1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Syntax and Semantics of Non-Eventive Sentences : English Middles and Other Constructions
Project/Area Number |
10610477
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
Section | 一般 |
Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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Research Institution | Tokyo Woman's Christian University |
Principal Investigator |
KAWASAKI(ISHII) Noriko (川崎 典子) Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Department of Languages, College of Culture and Communication, Associate Professor of Linguistics, 現代文化学部, 助教授 (50169702)
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Project Period (FY) |
1998 – 1999
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Keywords | Middle Construction / Syntactic Movement / Thematic Positions / Thematic Roles / Predication / PRO / Definiteness / Indefiniteness / English |
Research Abstract |
The research focused on the middle construction in English and sentences with the missing subject of infinitives and gerunds (PRO) or with the pronoun one. The middle construction is not interpreted as eventive, but is construed to involve genericity. Like indefinite noun phrases, PRO and one can be bound by an adverb of quantification or an implicit generic operator. Unlike indefinites, however, they do not allow existential interpretation. That is, they are possible in generic contexts but they do not allow episodic/eventive interpretation. First, I proposed that the middle construction in English contains a zero-form morpheme which heads an adjunct to the verb and has the meaning of "due to." The zero-form morpheme is the source of the meaning typical of the construction that the derived subject is responsible for the genericity described by the sentence, and also prevents the realization of the demoted agent as well as other internal arguments. The derived subject of the middle const
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ruction is assigned the semantic role of the bearer of a property in the derived position. The assignment is based on the predication relation between the subject and the predicate. On the other hand, the subject of such sentences as "John washed" "John shaved" is not moved from the object position to the subject position. I proposed that movement into a position with a semantic role is possible if the role assigned there is based on predication, but not possible if it is one of the event-related roles such as agent and theme, which are based on the thematic relations of the verb. I argued that this generalization points to the hypothesis that the event-related thematic roles are not syntactic features that trigger syntactic movement. Based on the above-mentioned observations on PRO and one, I examined the relationship between definiteness/indefiniteness and their syntactic realizations from the Minimalist point of view. I argued that indefiniteness, as well as definiteness, must be explicitly marked on noun phrases, and existential interpretation is possible only for noun phrases explicitly marked as indefinite. Less
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Research Products
(6 results)