Abstract
When we compare (1) John will finish his work with (2) John will finish his work by seven, we find that, though in both sentences the verbs are in the non-perfect form, sentence (2) has practically the same 'perfective' meaning as that of (3) John will have finished his work by seven, while sentence (1) has no such meaning. This means that the by-phrase expressing time has a special function to 'perfectivize' the meaning of a sentence like (2) where the verb is in the non-perfect form. The purpose of this paper is to show how this special semantic function of the by-phrase expressing time can be formalized within the framework of transformational generative grammar. In the first section we discuss in more detail this 'perfectivizing' function of the phrase in question. In the second section two ways are proposed for handling this function of the by-phrase within the framework of trans-formational generative grammar. One is to handle it solely within the semantic component, without any syntactical discussion of the deep structure of the sentence containing the by-phrase. The other is to regard this by-phrasal function as a syntactical problem and treat it syntactically, discussing fully the deep structure of the by-phrasal sentence. In the third section we examine whether the first way proposed is adequate for the treatment of the by-phrasal function. After the examination it is found to be inadequate. So the second alternative is tried in the following sections. In the fourth section we compare the by-phrasal sentence with the sentence containing the verb in the perfect form as to their syntactical behaviors. The comparison shows that there is enough similarity between their syntactical behaviors to enable us to postulate the same deep structure for the former as that of the latter; in other words, to assume that the deep structure of the by-phrasal sentence contains `deep perfect' as one of its constituents. In the fifth section we discuss of what type the deep structure of the by-phrasal sentence should be. After such discussion, we come to the conclusion that it should be a deep structure of the complex sentence type consisting of a matrix sentence and an embedded sentence. To take sentence (2) as an example, the deep structure of the by-phrasal sentence can be shown in the following way: [[it + [John will finish his work]_S]_<NP> + [[Present + will + Perfect]_<AUX> + [happen]_V + [by seven]_<Time Adv>]_<VP>]_S (which would be transformed into the surface structure It will have happened by seven that he will finish his work if the obligatory transformation alone were applied to it). Thus, as a solution for the problem of the 'perfectivizing' function of the by-phrase expressing time, we propose to posit 'deep perfect' in the deep structure of the by-phrasal sentence.
