On The Syntax Of English Small Clauses

The analysis of the syntactic structure of small clauses was put forward by Stowell in1981, and it has been one of the hot syntactic issues studied by many linguists. Researchers have presented different views and ideas on the syntactic structure of small clauses, and have carried out extensive and in-depth discussions. But there are still divergences, and its structure has been controversial, and has not obtained a conclusion. Whether it is a phrase or a clause, whether it is an independent component, or the projection of a content word, or a functional word, it’s still unclear. What characteristics it owns and its distribution, etc., all of these are worthy of our study of the phenomenon. This thesis attempts to define small clauses in English within the framework of transformational generative grammar, and study its syntactic structure to make an in-depth discussion.This thesis is going to discuss the syntactic structure, the features and the distributions of English small clauses within the theoretical framework of TG. This thesis has firstly defined a small clause as a verbless constituent having subject and predicate relation. This thesis briefly describes the relevant theoretical background of small clauses, as well as the analysis of English small clauses by many language scholars, such as Stowell, Chomsky, Bowers, and other scholars. All of them have made an accurate and detailed analysis about small clauses. Williams has held different views on the scope of the syntactic structure of small clauses. Until2012he still insisted that small clauses are a third section of the non-independent component. We have demonstrated indeed small clauses are independent components on the relevant theoretical basis, and we think small clause is a maximum projection of a functional abstract PrP word. XP is in its complement position. Its subject generates in Spec-XP position, and then moves to Spec-IP position, mainly in order to gain the argument. The shift of the subject is to satisfy the Case Filter. Thus, it can well solve the problem of finding a suitable node of small clause under X-bar theory, and it can well explain the grammatical structure of consider, seem etc.Based on this definition:small clause lacks C and I, its structure can be written as V [NP XP], where XP=AP, NP, PP, etc. Finally, this thesis gives examples to analyze the generative process of ECM structure, rising structure, and there-be structure. And demonstrate the subject of small clause generates from internal XP for thematic roles, in order to satisfy the Case Filter moving to IP position.