TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR

A. GENERAL AIMS

In linguistics, a transformational grammar, or transformational-generative grammar

(TGG), is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in a
Chomskyan tradition. Additionally, transformational grammar is the Chomskyan tradition that
gives rise to specific transformational grammars. Much current research in transformational
grammar is inspired by Chomsky's Minimalist Program.
The aims of Transformational-Generative Grammar (TG for short) are quite different
from those of structural linguistics. Instead of attending to a corpus and methods of analysis, TG
focuses attention on the fact that all speakers of a natural language are able to form a new
sentences and understand utterances they have never heard before. In other words, knowing a
language is not merely a matter of storing in one’s head a long list of words or sentences, but
being able to produce sentences not heard before. TG assumes that the basis of this ability is
knowledge of what may be called a grammar.
The Grammar of a language, therefore, consists of the rules (the formulas) that will
generate sentences grammatically acceptable to native speakers. The aim of the TG is to
formulate these rules as precisely as possible, so that they generate all the possible sentences of
the language and none of the impossible ones.

B. GRAMMATICAL THEORIES

In the 1960s, Chomsky introduced two central ideas relevant to the construction and
evaluation of grammatical theories. The first was the distinction between competence and
performance. Chomsky noted the obvious fact that people, when speaking in the real world, often
make linguistic errors (e.g. starting a sentence and then abandoning it midway through). He
argued that these errors in linguistic performance were irrelevant to the study of linguistic

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competence (the knowledge that allows people to construct and understand grammatical
sentences). Consequently, the linguist can study an idealised version of language, greatly
simplifying linguistic analysis (see the "Grammaticalness" section below). The second idea
related directly to the evaluation of theories of grammar. Chomsky made a distinction between
grammars which achieved descriptive adequacy and those which went further and achieved
explanatory adequacy. A descriptively adequate grammar for a particular language defines the
(infinite) set of grammatical sentences in that language; that is, it describes the language in its
entirety. A grammar which achieves explanatory adequacy has the additional property that it
gives an insight into the underlying linguistic structures in the human mind; that is, it does not
merely describe the grammar of a language, but makes predictions about how linguistic
knowledge is mentally represented. For Chomsky, the nature of such mental representations is
largely innate, so if a grammatical theory has explanatory adequacy it must be able to explain the
various grammatical nuances of the languages of the world as relatively minor variations in the
universal pattern of human language. Chomsky argued that, even though linguists were still a
long way from constructing descriptively adequate grammars, progress in terms of descriptive
adequacy would only come if linguists held explanatory adequacy as their goal. In other words,
real insight into the structure of individual languages could only be gained through the
comparative study of a wide range of languages, on the assumption that they are all cut from the
same cloth.

C. COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE DISTINCTION

Chomsky makes a distinction between competence and performance. When he speaks of

competence he refers to the speaker’s implicit knowledge of his language (his knowledge of the
rules). By performance he means the actual use of language in concrete situations. A person’s
actual utterances may be ungrammatical or incomplete because he is tired or excited or not
paying full attention. The problem for the linguist is to describe the language competence of the
speaker by observing his performance. The linguist is interested in competence because he is
interested in what is possible in the whole language.
Linguistic competence is not always reflected in actual speech. Our linguistic
performance is peppered with 'ums' and 'ahs', false starts and sentence fragments. Nevertheless,
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when asked, we are still able to judge the difference between those utterances that live up to the
rules of English and those that do not. Although we are probably not consciously aware of any of
these rules, our unconscious mastery of them is revealed in our linguistic competence.?

