The Asymmetries of Subject-Auxiliary Inversion in English Wh-Questions
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Exploring the nature of do-support and Subject-Auxiliary Inversion (the SAI) in English wh-questions, this paper is to explain the asymmetries of the SAI (or the T-to-C head movement in a minimalist framework). The SAI in English wh-questions shows the asymmetries of subject and non-subject words as well as those of matrix clauses and non-matrix clauses. The T-to-C head movement occurs only in a matrix clause and in non-subject wh-movements. In this paper, I suggest do as a meaningful support (not ‘dummy’), and this idea as do-support implies that do has a [+tense] feature as in do, did and does. I consider that in English, a successive long-distance V-to-T-to-C movement develops historically into a short T-to-C movement occurring only in a matrix clause. In addition to a historical reason, the syntactic asymmetries of do-support and the subsequent T-to-C movement is crucially related with a [+tense] feature of the matrix clause and a [+tense] feature of an auxiliary do: the T[+tense] element do raises to the C position for the final spell-out of a matrix clause. To see the functional motivation of do-support, it is needed to reduce the complexity of the construction, being inserted between the subject and the predicate for an efficient parsing of a sentence. In addition, the same theory for the asymmetries of wh-questions can be applied to other subject/non-subject asymmetries such as that-trace effect, providing a more unified explanation on why asymmetries occur in a language.
Abstract
Exploring the nature of do-support and Subject-Auxiliary Inversion (the SAI) in English wh-questions, this paper is to explain the asymmetries of the SAI (or the T-to-C head movement in a minimalist framework). The SAI in English wh-questions shows the asymmetries of subject and non-subject words as well as those of matrix clauses and non-matrix clauses. The T-to-C head movement occurs only in a matrix clause and in non-subject wh-movements. In this paper, I suggest do as a meaningful support (not ‘dummy’), and this idea as do-support implies that do has a [+tense] feature as in do, did and does. I consider that in English, a successive long-distance V-to-T-to-C movement develops historically into a short T-to-C movement occurring only in a matrix clause. In addition to a historical reason, the syntactic asymmetries of do-support and the subsequent T-to-C movement is crucially related with a [+tense] feature of the matrix clause and a [+tense] feature of an auxiliary do: the T[+tense] element do raises to the C position for the final spell-out of a matrix clause. To see the functional motivation of do-support, it is needed to reduce the complexity of the construction, being inserted between the subject and the predicate for an efficient parsing of a sentence. In addition, the same theory for the asymmetries of wh-questions can be applied to other subject/non-subject asymmetries such as that-trace effect, providing a more unified explanation on why asymmetries occur in a language.
참고문헌 (24)
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