Minimalism and Logical Form

这是一个句法理论的研究项目，在被称为“极简程序”（MP）的一般框架内。MP的目的是从根本上简化“政府与约束”（GB）理论框架的假设和机制，这是MP的线性先行词，同时继续解释GB成功处理的经验数据。在这个特殊的项目中，研究人员将专注于开发一个令人满意的量化表达属性的理论说明，如“每个孩子”或“许多书”。对包含两个或更多这样表达的句子的解释表明，它们以有趣的方式相互作用，特别是在它们的“范围”方面，可能是宽的，也可能是窄的。这里要研究的主题是，是否可以利用为其他目的而设定的结构模式，例如为名词短语分配case类别，在解释量化表达时给出正确的结果，而不需要在GB框架中发展起来的某种复杂的解释机制。

This is a project of research in syntactic theory, within the general framework known as the "Minimalist Program" (MP). The aim of the MP is to simplify radically the assumptions and the mechanisms of the "Government-and-Binding" (GB) theoretical framework which was the lineal antecedent of MP, while continuing to account for the empirical data the GB handles successfully. In this particular project, the investigators will focus on developing a satisfactory theoretical account of the properties of quantified expressions, like "every child" or "many books". Interpretations of sentences containing two or more such expressions show that they interact in interesting ways, especially with respect to their "scope", which may be wide or narrow. The topic to be investigated here will be whether structural patterns which need to be posited for other purposes, such as assignment of case categories to noun phrases, can be exploited to give the right results in interpreting quantified expressions, without the need of the somewhat elaborate machinery for their interpretation which has evolved in the GB framework.