D. DEEP STRUCTURE AND SURFACE STRUCTURE

In 1957, Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures, in which he developed the idea
that each sentence in a language has two levels of representation — a deep structure and a surface
structure.The deep structure represented the core semantic relations of a sentence, and was
mapped on to the surface structure (which followed the phonological form of the sentence very
closely) via transformations. Chomsky believed that there would be considerable similarities
between languages' deep structures, and that these structures would reveal properties, common to
all languages, which were concealed by their surface structures. However, this was perhaps not
the central motivation for introducing deep structure. Transformations had been proposed prior to
the development of deep structure as a means of increasing the mathematical and descriptive
power of Context-free grammars. Similarly, deep structure was devised largely for technical
reasons relating to early semantic theory. Chomsky emphasizes the importance of modern formal
mathematical devices in the development of grammatical theory:

But the fundamental reason for [the] inadequacy of traditional grammars is a more
technical one. Although it was well understood that linguistic processes are in some
sense "creative", the technical devices for expressing a system of recursive processes
were simply not available until much more recently. In fact, a real understanding of
how a language can (in Humboldt's words) "make infinite use of finite means" has
developed only within the last thirty years, in the course of studies in the foundations
of mathematics.
(Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, p. 8)

Consider the following sentence pairs:

• "The cat chased the mouse."

• "The mouse was chased by the cat."

• "Where did John drive?"

• "John drove (where)."

According to the transformational grammar, there is an abstract level of representation

that underlies the syntactical structures of each pair member. For instance, the forms first and

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second sentences correspond to "surface structures." The linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that
these surface structures are derived from a common underlying grammatical representation,
called their "deep structure." Within the theory, their deep structure is represented in the form of a
heirarchical tree depicting the grammatical relationships between the various constituents that
make up the sentence, such as the noun phrases* "the cat" and "the mouse," and the verb phrases
"chased" and "was chased ." The application of certain transformation rules to this tree produces
the surface structures seen above. A phrase structure tree is a form of representation of sentences
in which nodes or elements are labelled by syntactic category (noun phrase (NP), verb phrase
(VP), prepositional phrase (PP), etc.)

E. DEVELOPMENT OF BASIC CONCEPTS

Though transformations continue to be important in Chomsky's current theories, he has

now abandoned the original notion of Deep Structure and Surface Structure. Initially, two
additional levels of representation were introduced (LF — Logical Form, and PF — Phonetic
Form), and then in the 1990s Chomsky sketched out a new program of research known as
Minimalism, in which Deep Structure and Surface Structure no longer featured and PF and LF
remained as the only levels of representation.

To complicate the understanding of the development of Noam Chomsky's theories, the

precise meanings of Deep Structure and Surface Structure have changed over time — by the

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1970s, the two were normally referred to simply as D-Structure and S-Structure by Chomskyan
linguists. In particular, the idea that the meaning of a sentence was determined by its Deep
Structure (taken to its logical conclusions by the generative semanticists during the same period)
was dropped for good by Chomskyan linguists when LF took over this role (previously, Chomsky
and Ray Jackendoff had begun to argue that meaning was determined by both Deep and Surface
Structure).

Terms such as "transformation" can give the impression that theories of transformational
generative grammar are intended as a model for the processes through which the human mind
constructs and understands sentences. Chomsky is clear that this is not in fact the case: a
generative grammar models only the knowledge that underlies the human ability to speak and
understand. One of the most important of Chomsky's ideas is that most of this knowledge is
innate, with the result that a baby can have a large body of prior knowledge about the structure of
language in general, and need only actually learn the idiosyncratic features of the language(s) it
is exposed to. Chomsky was not the first person to suggest that all languages had certain
fundamental things in common (he quotes philosophers writing several centuries ago who had the
same basic idea), but he helped to make the innateness theory respectable after a period
dominated by more behaviorist attitudes towards language. Perhaps more significantly, he made
concrete and technically sophisticated proposals about the structure of language, and made
important proposals regarding how the success of grammatical theories should be evaluated.

Chomsky goes so far as to suggest that a baby need not learn any actual rules specific to a
particular language at all. Rather, all languages are presumed to follow the same set of rules, but
the effects of these rules and the interactions between them can vary greatly depending on the
values of certain universal linguistic parameters. This is a very strong assumption, and is one of
the most subtle ways in which Chomsky's current theory of language differs from most others.

