A Diachronic Study on the Licensing of Subjects and the Syntactic Structure of the Absolute Participial Constructions in English

Research Project

Project/Area Number	16K16859
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	English linguistics
Research Institution	Fujita Health University
Principal Investigator	Nakagawa Satoshi 藤田保健衛生大学, 医学部, 講師 (90566994)
Project Period (FY)	2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2017)
Budget Amount *help	¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000) Fiscal Year 2017: ¥520,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥120,000) Fiscal Year 2016: ¥650,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥150,000)
Keywords	独立分詞構文 / PP構造 / φ素性の消失 / 一致形態素の消失 / CP構造 / 与格付与 / 統語構造 / 主語への格付与
Outline of Final Research Achievements	The diachronic change of absolute participial constructions from OE to ME is accounted for from the viewpoint of the Labeling Algorithm proposed by Chomsky (2013).In OE, dative Case was assigned to the subjects of absolute participial constructions and present participles agreed with them in gender, number, and case. This study proposes that the absolute participial constructions were headed by a null P and the null P assigned dative Case to both their subjects and the present participles. Furthermore, the complement of the null P was labeled as <φ, φ>as a result of the merger of the subjects and the present participles, because the present participles had φ-features. It is argued that in ME, present participles lost their φ-features and then the complement of the null P was not labeled as <φ, φ>, absolute participial constructions became obsolete.