句法结构从哪里来?--论句法理论的冗余性及其消除的可能性

Where do syntactic structures come from? On the redundancy of the current syntactic theories and its eliminability

自1957年乔姆斯基发表《句法结构》至今,生成语法经历了几十年的理论发展和更迭。从最早的短语结构规则和转换规则、70年代的X杠标理论到80年代包含X杠标理论和移动α等理论模块在内的管约论,再到自90年代中期开启的最简方案,句法结构及其属性得到越来越优化的解释,理论构件之间的冗余性不断被消除。虽然如此,目前最简方案以合并为基础的解释仍存冗余性。本文认为采取句法结构仅由词库而来的基本假设,把词库作为唯一的句法理论构件,可彻底消除冗余性,召唤着一种全新句法理论的出现。

Throughout the years, generative grammar provides several models for syntactic structures and their properties. A driving force for the changes within generative grammar comes from the need to eliminate redundancies among theoretical constructs. The said redundancy, however, still obtains in the current Minimalist Program. One way out is to adopt the lexicon as the only construct for syntactic theorizing, where syntactic structures and their properties derive ONLY from the lexicon. This calls for a new syntax.