Page 372 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes 28.7 Summary

• The term “transformational generative grammar” is used to refer to Noam Chomsky theories
abut syntax. These theories were first put forward in a book entitled “Syntactic Structure”. In
this Chomsky tired to find out certain rules which would create well-formed sentences and
define the relation between them. According to Chomsky, it is generative because it can generate
infinite number of sentences and it is transformational bcause a bsdic and simple sentence like,
“I read the book” can be changed or transformed into number of sentences with either the same
meaning like “The book is being read by me,” or the different meaning like, “Do I read the
book?”, “I read the book. Don’t I?”
• Transformational generative grammar (TG) has two interesting properties, (i) it only generates
the well formed or grammatically-correct sentences or language. It will not generate a sentence
which is ill formed or incorrect. (ii) It has recursive rules. This property of recursiveness is the
capacity of a rule to be applied again and again in order to generate infinite set of values. In this
case value means new combinations of words which are gramatically correct. By using
Chomsky’s transformational rules, we can show the similarity of the passive to the active mood
by showing how a phrase marker forthe active mood can be converted into a phrase marker for
the passive mood. Thus, instad of generating two unrelated phrase markers by phrase structure
rules, we can construct a simpler grammar by showing how both the active and the passive can
be derived from the same underlying phrase marker.
• To account for sentences like “I like her cooking” we show that what we have is not just one
phrase marker but several different underlying sentences each with a different meaning, and
the phrase markers for these different sentences can all be transformed into one phrase marker
for “I like her cooking.” Thus, underlying the one sentence “I like her cooking” are phrase
markers, for “I like what she cooks,” “I like the way she cooks,” “I like the fact that she cooks,”
etc.
• Different transformational rules convert each of these into the same derived phrase marker for
the sentence “I like her cooking.” Thus, the ambiguity in the sentence is represented in the
grammar by phrase markers of several quite different sentences. Different phrase markers
produced by the phrase structure rules are transformed into the same phrase marker by the
aplication of the transformational rules.
• Because of the introduction of transformational rules, grammars of Chomsky’s kind are often
called “transformational generative grammars” or simply “transformational grammars.” Unlike
phrase structure rules which apply to a single left-hand element in virtue of its shape,
transformational rules apply to an element only in virtue of its position in a phrase marker:
instead of rewriting one element as a string of elements, a transformational rule maps one
phrase marker into another. Transformational rules therefore apply after the phrase structure
rules have been applied; they operate on the output of the phrase structure rules of the grammar.
• Corresponding to the phrase structure rules and the transformational rules respectively are
two components to the syntax of the language, a bse component and a transformational
component. The base component of chomsky’s grammar contains the phrase structure rules,
and these (together with certain rules restricting which combinations of words are permissible
so that we do not get nonsense sequences like “The book will read the boy”) determine the deep
structure of each sentence. The transformational component converts the deep structure of the
sentence into its surface structure. In the example we just considered, “The book will be read by
the boy” and the sentence “The boy will read the book,” two surface structures are derived
from one deep structure. In the case of “I like her cooking,” one surface structure is derived
from several different deep structures.
• At the time of the publication of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax it seemed that all of the
semantically relevant parts of the sentence, all the things that determine its meaning, were
contained in the deep structure of the sentence. The examples mentioned above fit in nicely
with this view. “I like her cooking” has different meaning because it has different deep structures

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