2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Understanding narrow syntax as the core of the language organ: Toward its further minimization and simplification

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	18K00592
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Review Section	Basic Section 02060:Linguistics-related
Research Institution	Chukyo University
Principal Investigator	Nomura Masashi 中京大学, 国際学部, 教授 (60410619)
Project Period (FY)	2018-04-01 – 2024-03-31
Keywords	pair-Merge / Labeling Algorithm / Internal / External / passives / MERGE / Head movement
Outline of Final Research Achievements	Under the framework of a minimalist program, this research project aims to further minimize and simplify the syntactic system that plays the core of the language organ and aims to construct a system in which the only structure building operation is simple Merge. First, we have examined whether pair-Merge, which is different from simple Merge, is available in the analysis of "head-movement," and by the application of the syntactic operation pair-Merge, we have shown that it can generate various types of verbs such as transitive verbs, unaccusative verbs, and unergative verbs from the same R and v just by changing the order of the application of pair-Merge. Furthermore, we have showed that Japanese passive morphemes, which have the same morphology but behave syntactically differently, can be explained by the difference in the order of pair-Merge. On the other hand, we concluded that a type of "head-movement," such as V(INFL)-to-C, can be explained by simple Merge rather than pair-Merge.
Free Research Field	理論言語学
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	本研究の学術的意義は、言語器官の中核を担う統語システムの最小化・単純化を目指すことから人間言語の本質を解明することにある。人間言語の文法体系は表面的に複雑であり、言語間に違いが見られる。しかし人はどの言語を母語として獲得する場合でもおよそ3~４年という短い期間で大人と同じ文法を有することがこれまでの言語学研究により明らかとなっている。この事実は、人間言語の文法体系が短期間で獲得できるだけ単純であり、言語間に差がないということを示唆している。本研究で提示した提案が妥当であると示されれば、人間のあらゆる行動を支える言語の仕組みの解明に迫れるという点でその学術的意義は大きいと考える。