著者

越後 周造

出版者

福井工業大学

雑誌

福井工業大学研究紀要 (ISSN:02868571)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.101-113, 1973-09-20

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The object of this brief essay is to 'sound' the whereabouts of 'structural meaning'. It is expedient to begin with a quotation from The Case For Case, an ambitious essay by Charles J. Fillmore. "In their deep structure, the proposional nucleus of sentences in all languages consists of a V and one or more NP's, each having a separate case relationship to the P and hence to the V. In English, case relationships, such as agentive, instrumental, objective, factitive, locative and fenefactive, are mostly expressed by means of prepositions. In the Study of Syntax, D. Terence Langendoen discusses 'symmetric predicates, ' in which subjects (NP_1) and objects (NP_2) are interchangeable without making appreciable difference. To cite an example, as he says, a pair of three sentences : 1.1 The tanker collided with the steamer., 1.2 The steamer collided with the tanker., and The tanker and the steamer collided., have the same deep structure in common. He illustrates 1.1 as having the following deep structure : (collided/and/with the tanker, with the steamer, ). George Lakoff and Stanley Peters also discuss the same subject. They give 7.1 John conferred with Bill, ' an example of a structure closely similar to Langendoen's 1.1. But they slightly differ from the British grammarian in believing that prepositions have no existence in the deep structure, but are inserted at some later stage in the derivational process. They insist that the deep structure for their 7.1 be (and John, and Bill/past, confer). O. Jespersen takes several instances as double faced phrases in his Modern English Grammar III. Most of his instances might be termed incomplete symmetric predicates. Hermann Paul also refers to a number of similar instances from several languages in his Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Jespersen's instances may be represented with '9.1 The garden swarms with bees' and '9.2 Bees swarm in that place., and H. Paul's with '14.1 dass unsere Augen mit Tranen rinnen, ……. To smooth over some 'catch' in their explanation, the present writer prefers to regard 9.2 as basic and 9.1 as derived, that is, possible of transformational derivation along the line of Fillmore and Lakoff. Here '23.1 My hand was dripping blood' may be noticed as a sentence of intermediate character, in which blood represents older blode in the instrumental dative. Jespersen calls such an object one of instrument. Through the decline of the case ending, 'blode' has jumped with blood, the common case form in Modern English. In the process of modification, it must be noticed that the verb 'drip underwent a change in quality from intransitive to transitive. Now we hurriedly turn to the exchangeability of NP_2 amp; NP_3. In this group of sentences. To which Jespersen also refers, verbs are always transitive. His examples, which fall under two patterns may be represented with '30.1 hang curtains on the window' and '30.2 hang the wall with pictures' with the German correspondent being 'die Wand mit Bildern behangen, ' and with '36.1 I'll furnish a reception to them, ' and '36.2 We furnish you with everything you want, the French correspondents being 'fournir quelquechose a quelqu 'un' and 'fournir quelqu' un de quelque chose respectively. Expressed in Fillmore's case frames, the processes of rewriting he endorses in connection with the two types of constructions will be [V+0(NP_2)+L(NP_3)]→[V+L(NP_3)+0(NP_2)instr.] and [V+0(NP_2)+D(NP_3) →[V+D(NP_3)+O(NP_2)instr.]