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Generally assumed, ESs express that certain objects exist, appear, or disappear from someplace. However, there are some different requirements on the structures of English and Chinese ESs. For example, the subject position of an English ES must be occupied by an unstressed, non-deictic there (Milsark 1979, Li & Thompson 1981, Lumsden 1988). Any constituent (there, be /VP and NP) involved in English ESs, can never be omitted. The following examples are quoted from Milsark (1979: 14):

(12)a. There is a Santa Claus. a’. *is a Santa Claus. b. There ensued a riot. b’. *ensued a riot.

See that English ESs in (12) cannot omit expletive there, or it will crash the sentences. Meanwhile, matrix finite verbs and NP arguments cannot be omitted as well. While in Chinese ESs, the only indispensable element is the post-verbal NP (Chen 1957, Fan 1963, Song 2007). For instance, Fan (1963: 386) classifies the constituents of Chinese ESs into three parts and names them as A, B, C, separately. So the structure of Chinese ESs is rewritten below:

LP + VP + NP → A + B + C

Fan (1963: 393) uses Part C to name the post-verbal NP, which is the nucleus of ESs and cannot be omitted in any case. We illustrate this point with the following examples.

2.2 Previous Studies on the Classifications of English and Chinese PSs

Since scholars have made many detailed and comprehensive studies on PSs. The point of these sentences is that they contain pivot elements, each of which serves as the theme or patient object of the first verb and the agent subject of the second predicate (Fan 1998). Scholars define and categorize pivotal sentences according to different criteria. For instance, Wang (2015) regards sentences containing a joint as recursive nexus① ‘dixishi’, known as the PS (pivotal sentence). According to different kinds of specific subjects of the adnex, Wang (2015: 105) classifies the recursive nexus into three types:

Firstly, the purpose object serves as the subject of the adnex, as in duoxie jiejie tixing-le wo ‘Thank my elder sister for reminding me’, the object jiejie ‘my elder sister’ is the subject of the adnex.

Secondly, the predicative object serves as the subject of the adnex, as in shi shei qi zheyang diaozuande mingzi ‘It is someone who gave such a weird name’, the object shei ‘someone’ is the subject of the adnex.

Thirdly, the whole predicate serves as the subject of the adnex, as in wo lai-de buqiaole ‘I came here at a wrong time’, the first predicate lai-de ‘came here’ serves as the subject of the adnex.

In addition, other scholars classify pivotal sentences, such as in accordance with the meaning of the first verb (V1), Wu (1990) simply classifies them into six types: First, V1 is the cause-like verb, and V2 is the result or purpose of V1. Second, V1 shows sentiment, and V2 is the cause. Third, V1 shows the meaning of transfer, and V2 is the action of transferring objects. Fourth, V1 is have or (not) have ‘(mei)you’, and V2 is the action and mood of the pivot. Fifth, V1 is the verb for titles, and V2 acts as the titles. And last, V1 is the link verb ‘shi’, and 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。