| The thesis seeks the very basic clausal structure through an investigation of syntactic relations held between verbs and other clausal constituents in French. The dissertation uses the theoretical framework as it is developed in Generative Grammar in the last decade. The study begins with, and is based on, recent proposals for the movement of verbs. Syntactic phenomena such as French inversion and adverbial placement have been accounted for with respect to the movement rule. In addition to French, some data are taken from other languages such as English and Chinese. Following the approach that a core grammar can be drawn by fixing parameters of the system, the study defines the basic clausal structure as follows: {dollar}{dollar}rmlbrack CPquad lbrack TPquad lbrack NEGPquad lbrack AGR{lcub}-{rcub}SPquad lbrack AGR{lcub}-{rcub}OPquad lbrack VPquad rbrack rbrack rbrack rbrack rbrack rbrack{dollar}{dollar}which is supported by the movement rule of verbs and the assumption that the basic subject position is within VP. Inversions in French can be accounted for as an instance of verb raising, instead of NP movement as traditionally assumed. The investigation of French adverbial placement consists of two assumptions: (i) the variety of syntactic positions of adverbial can be better understood in terms of thematic relations held between adverbial and predicate--from this follows a classification of French adverbials; (ii) base-generated adverbials are complements to V-head, internal Adjunct-like adverbials are complements to V{dollar}spprime,{dollar} and external adverbials must be attached to maximal projections. The study shows that the verb-movement is crucially involved in providing a comprehensive account for the adverbial positions. The two domains of the investigation thus provide evidence that configurational differences can be maximally reduced to derivations from a unique clausal structure as a result of interactions between the modules of the grammar. |
