馬拉加西語中的兩權分枝與零主語

Binary Branching and Null Subjects in Malagasy

本文所探討的是依照Kayne（1981）的方式將兩權分枝（Binary Branching)定律系統性地應用在馬拉加西語中，以及其與該語言中零主語（null subject)的分布之互動關係。研究結果發現：一個句子當中外顯的語法主語（overt grammatical subject）是否必要，乃取決於子句的中心成分（clausal head）所包含之語法屬性（features)。其關鍵因素似乎在於這些語法屬性的強弱。這顯示出子句的中心成分（clausal head）與其指示語（specifier）這兩組原子屬性(atomic features）之間關係的重要性。由本文中可看出馬拉加西語利用Haeberli（2000）所提出的語法屬性從缺（missing feature）的觀念，以及主語前移至句首以避免不相容的語法屬性相互抵觸。作者深感已出版文獻中之語料不盡詳實，故於本文後另附馬拉加西語語料以供參考。

This paper explores the systematic application of the principle of Binary Branching to Malagasy following Kayne (1981), and its interaction with the distribution of null subjects in the language. It transpires that the set of features contained in the clausal head determines whether there has to be an overt grammatical subject or not. The crucial factor seems to be whether such features are strong or weak. This underlines the importance of the relationship between the clausal head and its specifier, both envisaged as bundles of atomic features. It will be seen among other things that Malagasy exploits the concept of ‘missing Feature’ as proposed in Haeberli (2000), and that movement of the subject to the front within the sentence helps avoid a clash of incompatible features. A number of appendices providing additional Malagasy data accompany this paper, as the author is aware that the linguistic data already published in the literature may not always be reliable.