Syntactlc Status And Derivation Of English Expletives

In English sentence, both notional constituents and expletives are permitted in the left peripheral domain of predicate verbs. Expletives, when located in the left periphery of predicates, are essential to the formal computation of sentences, which play a vital role in the completeness of sentence structure and yet, exert no influence on the construction of sentential semantics. Therefore, there exists an asymmetry between syntactic and semantic function of expletives in the construction of sentence form and meaning.English expletives have been studied in a large quantity from perspectives of traditional grammar, generative grammar and functional grammar, which has yielded rich achievements. However, there is still lack of consensus on syntactic status of expletives.This dissertation firstly analyzes the problem existing in the phase derivation of structures with expletives, which indicates that the extraction of expletives from Lexicon is not indispensable to Syntactic Numeration in the current framework of phase derivation. Constructions with expletives are demonstrations of English non-standard sentence pattern. The main distinction between standard and non-standard sentence pattern lies in that special information packaging mechanism is involved in the latter. As such, the information distribution is taken as a starting point in the analysis of constructions with expletives, and the mapping relation between information distribution and syntactic numeration is primarily explored to reasonably account for the syntactic status and semantic function of expletives. Moreover, the generation of there and it is explained in such a framework.The main findings are as follows:1) Informational Structure Interface is illustrated based on mapping relation between information distribution and syntactic numeration and then the syntactic status and semantic function of English expletives can be defined. Syntactic status of English expletives is Focus Operator (FO) and their semantic function is to highlight the thematic-predicate relation in constructions with expletives. On such bases, a brand-new generation model of English expletives is put forward. With information distribution involved in syntactic numeration, abstract functional focus operator FO is added to Lexicon of the constructions with expletives and functional focus constituent FocP is projected in the corresponding syntactic numeration. The specifier position of FocP carries the uninterpretable feature [+Foc]. The focus operator is base-generated in the leftmost peripheral position of the constructions with marked focus constituents, then the attraction of FocP drives itto move to the left peripheral position of FocP to check the uninterpretable feature and thus, the focus becomes salient. After the convergence of phase derivational process of the constructions, the representation is transferred to PF and LF. Meantime, Information Structure Interface coordinates between PF and LF, which realizes FO as there or it respectively at PF, and interprets it as focus at LF. The above model is called Phase Derivational Model Involving Information Distribution in this dissertation.2) It’s proposed that there exists the distinction in syntactic numeration process between standard and non-standard sentence pattern. Constructions with expletives are instantiations of non-standard sentence pattern in English which demonstrates special information packaging mechanism. In the non-standard sentence pattern, information distribution is intervened in syntactic numeration, focus operator FO is added to Lexicon and the focus constituent FocP is projected in the process. Yet, in the standard sentence pattern, features in information distribution are directly projected in the interface between syntactic numeration and PF and they don’t intervene in syntactic numeration. Those features don’t trigger syntactic operations and they are interpreted by phonetic tools, which means that compared with the standard sentence pattern, information structure interface should be added after Spell-out in the syntactic numeration of the non-standard sentence pattern to thoroughly explain the features generated by information distribution in PF and LF. Therefore, different models should be utilized to analyze standard and non-standard sentence patterns and meanwhile, the existence of expletives should be well expounded in the mapping relation between outer information distribution and inner syntactic numeration.3) It’s been found that non-predicate constituents like nouns, adjectives and prepositions can gain the predicate feature from the markedness of focuses according to the analysis of the logical semantic relations between constituents in constructions with marked focuses. Thus, light predicate phrase XpredP is proposed, which is applicable to the explanation of non-predicate constituents including nouns, adjectives and prepositions. The head of light predicate phrase xpredP is endowed with [+predicate] feature and its complement is non-predicate constituents XP. XP cannot be predicates which assign thematic roles to external arguments; yet, the attraction of the head feature of xpredP motivates them to move to the specifier positions to check [+predicate] feature, which makes XP carry external arguments and assign thematic roles. As the focus of the constructions with expletives, xpredP expresses a certain thematic-predicate relation and the focus status is interpreted by FO in the specifier position.Based on the above findings, a generative model of English expletives which is called Phase Derivation Model involving Information Distribution is established in this dissertation. Then the generation of there and it is expounded.This dissertation includes 6 chapters. Chapter 1 is Introduction, which defines terminologies and generally states reasons for topic selection as well as the structure. Chapter 2 is Literature Review, which reviews the literature concerning there and it from perspectives of traditional grammar and generative grammar and then puts forward research questions and objectives. Chapter 3 is Theoretical Foundation, which overviews the fundamental concepts related to Phase Theory and Information Structure Theory, basic derivational process and operational tools. Chapter 4 analyzes the syntactic status of there and proposes Phase Derivational Model Involving Information Distribution. Chapter 5 explores the generation of it, proving that the new model is rational and feasible in analyzing the derivation of expletives. Thus, the syntactic status and semantic function of English expletives there and it are defined under the same framework. Chapter 6 goes to the conclusion in which the significance, innovations, limitations as well as implications for further research are put forward.