Page 361 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 28: Transformational Generative Grammar

As a concrete example of an illustrative fragment of the base Component consider the sentence honesty Notes
may admire the man on the basis of Chomsky’ Aspects (1965). Instead of a simple Phrase Structure
type grammar (while we dicussed in the previous section) we now have a grammar containing the
branching rules (i), along with the subcategorization rules (ii) and containing a lesson with the entries
(iii) It should also be noted that the items in antique type stand for phonological distinctive feature
matrices, that is, ‘spellings’ of formatives.
(i) S NP ∩ AUX ∩ VP* (b) M—>May

VP—> V ∩ NP N—> honesty
NP—> Det N N—> man
NP—>N N—> admire
Det—> the
Aux —> M
(ii) N—> [+ N ± Common]
[+ Common—> [± Count]
[+ Count—> [± Animate]
[- Common—> [± Animate]
[+ Animate—>[± Human]
[- Count]—>[± Abstract]
(iii) (honesty, [+ N, -Count + Abstract])
(man, [+ N, + Count, + Common + Animate + Human])
(may,[+M])
These rules allow us to generate the preterminal string. (+ (iv) N, + Count, + Abstract) ∩ M ∩ . The
(+ N, Count, + Animate, + Human), where Q is the complex symbol into which V is analysed by
rules that we shall discuss directly. The lexical rule allows us to insert honesty for the first complex
symbol.
*The symbol ∩ has the same function as +
and man for the last complex symbol of (iv). Information about admire and may is also given fully.
We might represent this Phrase-marker in the form shown in (v).

S

NP AUX VP

N M V NP
(=COUNT) (+COMMON) Q
MAY DET N
(+ABSTRACT)
ADMIRE THE
HONESTY (+COUNT) (+COMMON)
(+ANIMATE)
(+HUMAN)

MAN
The category V is analysed into a complex symbol in the following manner :
(iv) V—> [ + V, ± progressive, ± Transitive, ± Abstract,
subject, ± Animate, Object]

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