| Inversion is a universal phenomenon in natural languages.In English,inversion aims to express a different information by an uncanonical word order.As the representative of English inversion,English locative inversion is usual with a locative preposed element.Based on the syntactic categories of preposed constituents,English locative inversion is divided into inversion with a preposed locative PP(PPloc-inversion)and inversion with a preposed locative Adv(P)(Adv(P)loc-inversion).First,this thesis generalizes the basic properties of English locative inversion by comparative analysis.Furthermore,the motivation of movement is explored in accordance with the basic properties.At last,under the Syntactic Cartography and Minimalist Program,the derivation of English locative inversion is discussed.The basic properties of English locative inversion are presented as follows:(ⅰ)the post-verbal logical subject with focus feature is assigned nominative case and controls the agreement of number;(ⅱ)the preposed locative element owns topic feature;(ⅲ)only unaccusative verbs can trigger the locative inversions.PPloc-inversion and Adv(P)loc-inversion also own unique features respectively.In PPloc-inversion,the preposed locative PP owns nominal feature[+N]but doesn’t have the subject status.In Adv(P)loc-inversion,the preposed Adv is regarded as a transparent particle without any nominal features.The main factor triggering the movement in locative inversion is the focalization in which the logical subject appears in the end-focus position in order to be focalized.Meanwhile,the locative constituent must undergo topicalization to the sentence-initial position so as to highlight the post-verbal focus.Under the Syntactic Cartography,topicalization or focalization refers to the syntactic movement to topic or focus position.According to the hypothesis of a low IP focus as the end-focus position in English,logical subject DP moves to the Spec-FocP in low IP area as the presentational focus,which is the process of focalization.Then,DP is frozen in this position.The locative element finally moves to the Spec-TopP and becomes the topic of sentence in left periphery.Adv(P)loc-inversion and PPloc-inversion adopt non-subject to satisfy the subject criterion by different methods.During the derivational process of PPloc-inversion,locative PP can move to the Spec-IP on the way to Spec-TopP due to the nominal feature[+N].Thus,the subject criterion is satisfied indirectly.During the derivational process of Adv(P)loc-inversion,Fin head keeps the EPP feature with an uninterpretable nominal feature[u-Loc].According to the hypothesis that transparent particles are able to project phrases,the particle phrase moves to the Spec-FinP on the way to Spec-TopP.Further,the uninterpretable nominal feature of Fin is valued.Thus,the subject criterion is satisfied indirectly. |
