A Study On Cartography Of The“why+Not+XP” Structure

The basis for selecting this topic lies in: Firstly,as the mainstream theory of syntactic research,Chomsky's TG grammar has not adequately described the syntactic structures of some “peripheral constructions”.As a result,it can not provide a complete and fine tree diagram for them.Although more and more “peripheral constructions”,such as sluicing structure,stripping structure,and sluice stripping structure,have recently been paid more and more attention,the drawing of the tree diagram of the structure of “why+ not+ XP” is still a problem that needs to be solved.Secondly,it is under this background that a theoretical school of syntactic cartography has quietly emerged in recent years with a very extensive research interest,including Pollock's“Split-INFL Hypothesis”,Larson's proposal on the structure of the shell,Rizzi's research on the structure of the left periphery of the clause and so on.Although the focuses are different,the goals and efforts of each school are similar,that is,to provide as detailed descriptions of the structural components as possible.In view of that,this paper sets about to analyze the structure of “why+ not+ XP” from the perspective of syntactic cartography.It aims to describe the syntactic derivation of the structure of“why+ not+ XP” as much detail as possible,to reveal its internal structure and to draw a complete and fine tree diagram.Because the structure of “why+ not+ XP” belongs to the CP domain,this paper selects Rizzi's left periphery of the clause as the theoretical basis.This paper not only analyzes the structure of “why+ not+ XP” and draws the tree diagram by using the method of syntactic cartography for reference,but also verifies its syntactic derivation and tree diagram by using Componential Analysis.The study has come to the following conclusions: 1.The structure of “why+ not+XP” is not a simple linear sequence composed of several words,but a special interrogative sentence with complete phonetic expressions which undergoes movement of relevant components and deletion of some components at the level of PF.And the structure usually exists in a parallel structure with a preceding clause.2.This paper indicates that the syntactic derivation of the structure of “why+ not+ XP” involves the“why” base-generates in the specifier of ForceP.“Not” and “XP” undergo a series ofovert movements,and in order to highlight the contrastive focus of the sentence,some components are omitted in the speech layer.And at last I draw a fine tree diagram under the frame of the left periphery of the clause.3.In terms of semantics,the rationality of syntactic derivation of “why+ not+ XP” structure is verified.At the same time I get the semantic interpretation of the structure and find that its XP has a semantic restriction that it should be related to the XP of its preceding clause.This paper analyzes the structure of “why+ not+ XP” from the perspective of syntactic cartography.Compared with TG grammar,syntactic cartography provides a more detailed syntactic interpretation.This not only makes people pay more attention to the complex syntactic derivation behind the seemingly simple structure,but also provides a new research method for syntactic research.For the sake of completeness,this paper verifies its syntactic derivation semantically,and provides an idea for the subsequent research on the combination of syntactic cartography,semantics and pragmatics.As for its practical contribution,the study is instructive for drawing tree diagrams of some structures which are similar to “why+ not+ XP” structure.