The Passive Construction In Chomskyan Theory: Dynamic Development And Cognitive Evaluations

The transformation between the active and the passive pertains to many important syntactic principles, such as semantics in syntactic interpretation, the transformational relevance between D-structure and S-structure, syntactic realization of thematic roles and case assignments, feature-checking and subject-to-subject raising.The passive construction is the objective of study in my dissertation. During the five evolutionary phases of TG, the passive construction is dealt with under different operational systems, about which I make a thorough exploration and a close comparison, with the purpose of gaining a cognitive insight into the generative enterprise. In my research, I give a detailed description about the transformation of the active and the passive, which was only slightly expounded in each phase of TG, and make a comparison based on the flow of generative theory. Then I give a cognitive evaluation about the development of the passive construction in TG from the perspective of cognitive principles and approaches.Based on the achievements and assumptions of the minimalist program, I make a tentative study of the Chinese passive or Bei-zi structure, testing the assumption of the functional category of Bei-zi, which needs to be studied further.My research gives a principled account of the fact that TG conforms to human cognition from its philosophical source and the operational approaches in different phases of its development. The metagoal of TG is consistent despite radical modifications on the models of the theory, which tries to make the theory more plausible and scientific.