Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Ellipsis---Toward the establishment of generative grammar as an empirical science---

该项目的主要目标是通过对自然语言中省略结构的句法和语义分析来揭示语言教师的本质，主要集中在日语和英语上。我们的最终目标是提出一个纯粹受结构因素制约的语言能力模型，它有别于词汇或语用制约因素。省略对这方面的研究有所启发。因为，从定义上讲，省略结构中的发音比发音的要多，所以可以预料到，“省略”部分的意思应该以某种方式在我们的头脑中重建。在这一背景下，重要的是，尽管一些省略结构允许根据说话人的世界知识来猜测其意义，但一些省略结构需要重构语法/语言表征，正如Hankamer&Sag(1976：《深层和表层回指》在《语言调查》中指出的那样)。Hankamer&SAG…进一步的研究表明，某些省略结构需要先行语言表达，而另一些省略结构则不需要，并声称前者是表层回指(其解释需要基于重构的语言表征来计算)，后者是深层回指(其意义可以以任何方式推断，基于语言外知识)。换句话说，表层回指反映了先行语表达的结构/形式意义，这就是为什么我们对它们特别感兴趣的原因：省略可能比它的显性对应提供更多关于语法运作的信息。为了实现这一目标，我们需要(I)识别涉及表层回指的结构，(Ii)检验我们的理论所做的预测，(Iii)在必要的时候修改我们的假设。这需要多种形式的初步调查和试点调查。我们招募了生成句法和形式语义学领域的省略专家。我们很幸运能够组建一个理想的研究小组来实现这一目标。较少

The main objective of the project has been to uncover the nature of the language faculty through syntactic and semantic analysis of elliptical constructions in natural language, mainly focusing on Japanese and English. Our ultimate goal is to propose a model of that part of language faculty which is conditioned by purely structural factors as distinct from those that are lexically or pragmatically conditioned.Ellipsis sheds some light on this aspect of the research. Since, by definition, more than what is pronounced is delivered in elliptical constructions, it is expected that the meaning of the 'omitted' part should be somehow reconstructed in our mind. What is important in this context is that while some elliptical constructions allow their meaning to be guessed based on the speaker's knowledge of the world, some require reconstruction of grammatical/linguistic representation, as pointed out in Hankamer & Sag (1976 : "Deep and Surface Anaphora," in Linguistic Inquiry). Hankamer & Sag … More show that certain elliptical constructions need an antecedent linguistic expression while others do not, and claim that the former is surface anaphora (whose interpretation needs to be calculated based on the reconstructed linguistic representation) and the latter is deep anaphora (whose meaning can be inferred in whatever way, based on extra-linguistic knowledge). In other words, surface anaphora reflects the structural/formal meaning of the antecedent expression, and this is the reason why we are especially interested in them : an ellipsis may give us more information than its overt counterpart, regarding the workings of grammar.In order to achieve the goal, we need (I) to identify the construction involving surface anaphora, (ii) to check the predictions which our theories make, and (iii) to revise our hypotheses where necessary. This requires varieties of preliminary investigation and pilot surveys. We recruited specialists of ellipsis in the fields of generative syntax and formal semantics. We were fortunate to have been able to form an ideal research group for fulfilling this goal. Less