Abstract:

At the earlier stage Chomsky did not propose any movement rules on wh-questions, but he believed that wh-displacement was formed through permutation. In 1977, Chomsky proposed for the first time that the observation and description of linguistic phenomena must be guided by the principles of the universal grammar. Therefore, Chomsky argued that wh-movement must meet three conditions: Cyclic Condition, Subjacency Condition and Island Conditions. In the recent Minimalist Program, Chomsky proposed that movement was operated as the last resort for interface requirement in order to satisfy the principle of economy. There is no free and arbitrarily selected movement as it was supposed in the first stage. Movement is to satisfy the interface requirement, and the operation of movement is never triggered unless the uninterpretable features of the wh-words as well as those of the target head C are erased. The goal of movement is for feature checking. In the third stage of theoretical development, Chomsky followed his bio-linguistic perspective of language studies. According to the recent Strong Minimalist Thesis, the phenomenon of ubiquitous displacement in the wh-questions can be accounted for by the most basic property of language faculty—merge. Merge is a biological object, logically possible through internal merge and external merge. Displacement of wh-words is internal merge, pronounced in one place but interpreted in both places.

Keywords: Wh-movement; locality; phase; the Minimalist Program

摘要：

乔姆斯基早期关于疑问词疑问句的论述并没有提出任何移位的规则体系,而是认为疑问词位移现象是通过置换形成的。乔姆斯基认为疑问词移位必须遵守三个限制条件：循环限制条件、邻接条件和命题孤岛条件。在后期的最简方案中,为了满足派生的经济原则,乔姆斯基提出了移位是为了满足界面要求不得已而为之的操作。为了解决句法推导中的局部问题,乔姆斯基提出了语段不可渗透条件。根据最近的强最简论,合并作为语言机制的最基本特征,可以用来解释普遍存在的位移现象。

关键词: 疑问词移位, 局部, 语段, 最简方案