F. TRANSFORMATIONS

In structural linguistics the concern was largely to analyse sentences, i.e. divide them into
parts and state the functions of the parts. Such an analysis can show certain similarities and
differences between sentences. TG points out that there are certain kinds of relationships between

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sentences. An example of this kind is the pair of active and passive sentences such as:
1. Cheng kicked the ball. (Noun + Verb + Det + Noun)
2. The ball was kicked by Cheng. (Det + Noun + Aux + Verb + Prep + Noun)
In IC analysis these two sentences would be described as two different sentences with different
sequences of elements, as indicated. TG attempts to explain the native speaker’s intuition that
they are closely related. TG regards passive sentences as being formed from the active ones.
What sort of changes of must take place in this transformation, as it is called? Notice that the
subject (Cheng) and object (the ball) in (1) have changed places in (2) Where the ball is the
subject and Cheng is the agent preceded by by
.The relationship between the active and passive sentences and the changes that take place
in the process of transforming the active sentence into the passive one can be stated in an abstract
way by using symbols. The use of symbols enables TG to state that all active sentences with the
pattern of Cheng kicked the ball can be converted into a passive sentence. The ball was kicked by
Cheng. For example, we could use the following symbols to represent the elements in the active
sentence and the symbols would represent other sentences of like form as:

NP1 V NP2
Cheng kicked the ball
Mary has eaten the apple
Frodo will chase the Orcs

The change into passive sentence is also represented as follows:

NP1 V by NP2
The ball was kicked by the ball
An apple has been eaten by the apple
The Orcs will be chased by the Orcs
I could add to the number of sentences in the first set indefinitely and they could all be
transformed in to the shape of those in the second set.
The use of symbols is a net way of making a general statement. NP 1 and NP1 refer to the
first and second noun phrases in the active sentence. V stand for verb. We can say all sentences of
the form NP1 – V – NP2 can be changed into NP2 – V – by – NP1. Our statement of the active –
passive relationship is less precise than Chomsky’s in syntactic Structures (the rules in TG must
be precise and explicit, but it does show us the essential principles.

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Chomsky states that sentences of the form NP1 + Aux – V – NP2 can be changed to those of the

form NP2 – Aux + be + en -- V – by – NP 1, NP1, NP2, and V have the same meaning as in our
statement. Aux refers to tense and all auxiliary verbs, be + en supplies the passive element (en
stands for the past participle.
The active sentence is basic. The passive sentences is a “transform” of it. In other words,
the passive is derived from the active. Many languages contain active and passive sentences, but
the changes in the process of transformation may be different.
There are also transformations that change two or more sentences into one. That is, they
join sentences together. The first example is:
The man who came to dinner is my brother.
This sentence is derived from
1. The man is my brother
2. The man cam to dinner.
The transformation places the second sentence after man in the first sentence (this is known
technically as “embedding”) and then replaces the man in the second sentence (the embedded
sentence) by who . This transformation is possible only when the same noun phrase (the man)
occurs in both kernel sentences.
The usual usage of the term 'transformation' in linguistics refers to a rule that takes an
input typically called the Deep Structure (in the Standard Theory) or D-structure (in the extended
standard theory or government and binding theory) and changes it in some restricted way to
result in a Surface Structure (or S-structure). In TGG, Deep structures were generated by a set of
phrase structure rules.
For example a typical transformation in TG is the operation of subject-auxiliary inversion
(SAI). This rule takes as its input a declarative sentence with an auxiliary: "John has eaten all the
heirloom tomatoes." and transforms it into "Has John eaten all the heirloom tomatoes?". In their
original formulation (Chomsky 1957), these rules were stated as rules that held over strings of
either terminals or constituent symbols or both.

X NP AUX Y X AUX NP Y

In the 1970s, by the time of the Extended Standard Theory, following the work of Joseph
Emonds on structure preservation, transformations came to be viewed as holding over trees. By

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the end of government and binding theory in the late 1980s, transformations are no longer
structure changing operations at all, instead they add information to already existing trees by
copying constituents.

The earliest conceptions of transformations were that they were construction-specific

devices. For example, there was a transformation that turned active sentences into passive ones. A
different transformation raised embedded subjects into main clause subject position in sentences
such as "John seems to have gone"; and yet a third reordered arguments in the dative alternation.
With the shift from rules to principles and constraints that was found in the 1970s, these
construction specific transformations morphed into general rules (all the examples just mentioned
being instances of NP movement), which eventually changed into the single general rule of move
alpha or Move.

