Sentences with Be, Exist, and Have in Chinese

Abstract

The group of sentences called existential sentences in Chinese, containing the main verbs sh 'to be', zdi 'to exist, be present', and yJu 'to have' are examined. Their relatedness in syntax and semantics is explored, as revealed by the kinds of noun phrases which occur in these sentences and by the co-occurrence conditions of the three verbs. Six general observations on the properties of these sentences are substantiated. It is clear that the occurrence of the three verbs is closely related to the status and position of the NP's. The verbs are also individually selectable and transformationally introducible into these existential sentences. It is finally proposed that the three verbs are variant representations of a single Chinese verb in such sentences. The NP's in these sentences are also discussed in terms of their syntactic functions and characteristics such as definiteness and anaphoricness.*