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Unit 28: Transformational Generative Grammar

and an interrogative sentence, or between an active and a passive sentence, is no longer described in Notes
terms of optional transformations, but in terms of a choice made in the base rules.
As described in Aspects, the grammar of a language consists of three set rules : syntactic, semantic
and phonological. The syntactic rules generate the sentences of the language. They assign to each
sentence an underlying phrase mark (which represents the deep structure of the sentence) as well as
a derived phrase marker (which represents the surface structure). The meaning of the sentence is
derived (mainly, if not wholly) from its deep structure by means of the semantic rules of interpretation;
and the phonetic realization of the sentence is derived from its surface structure by means of the
phonological rules. In the theory ‘syntax’ is generative (reflecting the ‘creative’ or ‘productive’ aspect
of language), while phonology and semantics are ‘interpretative’ (assigning a phonetic and semantic
‘interpretation’ to the abstract structures generated by the syntax). Let us redraw the whole model to
make the syntactic component explicit :
The Components of a Grammar
The Aspects’ model (1965)

S
Y BASE
N PS EXP RULES
T
A SUBCATEGORIZATION
C RULES
T LEXICON & THE LEXICAL
I RULES
C SEMANTIC INTERPRETATION
DEEP STRUCTURE OF
COMPONENT SENTENCES
C
O TRANSFORMATIONS
M PERMUTATIONS
P DELETIONS
O ADJUNCTIONS
N
E TRANSFORMATIONAL
N FILTERS
T PHONOLOGICAL PRONUNCIATION
SURFACE STRUCTURE OF
COMPONENT SENTENCES

The syntax falls into two parts : the base component and the transformational component. It is the
base ‘component that generates the deep structures and the transformational component that converts
these into surface structures.’ Transformational component is therefore ‘interpretative’ in much the
same way as phonological and semantic rules are; and all the ‘creative’ power of the system is located
in the base. The base itself consists of two parts, or ‘subcomponents’ : the categorial subcomponent
and the lexicon. The categorial subcomponent contains a set of rules similar (with certain important
differences which will be mentioned in due course) to the phrase-structure rules of the earlier system,
the lexicon lists, in principle, all the lexical items of the language and associated with each the syntactic,
semantic and phonological information required for the correct operation of the rules.
The primary role of the categories component is to define implicitly the basic grammatical relations
that function in the deep structure of the language. The lexicon consists of an unordered set of lexical
entries and certain redundant rules. It associates with each lexical item, the syntactic, semantic and
phonological information required for the correct operation of the rules. This means that each lexical
entry is represented as a set of features. More precisely, the lexicon is a set of lexical entries, each
lexical entry being a pair (D.C.); where D is a phonological distinctive feature, matrix ‘spelling’ a
certain lexical formative, and C is a collection of specified syntactic features. The base component
generates the underlying representations (i.e. the deep structures) of sentences. These deep structures

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