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From Pages 101–106 of Abducted by Aliens, By Chuck Weiss
From Chuck Weiss
PAPER 6 (DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS) Describe the concept of Transformational Generative Grammar.
If we were to attempt to extend phrase structure grammar to cover the entirelanguage directly, we would lose the simplicity of the limited phrase structure grammar and of the transformational development. This approach to syntactic analysis is notappreciable. Chomsky in `Syntactic Structures' observes that "notions of phrase structureare quite adequate for a small part of the language and that the rest of the language can bederived by repeated application of a rather simple set of transformations to the stringsgiven by the phrase structure grammar. Thus "Transformational Generative Grammar"was introduced. The name suggests that there are two aspects of this theory. Thegrammar that it provides is both `transformational' and `generative'. These two aspectsare not logically dependent upon each other, though the theory gains plausibility from theinteraction of the two.
TRANSFROMATIONAL:
"Essentially, transformation is a method of stating how thestructures of many sentences in languages can be generated or explained formally as theresult of specific transformations applied to certain basic sentence structures.", as R. H.Robins observes in his book "General Linguistics". Further, he says, "These basicsentence types or structures are not necessarily basic or minimal from the point of viewof Immediate Constituent Analysis, the transformational syntax presupposes a certainamount of phrase structure grammar of the immediate constituent type to provide the basis of the `kernel' from which transformations start." Thus active sentences are `kernel'sentences whereas passive sentences are the transforms. However, the notion of `kernel'has been abandoned by Chomsky since the publication of his "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax".In "Syntactic Structures" Chomsky handles the active-passive relationship bysaying that if S1 is a grammatical sentence with the form NP1----Aux----V----NP2,then the corresponding string of form NP2----Aux + be + en----V----by + Np1is also a grammatical sentence. We can, that is, state how we convert an active sentenceinto a passive sentence. We have to change the positions of the noun phrase and insert`by' before the second one in the passive and at the same time change the verb fromactive into passive. In this way, the sentence "The door was opened by Shaw" is thetransform of the sentence in active voice "Shaw opened the door".There are, however, plenty of other transformations. One that occurs in English but is not paralleled in most languages is that of `permutation'. That is, "Has Jim playedthe piano?" is a transformation of "Jim has played the piano." This occurs with all theauxiliary verbs of English as "Is he coming?", "Can you go?", "Must I sleep?", etc. If there is no auxiliary verb, the verb `do' has to be supplied to act as one:He goes. Does he go?They play. Do they play?We came. Did we come?A different and in some ways more important type of transformation is "relativetransformation" which involves more than one "kernel sentence". There is a sense in
which one sentence can be regarded as being part of another sentence, that one structurecan be embedded into another. The sentence that is embedded into another is known asthe "constituent" and the sentence into which it is embedded as the "matrix". For example, the sentence `The boy who was standing there ran away.' can be treated as atransformation of the two sentences:The boy ran away.The boy was standing there.Thus the relative transformation places the second sentence after `boy' in the first andthen replaces `the boy' in the second by `who'.The relevance of transformational grammar becomes obvious when we see theway in which it can resolve ambiguity in sentences. The IC analysis can sometimesdisambiguate but because sentences that appear to be identical are often transforms fromdifferent kernels, transformational analysis can disambiguate far more. For example,`Visiting professors can be dangerous.'We want to distinguish here two senses-the action of visiting professors can bedangerous, and professors who visit can be dangerous. We can show this by difference inthe matrix and the constituent sentence as well as the place of embedding. On the firstmeaning we have the kernel sentence:Can be dangerous.(someone), visits professors.We then transform the second into `visiting professors' and insert it in the place of NP.On the second meaning the kernel sentences will be:Professors can be dangerous.Professors visit.Here we must apply a transformation similar to the relative transformation. Professorswho visit can be dangerous and then a further transformation to give the requiredsentence by transforming `who visit' in `visiting' and placing it before `professors'. Thuswe see that the deep structure of the two apparently identical sentences are quitedifferent.Another sentence in which we can resolve ambiguity by transformation isThey are hanging curtains.In terms of meaning, the ambiguity depends on whether some people are hangingcurtains or whether some people are performing the work of hanging curtains. Theambiguity is resolved by transforming the sentence into passive.`Curtains are being hanged by them.'In this way TG allows us to state all kinds of relationship that could not otherwise bestated. There is, as a result, a possibility that it may be used to handle features that are better treated as purely semantics.
GENERATIVE:
The other characteristics of TG is that it is `generative'. In other words, a grammar must `generate all and only the grammatical sentences of a language'.It means merely that the grammar must be so designed that by following its rules andconventions we can produce all or any of the possible sentences of the language.To `generate' is thus to `predict' what can be sentences of the language or to`specify' precisely what are the possible sentences of the language. Thus a grammar should `generate', `specify', and `predict' sentences such as:
He plays the piano. but not * plays the piano he.* He the piano plays.A generative grammar is not concerned with any actual set of sentences of the language but with the possible set of sentences. We are not, then, concerned or even primarilywith any observed sentences that have occurred, but rather with those that can or couldhave occurred.The advocates of TG point out that any corps has a finite number of sentences, nomatter, how large, yet a language consists of an infinite number of sentences. Thisinfinity is a result of what is known as `recursion'-that we can apply the same linguisticdevice over and over again. For example,This is the house that Jack built.This is the corn that lay in the house that Jack built.This is the rat that ate the corn that lay in the house that Jack built.We can contrive `ad infinitum'.The generative grammar is explicit, that is, it explicitly indicates just what are the possible sentences of the language. By its rules and conventions it generates all thesentences so its rules and conventions are totally explicit.The `competence' and `performance' of a native speaker of a language are relatedto the TG grammarians' interest not in the neutral text but in what is linguistically possible. Their interest, does not lie, therefore, in the actual utterances of the nativespeakers of a language but rather in what he can say. This concerns his knowledge of thelanguage, his `competence' not what he actually does at any time, the sentences heactually produces, which are a matter only of performance. According to the theory, thenative speaker of a language has `internalized a set of rules' which form the basis of hisability to speak and understand his language. It is the knowledge of these rules that is theobject of the linguist's attention, not the actual sentences he produces.
RULES:
TG is rule based grammar. Generative rules share some characteristics of both prescriptive and descriptive rules. They are in the first place instructions like the prescriptive rules but instead of being instructions for the production of correct speech,they are instructions for generating all the possible sentences of the language. In thesecond place, like descriptive rules, they relate to the facts of actual languages not theinvented languages of grammarians, and are ultimately based, therefore upon what people say rather than what they ought to say.The rules of TG are rewrite rules. That is to say, they rewrite one symbol asanother or as several others or one set of symbols by another until eventually thesentences of the language are generated. The rules start with symbols `S' (sentence) andthen a sequence of rules rewrite this symbol until a sentence is produced. ThusA---BCmeans rewrite A as BC. A simple set of rules is as follows, if we wish to generate asentence like `A man read the book'.1. S---------NP + VP2. VP---------V + NP3. NP---------D + N4. V--------- read
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Transformative Generative Grammar
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It's interesting to note that a paper on grammar has a grammar error in it.