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优选论是一种非推导性的理论，它结合了语言的普遍性和独特性。优选论根据语言的独特性将普遍的制约条件排列成一个制约等级，不同的制约条件的等级排列就导致了语言的独特性。从这种制约条件的等级排列上，我们可以清楚地了解到两种语言核心音节结构的异同点。
                                    CHAPTER ONE
                                  INTRODUCTION
    Chomsky's Universal Grammar has offered us that all human beings' languages share the same set of universal grammar, while different human experiences have resulted in various specific languages with particular grammars. Universal Grammar, as OT (Optimality Theory) proposes, consists of a set of violable constraints and characterizes both the universal properties of language and the variation tolerated among specific languages, so the differences in the grammars of different languages are achieved just by distinct rankings of these constraints (Archangeli, 1997, p. 2).This thesis takes this recent advent of OT, a nonderivational theory, as its main concern to investigate how English and Japanese core syllable structures manifest their universal and particular aspects.
    This chapter serves as an introductory section of the whole thesis. It will make a general introduction to the reason why the author wants to make a comparative study of English and Japanese core syllable structures under the framework of OT, by illustrating the objectives, the methodology, and the significance of tie study. At the end of the chapter, the organization of the thesis is also provided.
1.1 The objectives of the study
    'The syllable has always played a central role in phonological generalizations. It supplies a level of prosodic organization between segments and higher-level prosodic units: the `foot' and the `prosodic word' (Kager, 2001, p. 91). Phonemically speaking, studying syllable structures is to study the way that phonemes combine in that language (Zhang, 1993, p. 56). Every language has its own sound system and syllable structure; so analyzing and comparing syllable structures of different languages are of great importance in studying various languages and disclosing the common nature of human languages.
    In the literature of the comparative study of syllable structures, many efforts are laid on English and Chinese, while little attention is paid to English and Japanese. Even though there are some studies concerning English and Japanese syllable structures, most of them are about the distributional comparison or making experiments for the purpose of teaching needs. In recent years,QT has become one of the most influential theories in linguistics, especially in phonology. From the perspective of OT, every grammar is a system of conflicting forces, which are embodied by constraints; what's more, the constraints are universal, while the rankings are not: differences in ranking are the source of cross-linguistic variation (Kager, 2001, p. 4). Thus under the framework of OT, the universal and the particular aspects of languages can be clearly represented. So OT is of great value in doing the comparative study.
The first aim of the thesis is to discuss the interaction of the phonological constr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。