| The Control Theory has been one of the most important parts in the Generative Grammar. Under theGovernment and Binding (GB) framework, linguists have done a lot of research with respect to controlphenomena. With the birth of Minimalism and the proposal of Hornstein’s (1999) Movement Theory ofControl, the control construction becomes a hot topic again. Traditionally, PRO is believed to be abase-generated, non-overt lexical item. Then, its existence has caused much concern because of theelimination of D-structure under the Minimalist Program. Chomsky and Lasnik (1993) proposes that Casetheory instead of PRO Theorem determines the distribution of PRO. According to their analysis PRO isassociated with a special type of Case, called “null” Case and the null Case is checked by infinitival to or-ing. Though the approach provides an explanation to the control construction under the MP, it seems thatthis approach has a number of problems. Only PRO is capable of bearing null Case and Infl that checks nullCase cannot check any other kind of Case. PRO and null Case thus only ever occur together and accountfor each other by stipulation. Thus, it is a way of stating the descriptive generalization concerning itsdistribution.Hornstein questions the above idea, and argues that PRO is NP trace, and control is derived by themovement of PRO. Landau (2003) criticizes Hornstein’s proposal and points out that there are manyproblems with the Movement Theory of Control, which cannot explain such problems as subject controland partial control. Landau (1999,2004) proposes the Agree Theory of Control, but his proposal is alsoproblematic. He modifies the notion of Agree and the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) proposed byChomsky (1998,1999).Hornstein’s Movement Theory of Control is in accordance with the spirit of Minimalism, and providesa new perspective for the research of the control construction. Coppe (2010) found that the obligatorycontrol is the phenomenon where the distribution of movement and PRO overlaps, and based on this hedivides the control phenomena into case-sharing and case independence, as shown in the following twosentences, respectively: (1) a. I want [I to [I leave]].b.I want him/he [he to [he leave].The thesis holds that it is not convincing to give different explanations for the control construction. Interms of the MP, case feature on NP is inherent when the NP selected and can not be changed during thederivational process of a sentence. However, there is no explanation for the phenomenon such as (1b) underthe Movement Approach to control. According to the Case independence, the thesis postulates that verbshave tense feature which affects the Case valuation of its external argument. Based on Hornstein’s（1999）Movement Theory of Control, this thesis gives an analysis of control in English and interprets thederivation of obligatory control in EnglishThere are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter one is a brief introduction to the thesis. In this chapter,we review the definitions of control and illustrate our understanding towards control. Also, we introducethe typology of control, the basic questions concerning the research, and the motivation as well as the goalsof the thesis. In Chapter two we briefly review the main approaches to control. Chapter three is thetheoretical framework and we mainly focus on introducing the core ideas of the Minimalism. In Chapterfour, we analyze the control constructions in English according to the Movement Theory of Control andFeature Checking Theory. Chapter five states the contribution of the research to the study of control as wellas the remaining problems. |
PDF Full Text Request