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In linguistics, VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (VPISH) is a hypothesis of syntactic structure proposed by researchers such as Fukui and Speas (1986)[1], Kitagawa (1986)[2], Kuroda (1988)[3], and Koopman and Sportiche (1991)[4], which posits that the subject of a sentence is base-generated in the specifier position of VP (Spec-VP), instead of in Spec-IP.

Background

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The VPISH was developed in the 1980s, in which linguistic theory was transitioning from PSR-based syntax[5][6] to X-bar-based syntax put forth by Jackendoff (1977)[7] and established by Chomsky (1981)[8]. Under the PSR, the structure of S(entence) is represented as below (Chomsky 1965:68)[6]:

  • S → NP (Aux) VP

This reads "the constituent S consists of the subconstituents of an NP and a VP". It is important that the NP serves as a subject, and the VP as a predicate for it. The parsing rule indicates in addition that the subject of a sentence is located outside VP in PSR-based syntax, as schematized in Figure 1 (adapted from Chomsky 1965:65)[6], and the same holds under the IP hypothesis put forth by Chomsky (1981, 1986)[8][9], as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 1
Figure 2

In the 1980s, a number of issues were pointed out concerning such an "external subject" structure.

  1. There is a lexical relation between the V and the subject, but the external configuration presumably does not meet the closeness requirement generally imposed on such relations. (Koopman and Sportiche 1991:213)[4]

Hypothesis

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Footnotes

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References

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  1. ^ Fukui, Naoki; Speas, Margaret J. (1986), "Specifiers and Projection", MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 8: 128–172
  2. ^ Kitagawa, Yoshihisa (1986). Subjects in Japanese and English, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts. Reprinted in Kitagawa (1994), Routledge.
  3. ^ Kuroda, Shigeyuki (1988). "Whether We Agree or Not: A Comparative Syntax of English and Japanese". Lingvisticæ Investigationes. 12 (1): 1–47.
  4. ^ a b Koopman, Hilda; Sportiche, Dominique (1991). "The Position of Subejcts". Lingua. 85: 211–258.
  5. ^ Chomsky, Noam (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
  6. ^ a b c Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  7. ^ Jackendoff, Ray (1977). X-bar-Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  8. ^ a b Chomsky, Noam (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  9. ^ Chomsky, Noam (1986). Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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