1996 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
An Analysis of the Structure and Function of a Clause as a Basic Unit in Communication
| Project/Area Number |
06451081
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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| Research Institution | The School of Letters, Nagoya University |
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Principal Investigator |
NAKANO Hirozo Nagoya University, the school of Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (20023616)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
AMANO Masachiyo Nagoya University, the school of Letters, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (80116524)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1994 – 1996
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| Keywords | the meaning of an utterance / the syntactic structure of a sentence / speech act / speech act verb / illocutionary force / proposition / propositional attitude / propositional modality |
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| Research Abstract |
Having investigated the semantic structure of an utterance (of a sentence) for the past two years, we have come to the conclusion that the semantic structure of a sentence (or a clause) uttered in a communicative situation can be analyed as consisting of four hierarchically ordered layrs, namely, 1) the 'illocutionary force' layr, 2) the 'propositional attitude' layr (which expresses the speaker's psychological attitude toward the proposition), 3) the 'propositional modality' layr (the modality which reflects the speaker's propositional attitude), and 4) the 'proposition' layr (which expresses a state of affairs that the sentence refers to). Using this four layred structure analysis of a sentence uttered in a speech situtation and on the English data base that we have gathered, we have continued this year the study of the correspondence between the semantic and the syntactic structures of complement sentences of English verbs which we began in the previous year and we have also finishe
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d the study of adverbial chauses playing the roles of adjunct and disjunct in sentences, and have published the results of these studies in the form of a research report. We have also carried out an analysis of the English modal auxiliaries which are thought to have the same semantic structure as that of English verbs taking sentential complements as their objects, and have made it clear that our four-layred structure analysis of a sentence enables us to account in a principled way for the historical developments of the uses of English modals as well as their present-day uses. We think that the most important achievement that we have accomplished in our three-year research is that we have proved that the semantic properties of complement sentences (clauses) of English verbs and the uses of English adverbial clauses and modals, which have been regarded as completely unrelated in previous studies, can be accounted for uniformly and systematically on the basis of our analysis of the semantic struture of an utterance. Less
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