Abstract

Existential sentences have been discussed and analyzed by both traditional scholars and adherents of more recent theories in recent years, and they assert either the existence or the disappearance of an entity. Existential sentences have certain syntactic and semantic features which are believed to be common to most but not all languages. It is such diverse thinking habits and thinking modes that make English and Chinese existential sentences so different in structure. And up to now, the definition, frame，syntactic features about existential sentence are still uncertain. There is still substantial room for studying them.
This paper examines existential sentences by the comparison of English-Chinese   translation. My paper consists of four parts, complemented by an introduction and a conclusion. In this paper, I have cited seventeen typical existential sentences, and briefly speaking, all of them can be divided into English or Chinese existential sentences.
It is found out that the system of the machine translation has difficulty in identifying the shifted word order in the process of the original sentence translation. The machine translation does a better job in the translation of English existential sentences rather than that of Chinese existential sentences; the machine translation’s ability of recognizing V in Chinese existential sentences is better than that in English existential sentences, and the machine translation can recognize English existential sentences by translating it as you sentences, but PP and NP have difficulty in automatically adjusting the target language’s structure.
Thus we see many constructional differences between English and Chinese existential sentences. In my argument, a machine translation system will become more efficient and robust if it is empowered with word order transformation ability and better verb translation. My study can still give readers a better understanding of the English and Chinese existential sentences. 

Keywords: existential sentence; machine translation; constructional difference; Chinese; English

摘要

近年来，存在句有传统的学者和理论追随者的分析和讨论。存现句表明物体的存在或消失。存现句有其一定的句法和语义特征。不同的思维习惯和思维模式使英汉存现句的结构不同。目前，存现句的定义，框架及句法特征有很多不确定，仍有很大研究空间。
本文探讨了在英汉存在句的翻译。本文共分四个部分。列举的十七个典型的存现句可以分为英语和汉语存在句。
通过对比，足以指出机器翻译系统在转换原句的次序上有困难；机器翻译对英语存现句的翻译比对汉语存现句的翻译更准确；机器翻译在汉语存现句中对动词的识别度比在英语存现句中高；汉译系统能够识别出英语存现句并直接将其对应为“有”字句，但对其中PP与NP在目标语中的句法结构进行自动调整方面存在困难。
我们可以看到英汉语存在句之间的结构差异。我认为机器翻译需要加强词序调整和动词翻译。我的对比研究能让大家对英汉存现句的结构有更深刻的认识。

关键词：存现句；机器翻译；结构差异；中文；英文