Cross-linguistic investigation of nominal structure

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K18106
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: English linguistics; Linguistics
• Research Institution: Jissen Women's University
• Principal Investigator: Inokuma Sakumi 実践女子大学, 文学部, 准教授 (90711341)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 名詞句構造 / 一致現象 / AAVE / 共格

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Within the Minimalist framework, syntactic and semantics properties are investigated across various nominal elements - pronouns, proper nouns and common nouns - from cross-linguistic perspective. Firstly, syntactic similarities and differences are pointed out among these three types of nominal elements. It is argued that the differences lie in their phonetic realization, despite the fact that they do have uniform syntactic structures. Secondly, coherent syntactic patterns are identified in less investigated phenomena, including subject-verb agreement in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and number mismatch found in certain nominal predicates in standard English.

Free Research Field

生成文法理論

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究の学術的意義は以下の通りである。主語‐述語の一致現象に対する分析を通じて（i）名詞句内部構造と節構造の接続様式という理論的問題に対する一つの知見を提供し、（ii）項名詞句と述部名詞句の相違の一側面を指摘した。また、国際言語としての英語への関心が高まるなか、非標準英語（AAVE）が示す規則性と標準英語が持つ特異性を示すことで、英語の多様性への理解を促進するという点で社会的意義を持つ。