Syntactic subject requirement: the demise of impersonal constructions and the rise of unaccusative constructions

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520556
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Hosei University
• Principal Investigator: OSAWA Fuyo 法政大学, 文学部, 教授 (10194127)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 統語的主語 / 非人称構文 / 語彙・意味優位型 / 機能範疇 / 非対格構文

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research has aimed to show that the notion of subject is not universal. In Old English, The presence of impersonal construction with no subject is a decisive piece of evidence. This is because Old English was a lexical-thematic language which consists of content words with no functional categories. Thematic relations between lexical items played a crucial role in determining the clause structure. In current English,'subject’is a syntactic device which was introduced late in the historical development of language to satisfy structural requirements. In Present-day English, subject has become obligatory due to fully-developed functional systems. The subject requirement is now clear due to the facts of mandatory presence of subjects, the presence of expletive subjects without semantic content.

Free Research Field

人文学　humanities