A MP Approach To The Null Subject PRO In English And Chinese

Empty category, an important concept put forward by Chomsky in the late 70s and early 80s, plays an important role in the theoretical framework of Government and Binding. Empty category has no phonetic content but has syntactic and semantic function. Chomsky holds that null subject can be divided into two categories, that is, PRO and pro. PRO and pro are two variants of empty category. In English, they respectively distribute in the subject position of nonfinite clauses and finite clauses. The null subject PRO distributes in the subject position of nonfinite clauses. While pro appears in the subject position of finite clauses. The study of empty category is helpful to understand the structure of natural languages. Due to space limitations, the thesis only makes a study on the null subject PRO.The null subject PRO has aroused the attention of scholars at home and abroad since it was put forward. They conduct the study within the theoretical framework of Government and Binding at the beginning. Later the scholars and Chomsky realize the limitation of this theoretical framework, Chomsky establishes Minimalist Program. Economic principle serves an important role. Minimalist Program is put forward out of economy. No superfluous elements are allowed in the syntactic derivation and representation in terms of economic principle. So far, many studies show that the proposal of Minimalist Program can explain the linguistic phenomenon more adequately.Based on the Minimalist Program put forward by Chomsky, the thesis discusses the evidence, distribution, interpretation and motivation of syntactic generation of the null subject PRO in English and Chinese. On one hand, the thesis poses the correlative semantic, syntactic and theoretical evidences to prove the existence of the null subject of PRO in English. PRO distributes in the subject position of the nonfinite clause and is in complementary distribution with lexicalized NP in control structure. Since move, feature-checking and economic principle are closely related (move and feature-checking are restricted by economic principle), the conclusion can be drawn that the syntactic generation of the null subject PRO is motivated by economic principle not others. On the other hand, the thesis analyzes the previous views and raises the criterion of finiteness and nonfiniteness distinction. A clause can be regarded as a nonfinite clause if its subject position meets the conditions:it is an external argument position; moreover, it is not lexicalized with the original meaning unchanged (except the reflexive ziji). The distribution of the null subject PRO in Chinese is therefore derived, that is, PRO occurs in the subject position of nonfinite clause. Furthermore, the thesis analyzes and discusses the syntactic generation of the null subject PRO. Economic principle also plays an important part in Chinese. That is, the syntactic generation of the null subject PRO is also restricted by economic principle. Then the interpretation of the null subject PRO is discussed. There are five control relationships:exhaustive control, split control, partial control, variable control and arbitrary control. But there is no partial control in Chinese.The evidence, distribution, motivation of syntactic generation and interpretation of the null subject PRO in English and Chinese are explained more adequately through the study. The limitations of the study on the English and Chinese PRO in the theoretical framework of Government and Binding are solved to a certain extent. The thesis discuses the dispute of the existence of the null subject PRO in Chinese and reaches a conclusion that the null subject PRO exists in Chinese.