2020年山东自考现代语言学复习资料八

17．Theory of universal grammar普遍语法理论

Since early 1980s Noam Chomsky developed a theory of universal grammar (UG) know as the principle-an-parameters theory. UG is a system of linguistic knowledge and a human species-specific gift which exists in the mind or brain of a normal human being. UG consists of a set of general conditions, or general principles and also contains a set of parameters.

从八十年代初期开始，乔姆斯基发展了一种普遍语法理论，称为原则与参数理论。普遍语法是一个语言知识体系，是人类特有的天赋，它存在于正常人的头脑中。普遍语法包含一组广义条件，或广义原则，还包含一种参数。

18.General principles of universal grammar 普遍语法的广义原则

a) Case Condition. As is required by the Case Condition principle, a noun phrase must have Case and Case is assigned by verb or preposition to the object position, or by auxiliary to the subject position. The theory of Case Condition accounts for the fact that noun phrases appear only in subject and object positions.

格条件原则。格条件原则要求名词词组必须有格，宾语的格是由动词或介词决定的，而主语的格是由助动词决定的。格条件理论说明了为什么名词词组只在主语和宾语的位置上出现。

b) Adjacency Condition. As is required by Adjacency Condition principle, a Case assignor and a Case recipient should stay adjacent to each other. This condition explains why no other phrasal category can intervene between a verb and its direct object.

毗邻条件。毗邻条件决定格分派，该条件要求格分派者和格接受者要相互毗邻。这一条件解释了为什么任何别的词组类型都不能插到动词和它的直接宾语之间。

19.The parameters of universal grammar 普遍语法的参数

Parameters are syntactic options of UG that allow general principles to operate in one way or another and contribute to significant linguistic variations between and among natural languages. Set in one of the permissible ways, a parameter acquires a particular value, for example, a plus or minus value, which allows the grammar of a language to behave in a way very different from that of another language.

参数是普遍语法中的句法选项，它使广义原则能以一种或另一种方式进行操作并造成了不同自然语言之间在语言上的显著不同。一个参数若以某种可允许的方式设置，它就可以得到某种意义，如加或减的意义，这就使一种语言的语法和另一种语言的语法有很大不同。

a) UG is believed to contain a parameter wit the values (+ strict adjacency) and (- strict adjacency) set on the Adjacency Condition. With English-type languages, the Adjacency Parameter is set to the (+ strict adjacency) value, while for French-type languages, the parameter is set to the other.

普遍语法被认为包含一个参数，这个参数的意义是设置在毗邻条件之上的（加严格毗邻）和（减严格毗邻）。英语属前者而法语属后者。

b) Another parameter, the one that involves word order, concerns the directionality of Case assignment, known as the Directionality Parameter. This parameter offers a neat and consistent account for the typological difference in the word order within the VP category between English and Japanese. In English, VP → V NP while in Japanese,  VP → NP V.

另一个参数与词序有关，它涉及格分派的方位，被称为方位参数。这一参数为英语和日语的动词词组的词序的类型差异提供了一个满意的、恰当的解释。