What is an 'existential sentence' - 存现句?

[Zeppa]

In Ch. 27 of the book Conversational Chinese 301 (German version) the concept of 'Existentialsätze' is introduced. Actually, this is a Kantian term and I can't work out from my other grammars what it means. Is it a term used by Chinese grammarians (see original Chinese in subject)?

The explanation is that these are sentences which refer to the appearance, existence or disappearance of a person, a thing or a phenomenon, e.g.

桌子上有一本汉英词典。

前边走来一个外国人。

上星期走了易额美国学生。

There follows an exercise where we are supposed to change 4 sentences into 'existential sentences'. One example is given:

有两个人往这边走来了。

becomes

前边来了两个人。

I don't understand this exercise or the point of it. I don't mind whether I do it or not, but I would like some feedback from anyone who understands the grammar and perhaps links it to Chinese - A Comprehensive Grammar or something else. I always feel worse about grammar after I've tried to do this homework than before!

[skylee]

Try to rewrite the sentences by doing away the subjects without affecting the general meanings. Something like two guys are coming this way vs there are two guys coming this way.

[Zeppa]

Thanks, skylee, but what's the point of doing that? It's vice versa to what you said - I have to get rid of the 'there are'. But I don't see why 这边 changes into 前边.

Sorry about the typo in the third example sentence: should be 一个美国人.

I am wondering if this kind of sentence is one that presents no problems to English (and German) speakers.

[skylee]

Such exercises help train your ability to express things using different patterns so that what you say or write can be more than svo and be less boring. You would also be able to understand such sentences when you read or hear them.

[陳德聰]

I have only ever read the term existential sentence when referring to English sentences beginning in "there is/are..."

Your examples might be confusing for a couple of reasons. The most likely being that when you translate 上星期走了一個美國學生 into English, despite the fact that it is a 存現句... the English translation can be rendered as "An American student left last week", which is clearly not an "existential sentence" by the above criterion. "There was an American student who left last week" is probably more accurate though.

Existential sentences emphasize the existence or non-existence of things. These types of sentences can be used to emphasize the fact that that student was here before, and is not here now.

I think maybe the 有 is confounding your understanding of this, because 有兩個人 probably most comfortably translates as "there are two people", but I want to take a stab in the dark here and say that that is probably only a good translation when the location/time is at the beginning of the sentence. That is, if existential sentences in Chinese should be translated into existential sentences in English.

See here.

[Zeppa]

Thanks to both.

I have no problem understanding either of these sentence patterns, I just cannot see the point of changing one into the other! It would be different if it were a stranger type of sentence and I needed to learn it.

I gather that the Chinese term 存現句 is used in Chinese grammar books.

In the Rimmington/Yip grammar I find narrative, descriptive, expository and evaluative sentences, but I cannot match them to this Chinese term. Maybe Chinese and English grammars just differ.

I suspect problems in the book because there are a lot of issues. For example, in the accompanying exercise book, which is only Chinese-English, not German, we are asked to say whether sentences are 'true or false', but it really means 'right or wrong' ('correct or incorrect'). Apart from the fact that it's not good practice to see wrong sentences, this is badly expressed in English.

陳德聰,

that is right about the sentence, probably. Maybe they should introduce this as a word order matter rather than lumping so many different types of sentence together.

I found this grammarian Lü Shuxiang, but I wonder if he should be followed in a beginners' textbook. But as you say (I think), the book has just not given ideal examples of the structure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BC_Shuxiang

Anyway, thanks very much - that explains where the idea comes from.

[Guest realmayo]

Is it just me, or does 有两个人往这边走来了 sound clunky and ungainly compared to 前边来了两个人 (unless that you had a reason for the specific emphasis of the first example)?

[imron]

But I don't see why 这边 changes into 前边.

Because the sentence with 这边 describes the direction they are moving towards, whereas the sentence with 前边 describes the direction they are coming from. Like skylee said, it's just different ways to say the same thing rather than only being able to express yourself in a fixed and limited way.

[Zeppa]

Sorry to be dense, but if zhebian means 'this side' or 'here' and qianbian means 'in front', I still don't understand the change. Surely I could use zhebian in the changed sentence too?

I'm not going to get punished for not doing my homework, but I will try the first of the four sentences we were supposed to do:

（1）有两个新 同学到我们班来。

My attempt: 在我们半有两个新同学。

The 在 may be wrong.

[Michaelyus]

The Yip & Rimmington grammar would classify existential sentences as a type of expository sentence.

I think there may be a difference between existential sentences / 存现句 in Chinese and existential sentences in English. Those in Chinese are divided into four categories: with 有; with appearance/disappearance verbs; with a locative verb; with verbs expressing the existence of an event/experience [see this 1987 article]. But the English refers specifically to the first variety of the Chinese, with semantic content that concentrates solely on "existence"; the others are called "presentational-there" sentences.

So it may be that therein lies the difference?

Still, changing the structure from one variety to the other is a worthy exercise... Now that you know what the varieties are, I'm sure you'll understand that what has happened in post #9 is not a change from one existential sentence to another type / or to a "presentational-there" sentence, but that there has just been a change in topic.

I actually think the change from 这边 to 前边 is unnecessary and an example of bad pedagogy. If the exercise simply gave 往这边走来了两个人 or 来了两个人往这边走 as the answer, it would be grammatically OK but rather clunky, with a lot of emphasis [too much?] on the motion. Hence the change of vocabulary makes the sentence more euphonic, slightly more balanced, but is confusing for students!

[Zeppa]

Thanks very much, Michaelyus. That makes sense. I realized that 'expository sentence' was the most likely, but I couldn't immediately see the similarity.

Actually, I've been thinking about this and I think my main problem is that the book is really not for self-learning and it expects the class teacher to teach the grammar, but if she taught every grammar point we would have no time for other materials

In this chapter 27, there are first of all two dialogues (it's all about communication and dialogue). They appear to have no existential sentences in them at all. One is about 'I have a cold - You shouldn't smoke so much' and the other 'You shouldn't drive so fast - you will have an accident'. Then comes the vocabulary, about 20 items, which we usually look at first. The amount of dialogue and vocabulary is good, not too much. Then come two grammar points, explained in Chinese and English (and finally the exercises). The only explanation of existential sentences is what I quoted above: a definition and three examples. What is missing is a contrast with other sentence types. The only contrast I get is the example at the beginning of the exercise, where it says a) would be changed into b): I quoted it too:

有两个人往这边走来了。

becomes

前边来了两个人。

I have to rely on this for explanation, but it is confusing, as you say.

I now feel I need not complain about the book in the class this evening, which I keep promising myself not to do. (The book has quite a bit of Chinese which is there for the teacher who does not feel safe in German or English - the topic of each chapter consists of characters that are never explained to us).

[Zeppa]

Btw thanks for the article, that's great - I had overlooked the link.