A Syntactic Reanalysis Of Raising Structures

The raising structure is a special syntactic phenomenon, which has been studiedfrom the perspective of Generative Grammar and Functional Grammar by manylinguists at home and abroad due to its involvement with syntax, semantics andvocabulary. After an analysis of the previous studies, the author finds out manyshortcomings in previous researches: The motivations behind the raising operation aredeficient; the classifications of raising structures are ambiguous; some researches stayat the level of superficial description. In consideration of this given fact, this thesistries to make a reanalysis and a new explanation of the syntactic features andgenerative mechanism of raising structures.This paper is ready to reanalyze the syntactic properties of raising structures inorder to provide a reasonable explanation for the generative mechanism of raisingstructures within the frame of Generative Grammar. Firstly, this paper reviews theprevious studies of the syntactic features and generative mechanism of raisingstructures. The predicates in raising structures are believed to lose the capability ofassigning external theta roles and structural cases. Moreover, the predicate can causethe embedded subject to be moved out of the thematic position without case to anon-thematic position with case, which is the subject or object of the main clause.According to the syntactic properties of raising predicates, raising structures aremainly classified into the subject raising such as seem-structure, and the object raisingstructure such as believe-structure. Within the frame of Principles and Parameters, thetheoretical bases of raising structures are the Theta Theory and the Case Theory.Secondly, this thesis summarizes the previous studies of English and Chineseraising structures and proves their deficiencies in terms of explaining the generativemechanism. In this analytical procedure, theories as the Theta Theory, the CaseTheory, the Economy Principle, etc. are employed. In addition, the logical reasoningand rich English and Chinese raising examples are put into use. Finally, according tothe Economy Principle and Lexical Integrity Principle, the author argues that the raising phenomenon is the morphological changes of the involved predicate at lexicallevel, which is free from syntactic transformation. Based on the sufficient andnecessary conditions forming a sentence, this thesis adopts the basic logical framehypothesis of human languages proposed by Zhao Yanchun, on which this thesisproves that raising predicates are structurally complete VP, namely VP+andconstituents behind the raising predicate are the Adjunct.Through the analysis of the relevant theories and typical raising predicates, thispaper offers a unitary explanation for English raising structures and solves theproblems fronted with the Theta Theory and the Case Theory. The basic logical framehypothesis of human languages contributes to the reanalysis of different sentencestructures and the universalities of human languages and has reference value to someextent for the theoretical study of Generative Grammar.