Restudy Of Complementizer Within Generative Grammar

As one of the Core Functional Categories, Complementizers are words which introduce some clauses, getting the name because of their typical usage of introducing complement clauses in languages such as English. Proposed by Rosenbaum in 1960s, Complementizer has aroused many linguists'interest, including Chomsky, Radford, Matthew, etc. Although these researches have greatly enriched our understanding of Complementizer, there exist some unreasonable parts. Based on the previous studies, this thesis attempts to restudy Complementizer under the frame of generative grammar obeying N&S conditions, trying to give a clearer definition of Complementizer and rebuild new theoretical hypothesis to offer a more reasonable logic modal for syntactic analysis.The present studies of Complementizer do not give it a clear definition and syntactic position which causes the chaos of its composing elements and syntactic status.According to its syntactic features and functions, this thesis establishes the N&S conditions for Complementizer, based on which, the four well-accepted Complementizer components"that/for/if/whether"are reexamined. Among them,"that"is proved to be the only qualified Complementizer, while"for"remains its property as a proposition and"whether""if"are back to modal operators, to be specific, interrogative modal operators. More members which are in the same line with"if"and"whether"are figured out, including modal auxiliaries and affirmative and negative operators.Guided by sound logic and cross-lingual data, MP and Split-MP hypothesis are proposed in order to give these modal operators their proper positions in syntactic operations.This study offers the new analysis of CP which perfects the basic logic modal of human languages and will be the basis of further syntactic studies.