1.4 Significance of the Study

As we have mentioned previously, this research about the licensing mechanism of nominal predicate is theoretically important because excluding predicate NPs from case-licensing does undermine the uniformity and explanatory adequacy of the generative grammar.

First, the uninterpretable Case feature of every NP, whether argument or not, must be admitted, because all the syntactic operations in the framework of Minimalist Approach are motivated by features.It means, if the Case features of predicated NP are denied and NPs in this position are assumed caseless, those NPs are inactive in minimalist analysis and cannot participate in derivation.It's not plausible to assume that an inactive item enters into a derivational system where most of the derivational operations involve Move.If we assume a predicate NP enters derivation without Case feature, a different derivational mechanism is required to account for the process on such NPs.

Second, if the uniformity of the syntactic grammar is concerned, it is more tenable to license nominals in terms of their uniformed category[N], not in terms of their various syntactic positions in specific linguistic environment. Otherwise, we would expect verbs and nouns are interpreted in the same pattern as long as they appear at the same syntactic position, such as predicate position.If so, this postulation really poses severe challenge to the current syntactic system based on categorial features.Predicate NPs distribute extensively in natural language.If double standard is applied to the licensing of argument NPs and predicate NPs, the economy of the computation system will be weakened for double calculations are demanded by the double standards, which is not what an optimal design expects.

Therefore, to unify the predicate NP licensing mechanism into the current feature checking theory will contribute to the explanatory adequacy and uniformity of generative grammar, which is the ultimate goal of the system.