Theoretical and Descriptive Study of the Auxiliary Verb Systems in Natural Languages

本研究考察了现代英语的下列特征之间可能的相互关系，并将它们与德语和荷兰语等其他日耳曼语言中的特征进行了对比。(1)英语缺乏非人称被动句(不像德语/荷兰语)，(2)英语缺乏助动词选择(不像德语/荷兰语)，(3)现在时态动词在英语中普遍缺乏不完善的解释(不像德语/荷兰语)，(4)英语有Be+Ving结构(不像德语/荷兰语)，(5)英语中的被动句涉及助动词be(不像德语/荷兰语那样成为)，(6)英语，像荷兰语和德语一样，基本上没有大小写区分，(7)英语允许与格被动(不像德语/荷兰语)，(8)所谓的自由与格在英语中受到严格限制(如荷兰语和德语不同)，(9)现在完成时结构一般不允许出现像昨天这样的副词(不像德语/荷兰语)，(10)英语中有以动词Have为基础的使役结构(不像德语/荷兰语)。在确定了这些属性之间的一些关键的相互关系之后，本研究考察了日语和其他亚洲语言，看看类似的概括在类型学/谱系学上不同的语言中是否成立。例如，我们的研究表明，属性(2)和(9)确实倾向于在不同类型的语言中相互关联。

The present research looked into the possible interrelations among the following properties of Modern English, contrasting them with those found in other Germanic languages such as German and Dutch. (1) English lacks impersonal passives (unlike German/Dutch), (2) English lacks auxiliary selection (unlike German/Dutch), (3) verbs in the present tense generally lack imperfective interpretation in English (unlike German/Dutch), (4) English has the periphrastic BE+Ving construction (unlike German/Dutch), (5) passives in English involve the auxiliary verb BE (not BECOME as in German/Dutch), (6) English, like Dutch and unlike German, largely lacks case distinctions, (7) English allows dative passives (unlike German/Dutch), (8) the so-called free datives are severely restricted in English (like Dutch and unlike German), (9) the present perfect construction generally disallows the occurrence of adverbs like YESTERDAY (unlike German/Dutch), (10) English has the causative construction based on the verb HAVE (unlike German/Dutch). After identifying some crucial interrelations holding among these properties, the present research examined Japanese and other Asian languages to see if similar generalizations hold in typologically/genealogically different languages. Our research shows that properties (2) and (9), for instance, do tend to correlate across languages of different types.