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Linguistics

Notes This early form of transformational grammar shows the essential ideas behind Chomsky’s writing
which are still best approached via Syntactic Structures.
Components of a Transformational-Generative Grammar : Modified Theory
(1965)
In later versions such as Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Chomsky’s terminology and views
changed. Kernels, PS component, morphonemic component, transformations no longer occur as
such. The most notable difference is the inclusion of a totally new semantic component to deal with
meaning. This is attached at deep structure level. The phrase structure component is modified and
renamed the base component. And the morphonemic component is renamed the phonological
component. So the revised model, as drawn by Lyons, will look like the following :

INITIAL BASE TRANSFORMATIONAL
ELEMENT COMPONENT COMPONENT
SEMANTIC PHONOLOGICAL
COMPONENT COMPONENT

MEANING SOUND

In Syntactic Structure, it was said that, although semantic considerations are not directly relevant to
the syntactic description of sentences, there are ‘striking correspondences between the structures and
elements that are discovered in formal, grammatical analysis and specific semantic functions’ and
that, ‘having determined the syntactic structure of the language, we can study the way in which this
syntactic structure is put to use in the actual functioning of the language’. But in the Aspects-types,
he came to the conclusion that the meaning of sentences could, and should, be submitted to the same
kind of precise, formal analysis as their syntactic structure, and that semantics should be included as
an intergal part of the grammatical analysis of languages. The grammar of language is now seen by
Chomsky as ‘a system of rules relating the meaning (or meanings) of each sentence it generates to the
physical manifestation of the sentence in the medium of sound’ (Lyons : Chomsky : 1973 : 79).
Whereas grammar in 1957 was Syntax + Morphophonemics, in 1965 it became Syntax + Phonology +
Semantics.
Another important difference is the abolition of optional transformations. Negatives, questions and
passives are no longer introduced optionally at the stage of the transformation component, but are
partially incorporated into the base. Instead of generating a kernel only, the base component includes
deep structure ‘notes’ on the various transformations to take place :

S
NEG
VP
NP
V NP
PROPN AUX MV D N

TNS

JOHN PAST OPEN THE DOOR

When such a note (NEG/Q/Passive) exists, it is the transformational component which obligatorily
converts the string into its surface structure realisation. Thus the difference between a declarative

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