时制范畴与英汉间的语法差异  

The functional category T(ense) and grammatical variations between Chinese and English

作　　者：熊仲儒 XIONG Zhongru(Dept.of Linguistics,Beijing Language and Culture University,Beijing 100083,China)

机构地区：[1]北京语言大学

出　　处：《外语教学与研究》2019年第6期888-900,960,F0003,共15页Foreign Language Teaching and Research

摘　　要：英汉两种语言在主语、形容词及构造原则等方面有一些表面上的差异,如主语与谓语动词之间有无形态上的一致、是否需要虚主语、是否存在无主语的句子、形容词做谓语是否需要系动词、动词在句子与短语中是否有限定形式与非限定形式上的差别,等等。对此有学者认为英语有语法主语而汉语没有,英语有形容词而汉语没有,汉语短语与句子的构造原则一致而英语不一致。本文基于生成语法理论,提出这些差异是由两种语言中不同特征的时制范畴造成的:汉语的时制范畴没有屈折形态,其(EPP)特征也具有可选性;英语的时制范畴不仅有屈折形态,对其宿主也有范畴上的要求,其EPP特征具有强制性。跨语言比较结果显示,更深层的类型学范畴(如时制等功能范畴)似乎制约着一切语言,而那些表层结构的差异好像并不那么重要。English and Chinese differ in some superficial aspects, such as subject-predicate agreement, an expletive subject insertion and subject drop, etc.. Some scholars have observed that English has grammatical subjects and adjectives while Chinese doesn’t, and the construction principles of phrases and sentences in Chinese are unified but not so in English. From the perspective of generative grammar, all these differences are analyzed as caused by features of tense. Tense in Chinese has no inflectional features and its EPP feature is optional, while tense in English has inflectional features which have special categorical requirements for its host and its EPP feature is obligatory. A largescale cross-linguistic comparison shows these superficial variations recede into insignificance while the underlying typological categories, like tense, appear to overwhelm all surface formal structures.

关 键 词：时制范畴 语法主语 形容词 构造原则 Borer-Chomsky猜想 

分 类 号：H043[语言文字—语言学]