Collaborative Research: Phrase Structure and C-Command

在整个现代语言学理论中，几乎无一例外地假设句子最好地用某种被称为树的抽象图来表示。选择树作为潜在的句子结构抓住了一些关于句子结构的构建块的直觉，即所谓的成分：它们是连续的；每个组成部分都有独特的结构位置；每个独立的句子都包含一个单一的成分；等。语法理论必须有某种方法来选择那些表示结构良好的句子的树。因此，它必须使用一些原始词汇来谈论语言上相关的树结构的属性。什么进入这个原始词汇的问题相对来说被忽略了。虽然支配关系被广泛认为是一种原语，但本项目提出，c-command是一种语法上高度相关的结构关系，是更好的选择，应该在表征格式良好性方面发挥核心作用。提出的研究将解决以下问题：(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-command的表达能力是否足以定义语法理论的结构，同时又不会过于宽容，使语言学上无关的结构具有可定义性？(3)在最近的工作中，为了区分不同的关联成分的方式，引入了片段和类别之间令人困惑的二分法，使用原始的c-command能在多大程度上阐明这种二分法？(4)在原始c命令的背景下，使用简化的派生步骤序列构建结构表示的语法观点，特别是乔姆斯基的极简主义建议以及在理论和计算语言学上都取得重大成果的树相邻语法系统，在哪些方面？(5) c命令对人类句子处理模型的影响是什么？特别是，解析器操纵c命令关系的假设在多大程度上可以解释某些局部歧义的相对可接受性，同时解释其他歧义的处理困难的存在？本项目还旨在表明，在句子处理中使用c-command可以统一基于语义依赖和结构配置的句子处理模型开发中的两个相互竞争的工作链，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.