A Generative Approach to the Historical Development of Nominalized Adjectives

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K13440
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: University of Tsukuba
• Principal Investigator: Yamamura Shuto 筑波大学, 人文社会系, 助教 (30706940)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 名詞用法形容詞 / 生成文法理論 / 形態統語論 / PF削除 / 英語史 / 等位接続構造

Outline of Final Research Achievements

I examined nominalized adjectives in English, especially in Old and Present-day English, based on electronic corpora. The whole study shows that ellipsis of a head noun in "rice wif and earm (rich woman and poor)" is possible due to the semantic contrast between two adjectives: i.e. rich - poor. Generally speaking, adjectival inflection is responsible for such ellipsis. Indeed, instances like "the gap between the richer families and the very poor" are attested even in Present-day English. Instead of the adjectival inflection, the semantic contrast successfully provide a theoretical account for the fact that noun ellipsis immediately after an adjective is possible both in Old and Present-day English. In addition, it turned out from the "semantic contrast" point of view, that some examples in Old English text, which has been analyzed as noun ellipsis, are not actual instances of them because of the lack of such contrast.

Free Research Field

言語学、英語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

古英語は現代英語よりも、動詞や名詞、形容詞が豊かに屈折するので、特に語順については、無秩序のようにみえるほど自由だと思われているが、文法理論の視座からつぶさに観察してみると、語の配列にはやはり秩序があることがわかる。解釈上、そこにあるべき語が省略されるのは言語使用上当然の現象であるが、それがどのような条件下で起こるのかが今現在使われている言語でも、はるか過去に使われていた言語でも共通していることは、背後にある人間の言語能力の一貫性を示している。