A Study On The Derivation Of English Partitive Phrase

In English,countable nouns can form quantitative structures directly with numerals and have their own singular and plural forms,while uncountable nouns have to use partitives to express the meaning of quantity,such as “two cups of tea”.In this thesis,the expression which helps to express the quantity of uncountable nouns is called the partitive phrase structure.The English partitive phrase structure is“(Det)Num Par P of NP”,in which Par P is partitive phrase and the partitive has the semantic and syntactic function of expressing quantity.Its form is consistent with the determiner or numeral before it in number category.NP,on the other hand,is a common nominal phrase with indefinite denotation.Based on DP hypothesis and Phase Theory,this thesis comprehensively uses induction,deduction and formal analysis methods to analyze the causes of semantic and syntactic functions of English partitives,and then discusses the derivation of English partitive phrase structure.It is considered that the internal nominal constituents in partitive phrase form propositional structures,in which the partitives are like containers and the noun phrases are containees.This thesis assumes that there exists a prepositional phrase in the syntactic structure of the partitive phrase to express the containing relationship between the partitive and NP,which is expressed as “NP in Partitive”.At the same time,it is assumed that PP splits and moves,and the final derivation of partitive phrase is completed by means of nominalization process.Finally,compared with the common numeral phrase structure,the cause of the semantic and syntactic function of partitives is found out.