THE MECHANISM OF THE CHANGE IN ARGUMENT STRUCTURE FORMATION IN ENGLISH : THE DEMISE OF IMPERSONAL CONSTRUCTIONS AND THE EMERGENCE OF SYNTACTIC PASSIVES

这项研究旨在解释英语历史上发生的两个句法变化。这两个显著的变化是：(1)非人称结构的消亡和(2)句法被动结构的出现以及随后出现的新的被动结构，如间接被动句和介词被动句。这些变化是由于英语论元结构的变化造成的。也就是说，英语从词汇主位语言转变为结构依赖语言。这意味着小句结构的形成主要是基于结构原因，如主语要求，而不是谓词的意义。

This research has aimed to give an explanation to two syntactic changes which took place in the history of English. The two salient changes are(1) the demise of impersonal constructions and(2) the emergence of syntactic passives and subsequent emergence of new passive constructions like indirect passives and prepositional passives. These changes are due to the change which took place in argument structure formation in English. That is, the English language shifted from a lexical-thematic to structure-dependent language. This means that the clause structure is formed mainly on structural reasons like the subject requirement rather than meaning of the predicate.