Phrase Structure and Clausality in VSO Languages

拟议的研究解决了一些问题， 语言学理论的基础，尽管一再重复， 迄今为止，各方作出了大量努力，但仍未能解决问题。 基本 问题是制定一个普遍语法模型， 可以令人满意地解释句法模式， 动词和宾语短语相邻的语言， 例如英语或日语，以及它们所使用的语言， 由主题分开，VSO语言的标题，这 项目 调查人员将深入研究三种不同的 VSO语言，查莫罗人，柏柏尔人和现代爱尔兰人， 不断地比较和对比他们在三个方面的发现， 语言，试图达到最强的一般要求， 这是可以实现的。 选择这三种语言是因为 他们的基因和地理多样性，因为每一个 三位研究者长期深入研究 其中一个的照片 这三名调查人员都有国际领先的 作为敏锐的语言理论家， 语言描述能力和理论能力。 中的每 他们在最高水平的工作中非常富有成效， 在很长一段时间内。 他们在这个项目上的合作 提供了人们所能期望的最好的承诺， 我们对语言基本结构的理解。

The proposed research addresses some issues which are fundamental to linguistic theory and which, despite repeated and intensive efforts, have so far resisted resolution. The basic issue is the formulation of a model of universal grammar which can account satisfactorily for the syntactic patterns found in languages in which the verb and its object phrases are adjacent, such as English or Japanese, and also languages in which they are separated by the subject, the VSO languages of the title of this project. The investigators will study in depth three different VSO languages, Chamorro, Berber, and modern Irish, and will continually compare and contrast their findings on the three languages, attempting to arrive at the strongest general claims that can be made. The three languages are chosen because of their genetic and geographical diversity, and because each of the three investigators has been engaged in long-term intensive study of one of them. The three investigators all have leading international reputations as acute linguistic theoreticians with unusually keen abilities at linguistic description as well as theory. Each of them has been extremely productive of work of the highest caliber over a long period of time. Their collaboration on this project offers the best promise one could hope for of a fundamental new advance in our understanding of the basic structure of language.