An Empirical and Theoretical Study on the English Indefinite Article and its Related Constructions

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K00673
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 02080:English linguistics-related
• Research Institution: Kwansei Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: Ibaraki Seishirou 関西学院大学, 人間福祉学部, 准教授 (30647045)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 不定冠詞 / 後置属格 / 二重決定詞 / 属格

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study investigated the emergence and development of the indefinite article and post genitive with the indefinite article in the history of English using historical corpora to examine their distribution in each period, and discussed the facts revealed in the study using the framework of generative grammar theory. The results show that the emergence of the indefinite article coincided with that of post genitives, which suggests that the post genitive emerged at the time when the English determiner system began to be established. Regarding these developments, the process of the emergence of the post genitive was analyzed by adopting the RP structure based on the change in the genitive case assignment system.

Free Research Field

英語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

不定冠詞が古英語の数詞anから発達したことはよく知られているが、実際にコーパスを用いて不定冠詞が出現・発達した具体的時期を明らかにされてこなかった。本研究では、不定冠詞の出現した時期と十分に冠詞としての地位を築いた時期を明らかにすることができた。また、本研究は生成文法の理論的枠組みに基づいているため、人間の脳における言語能力の解明を目指す生成文法のプロジェクトに貢献するものである。