Generality and Specificity of the Truncated Register in Maritime English

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520533
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology
• Principal Investigator: Fuji Masaaki 東京海洋大学, その他部局等, 教授 (30313381)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 繋辞脱落 / レジスター / 動的文法理論 / 海事英語 / 擬似等位接続詞 / 含意普遍 / 過程説 / 言語習得

Outline of Final Research Achievements

It is generally believed that function words in Maritime English can be absent freely, but this study has shown that there are at least three environments in which a copula cannot be absent: (1) when the subject is a pronoun, (2) when the subject is a DP headed by the definite article, and (3) when it is inside a subordinate clause.
Further, it has been shown that the copula drop in so-called truncated registers in English are constrained by the same implicational hierarchy that the previous typological studies have found, i.e., NP>AP>VP.
Finally, it has been pointed out that this implicational universal resembles an implicational universal on conjoinable categories, i.e., NP>AP>CP, and this similarity begs for explanation. A conjecture has been put forth stating that both universal hierarchies are dynamically formed following the time-stability scale with NP and CP as its extreme ends.

Free Research Field

理論言語学