The Study on the Syntactic Ambiguity of“差點沒(chadian mei) +VP”Construction From the Perspective of Transformational Generative Grammar

尚振科

（中國海洋大學 外國學院，山東 青島 266100）

Abstract：The research on ambiguous sentences has been very common in the field of linguistics, and there are also many researches on the ambiguity of “差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”, a common expression in Chinese.Based on Chomsky’s Transformational Generative (TG) grammar , this paper discussed the reasons for the ambiguity of sentence structure with the help of the theory of α-Movement. It is found that the ambiguity of the sentence structure can be explained by the α-Movement theory, which occurs in the process of generating the surface sentence structure (S-Structure) from the deep structure (D-Structure).

Keywords：TG grammar； Ambiguous Sentences； α-movement

一、lntroduction

Chinese “差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”structure has been one of the hottest topics among Chinese languistic researchers. Many researchers have studied on this structure just like Shen Jiaxuan, Zhou Yimin etc. According to the Chomsky TG grammar theory, sentences are generated from the deep structure (D-Structure) of the human brain and then the surface structure(S-Structure) will be transformed from the D-Structure with the transformational rules. Among the process of transformation from the D-Structure to the S-Structure, α-Movement plays an important role in the formation of the written or spoken language sentence.That means TG grammar could make an explanation about the ambiguous meaning production in this structure in some way and it has been showed by Cao Baoping (2010).But the corpus or the structure in his study did not include the “差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”construction.Therefore, Zhao Xiang (2015) made an investigation about the relationship between “差點沒（chadian mei)+VP” construction and TG grammar. Thus, this study will make a more specific analysis about the ambiguous meaning production in “差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”construction with the α-Movement theory.

二、Analysis of“差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”in D-Structure and S-Structure

According to Chomsky’s TG grammar, the syntactic structure of a sentence has two layers, including deep Structure (D-Structure) and surface Structure(S-Structure). D-Structure is the basic structure of the sentence. Chomsky from multiple D-Structure into the view of the same S-Structure and D-Structure how to through the Phonetic Form and Logical Form of angle analysis may cause the disambiguation of the righteous.

In form one, the “mei”is expressed with almost and it is related to “chadian”But in form two, the meaning of “mei”which is expressed by the “not”was moved to the position before V. It can be seen that this sentence is no ambiguity from the TG grammar.That means the D-Structure is actually unambiguous. In form one, the D- Structure conveys the positive discourse meaning, that is, the adverb“almost”shows the result of “did not lose” while in form two, the D-Structure visually shows the negative meaning of the structure in the form of did not, and moves the word“did not”to the verb “lose”, together with the positive result of “did not lose”. More detail, it is related to the Chomsky definition about the D-Structure which is the mental thought expressed by a structure with composition not moved. In other words, there is no ambiguity in the D-Structure.

三、α-Movement analysis of “chadian (mei)+VP”structure

In syntax, D-Structure could be moved to S-Structure as a written or spoken sentence, it means that the components of the D-structure move from one structural position to another. In the rules, “α”can be any component in a sentence： a grammatical category, a lexical item, or a phrase structure. In detail, the movement operation is an invariant principle of computation, stating that a category can be moved to target position (Chomsky, 1993). α-Movement consists of a set of rules that apply to the movement of various components. Therefore, ambiguity can also be caused by moving the different D- structures into the same S-structure, which is why the ambiguity exists. In fact, the theory of the α-Movement is a part of the Government and Binding theory (Chomsky, 1981). In the theory of the α-Movement, any category can be moved to anywhere in some way. We will see how the movement of the components caused the meaning changed from D-Structure to the S-Structure.

The example of the“差點沒(Chadian mei)+VP”structure, such as：

門差點沒關上

In detail, this sentence has three D-Structures in different situations through the analysis of α-Movement theory.

The first one： [門[差點沒[關上]]]

This D-Structure in this sentence means the door has been closed even the process was not easy for the agent to close the door. The fact this structure wants to express is the door was closed with hardworking.

The second one：[差點[門[沒關上]]]

In the second D-Structure of the sentence. The site of the sentence components was moved to build its original position in D-Structure. At this time, the meaning of this sentence is the door has been closed but it is because of the luck. This sentence wants to express the emotion of the agent which is lucky enough to close the door and he or she will not sure whether the door will be closed if another demand will be given. It is obvious that the sentence component “差點(chadian)”was moved to the front of the word “門(men)”and changed the sentence meaning.

The third one：[門[差點]][沒[關上]]

As for the third one of the structures, the fact is that the door is not closed because the quality of the door is not good enough. It has changed the S-Structural meaning completely because of the sentence components movement from the process of D-Structure to the S-Structure.

In some way, the above structure of the sentence has the same S-Structure but are different in the D-Structure while α-Movement theory could explain the ambiguous meaning better. When“差點沒(chadianmei”was moved to their original site in the sentence in the D-Structure. Four different D-Structures will be produced to express the different sentence meaning. That is the reason why the ambiguous meaning produced. For one S-Structure sentence has different D-Structure,different sentence meaning will be chosen for the sentence receiver.

To sum up, based on Chomsky’s TG grammar, through the analysis of the D-Structure and S-Structure of“差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”, we find that shift is the main cause of discourse ambiguity in syntactic analysis,and it occurs in the process of generating S-Structure of D-Structure.

四、Conclusion

This study investigates the construction of “差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”from the perspective of TG grammar. The present study reveals that the construction of“差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”does not have the ambiguous meaning in the D-Structure. But, in the process of D-Structure to the S-Structure, the ambiguous meaning produced because different D-Structures were transformed into the same S-Structure through the α-Movement. Thus, this study shows that α-Movement are the reasons which caused the ambiguous meanings in the construction of“差點沒（chadian mei) +VP”.