Collaborative Research: Phrase Structure and C-Command

在整个现代语言学理论中，人们几乎毫无例外地认为，句子最好用某种称为树的抽象图来表示。选择树作为基本的句子结构捕捉了一些关于句子结构的构建块的直觉，这些构建块被称为成分：它们是连续的;每个成分都有一个独特的结构位置;每个独立的句子都包括一个单一的成分;等等。 因此，它必须使用一些原始的词汇来讨论语言相关的树结构的属性。什么东西进入这个原始语汇的问题相对来说被忽视了。虽然支配关系被广泛认为是一个原语，但本项目提出，c命令，一个高度语法相关的结构关系，是一个更好的选择，应该扮演表征良构性的核心角色。 本研究将探讨以下问题：（1）c-command的确切性质是什么？它允许我们定义的结构对象的范围是什么？(2)c-命令的表达能力是否足以定义语法理论的结构，同时又不过分宽容，以至于允许语言学上不相关的结构的可定义性？(3)在最近的研究中，为了区分把成分联系在一起的不同方式，引入了片段和范畴之间的二分法，而这一二分法本来是令人困惑的，但使用原始的c-命令能在多大程度上解释这种二分法呢？(4)在什么方面是语法的意见，建立结构表示使用的衍生步骤序列简化的情况下，原始的c-命令，特别是乔姆斯基的最低限度的建议，以及树邻接语法，一个系统，取得了重大成果，在理论和计算语言学？(5)c命令对人类句子处理模型有什么影响？特别是，在多大程度上可以假设，解析器操纵的C-命令关系占相对接受某些地方的歧义，而解释存在的处理困难的其他？该项目还旨在表明，在句子处理中使用c命令可以统一两个竞争的工作链，在基于语义依赖和结构配置的句子处理模型的开发中，保持各自的优势。

Throughout modern linguistic theory, it has been assumed almost without exception that sentences are best represented in terms of certain types of abstract graphs called trees. The choice of trees as underlying sentence structure captures a number of intuitions about the building blocks of sentence structure, what are called constituents: they are contiguous; each constituent has a unique structural position; every independent sentence comprises a single constituent; etc. A grammatical theory must have some way of selecting those trees that represent well-formed sentences. Consequently, it must make use of some primitive vocabulary for talking about properties of linguistically relevant tree structures. The question of what enters into this primitive vocabulary has been relatively neglected. While the domination relation has been widely assumed as a primitive, this project proposes that c-command, a highly grammatically relevant structural relation, is a better choice and should instead play the the central role of characterizing well-formedness. The proposed research will address the following issues: (1) What is the precise nature of c-command? What is the range of structural objects that it allows us to define? (2) Is c-command expressive enough to define the constructs of grammatical theory, while not being overly permissive as to allow the definability of linguistically irrelevant structures? (3) To what degree can the use of primitive c-command elucidate the otherwise puzzling dichotomy between segments and categories that has been introduced in recent work to distinguish different ways of relating constituents together? (4) In what respect are views of grammar that build structural representations using sequences of derivational steps simplified in the context of primitive c-command, in particular Chomsky's minimalist proposals as well as Tree Adjoining Grammars, a system which has achieved significant results both in theoretical and computational li nguistics? (5) What are the implications of c-command for models of human sentence processing? In particular, to what degree can the assumption that the parser manipulates c-command relations account for the relative acceptability of certain local ambiguities while explaining the existence of processing difficulty for others? This project also aims to show that the use of c-command in sentence processing can unify two competing strands of work in the development of sentence processing models based on semantic dependencies and on structural configurations, maintaining the advantages of each.