earticle

영어

The main goal of this paper is to illustrate the explanatory power of parametric approaches on the verbal orders between V and T in Early Middle English such as ‘spoke not’, ‘not spoke’, ‘did not speak’ and ‘did speak’ and choose which approach might be not only described but explained in the optimal way in terms of the Minimalist program frameworks. In GB and early minimalism language variation can be accounted for by language specific and language-independent parametric approaches. Thus it is revealed through GB and Minimalism that a number of language specific parametric approaches such as Overt/Covert parameter(Chomsky 1993, 1995), AGR-1 parameter(Pollock 1989, Roberts 1993), Spell-out parameter (Groat and O‘Neil 1996), Strong/weak T-parameter(Chomsky 2014) and Category-Specified parameter(Kim 2019) are introduced to explain the verbal orders between V and T. However according to the central tenet of recent minimalism(after Chomsky 2005) these parameters coupled with UG(Universal Grammar) must be simple and no-redundant to reduce the size and options of UG. Therefore specific parametric approaches should be driven to be decomposable into a unified one which can account for every aspects of verbal orders between T and V. In this presentation I will discuss how each parametric approach can deal with the Early Middle English verbal orders in conformity with the tenet of Minimalism and it is concluded that Category-Specified parametric approach in which T and V of UG are under-specified to Category is shown to be the best one to deal with the Early Middle English verbal orders, allowing grammar to account for language variation without appeal to language specific parameters of UG.