Syntactic Analysis Of English Small Clause

The thesis discusses the syntactic issues of English small clause—the categorial status, characteristics, classification and distribution of an English small clause under the framework of TG grammar. At the very beginning, the thesis tries to define a small clause as a verbless constituent having subject and predicate relation. Only three types of category are legitimate to be the category of small clause predicate. They are D, A, and P. What is the syntactic construction of a small clause has been a controversial issue for a long time. In light of the Syntax of Predication proposed by Bowers (1993), the thesis analyzes the English small clause as a maximal projection headed by an abstract functional head Pr, which is the syntactic realization of predication. According to VP-internal subject hypothesis and the principle that predicate theta-marks its subject, the thesis suggests that the subject of a small clause originates within predication, and then moves to spec-Pr because of the Case Filter rules. The thesis also discusses what structures contain small clauses. These structures are ECM structure, raising structure, existential structure, and English SVOC structure. The small clauses are classified both in syntactic and semantic aspects. At last, the generalization is made on the types of small clause subjects. And the explanation is given to the effect of Pr null case on the selection of small clause subjects. The thesis also has mentioned the features of small clause of predicate nominals and the distinction of predicate nominals from other DPs.