A Review of Contiguity Theory by Norvin Richards  

《邻接理论》述评

作　　者：Ma Baopeng 马宝鹏(临沂大学外国语学院)

机构地区：[1]Foreign Language School,Linyi University

出　　处：《韵律语法研究》2023年第1期118-156,共39页Studies in Prosodic Grammar

摘　　要：Norvin Richards’new book Contiguity Theory counts as an important contribution to the study of syntax-phonology interaction.In this book,Richards departs from the standard Minimalist approach which attends to syntactic differences of movement among languages by just positing the diacritic features in some languages,but not in others.He instead rationalizes a set of fundamental principles like Affix Support and Generalized Contiguity,grounded in independent and observable properties of languages.While these principles must be universally satisfied,languages tend to use different mechanisms to realize this goal under the constraint of their own phonological and morphological properties.The different ways employed may thus yield cross-linguistic variations concerning the presence or absence of syntactic movements.Richards’book makes a serious attempt to explore the syntactic variations among languages by taking an interface-oriented approach,with far-reaching implications for understanding how modules interact with each other within the current theory of grammar and accounting for the syntactic variations among various languages.MIT语言学系Norvin Richards教授的新作《邻接理论》,是生成语法理论视域下韵律-句法接口研究的前沿之作。该书突破了最简方案中的“单向推导”接口观,倡导韵律-句法同步互动机制,韵律结构的构建在狭义句法阶段就已开始,因此完全可以促发句法进行运作,以实现韵律结构的优化。书中观点表明,韵律模块和句法模块并非像最简方案理论所设定的那样严格分离,仅通过接口实现单向互动,而是更加交错、缠绕,正如Richards(2016:24)所言,“附之于句法树形结构之上的音系运作可以和句法派生运作同时进行,而不是在其完成之后”。总而言之,该书韵律-句法接口双向互动的研究,尤其是韵律激活句法运作的思想和机制构建,都是国际韵律-句法接口双向互动观的先声,其系统性成果对该领域具有推动作用。

关 键 词：Contiguity Theory MINIMALISM syntax-phonology interaction syntactic variation 

分 类 号：H043[语言文字—语言学]