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Chapter TwoLiterature Review

As mentioned earlier, drawing on the research techniques employed in linguistictypology and the research achievements in language universals will shed light on thestudy of universals of simple assertive construction in two distinct languages. Therefore,we must firstly capture the definition of language universals in different approaches.Then, we can see that different methods are employed to explain language universals.Lastly, previous studies on simple assertive construction are also necessary to bementioned, especially on the classification of simple assertive constructions.

2.1 Language universals
In recent linguistic studies, there are two major methodological approaches tolanguage universals that have been discussed among scholars. The first approachillustrates the perspectives of Joseph H. Greenberg and those who accept his ideas,while the second approach is associated with the work of Noam Chomsky and thosewho are inspired by his work. These two major approaches are contrasted with eachother on three important parameters: “the data base for research on language universals;the degree of abstractness of analysis that is required to state language universals; andthe kinds of explanation employed for language universals” (Comrie, 1989).Specifically speaking, the data base for research on language universals concerns aboutwhether the data needed in the research is collected from a wide range of languages orfrom a highly restricted set of languages; the degree of abstractness of analysis that isrequired to state language universals concerns about whether the syntactic analysis isconcrete or abstract; and the last parameter which concerns about two different majorapproaches to language universals have something to do with different explanatorymethods on language universals.Language universals, as it is, reflect the idea that all languages should share certainlinguistic properties, but the definition of language universals is quite different in thesetwo approaches. Greenberg’s approach represents a typological study on languageuniversals, while Chomsky’s approach uses generative grammar to study languageuniversals. In fact, the differences between the typological and generative approaches tolanguage universals correspond to their different responses to two different traditionalopinions on languages. Greenberg’s approach stands for a reaction againstanthropological relativism, while Chomsky’s approach stands for a reaction againstbehavioristic psychology.
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2.2 Simple assertive constructions
Assertive construction can be formulated as XP be YP. It implies the semanticcategory of “assertion” which has been recognized as a universal property of humanlanguages. This thesis focuses on simple assertive construction. As a subcategory ofassertive construction, a very typical type of simple assertive construction can beformulated as NP1 be NP2, representing both the precopular part and the postcopularpart are noun phrases.It is widely known that two perspectives have been made on simple assertiveconstructions. One is about syntactic properties of simple assertive constructions: thelink-verb “be” of NP1 be NP2 is the essential factor, deciding the syntactic properties ofsimple assertive constructions. The link-verb “be” can be classified into the “be” ofpredication and the “be” o本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。