Transformations actually come of two types: (i) the post-Deep structure kind mentioned
above, which are string or structure changing, and (ii) Generalized Transformations (GTs).
Generalized transformations were originally proposed in the earliest forms of generative
grammar (e.g. Chomsky 1957). They take small structures which are either atomic or generated
by other rules, and combine them. For example, the generalized transformation of embedding
would take the kernel "Dave said X" and the kernel "Dan likes smoking" and combine them into
"Dave said Dan likes smoking". GTs are thus structure building rather than structure changing. In
the Extended Standard Theory and government and binding theory, GTs were abandoned in favor
of recursive phrase structure rules. However, they are still present in tree-adjoining grammar as
the Substitution and Adjunction operations and they have recently re-emerged in mainstream
generative grammar in Minimalism as the operations Merge and Move.

G. PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES

Phrase-structure rules are a way to describe a given language's syntax. They are used to
break a natural language sentence down into its constituent parts (also known as syntactic
categories) namely phrasal categories and lexical categories (aka parts of speech). Phrasal
categories include the noun phrase, verb phrase, and prepositional phrase; lexical categories
include noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and many others. Phrase structure rules were commonly
used in transformational grammar (TGG), although they were not an invention of TGG; rather,

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early TGG's added to phrase structure rules (the most obvious example being transformations;
see the page transformational grammar for an overview of the development of TGG.) A grammar
which uses phrase structure rules is called a phrase structure grammar - except in computer
science, where it is known as just a grammar, usually context-free.

Phrase structure rules are usually of the form

, meaning that the constituent A is separated into the two
subconstituents B and C. Some examples are:

The first rule reads: An S consists of an NP followed by a VP. This means A sentence consists of
a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase. The next one: A noun phrase consists of a determiner
followed by a noun.

Further explanations of the constituents: S, Det, NP, VP, AP, PP

Associated with phrase structure rules is a famous example of a grammatically correct sentence.
The sentence was constructed by Noam Chomsky as an illustration that syntactically but not
semantically correct sentences are possible.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously can be diagrammed as a phrase tree, as below:

wzTooltipColorless green ideas sleep furiously.fBehindDocument0fIsButton1fLayoutInCell1

where S represents a grammatical sentence.

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The theory of antisymmetry proposed in the early '90s by Richard Kayne is an attempt to derive
phrase structure from a single axiom.

A number of theories of grammar dispense with the notion of phrase structure rules and
operate with the notion of schema instead. Here phrase structures are not derived from rules that
combine words, but from the specification or instantiation of syntactic schemata or
configurations, often expressing some kind of semantic content independently of the specific
words that appear in them. This approach is essentially equivalent to a system of phrase structure
rules combined with a noncompositional semantic theory, since grammatical formalisms based on
rewriting rules are generally equivalent in power to those based on substitution into schemata..
So, in this type of approach, instead of being derived from the application of a number of phrase
structure rules, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" would be generated by filling
the words into the slots of a schema having the following structure:

(NP(ADJ N) VP(V) AP(ADV))

And which would express the following conceptual content
X DOES Y IN THE MANNER OF Z
Though they are noncompositional, such models are monotonic. This approach is highly
developed within Construction grammar, and has had some influence in Head-Driven Phrase
Structure Grammar and Lexical functional grammar.

Chomsky's system of transformational grammar, though it was developed on the basis of

his work with Harris, differs from Harris's in a number of respects. It is Chomsky's system that
has attracted the most attention and has received the most extensive exemplification and further
development. As outlined in Syntactic Structures (1957), it comprised three sections, or
components: the phrase-structure component, the transformational component, and the
morphophonemic component. Each of these components consisted of a set of rules operating
upon a certain "input" to yield a certain "output." The notion of phrase structure may be dealt
with independently of its incorporation in the larger system. In the following system of rules, S
stands for Sentence, NP for Noun Phrase, VP for Verb Phrase, Det for Determiner, Aux for
Auxiliary (verb), N for Noun, and V for Verb stem.

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(i) S
(ii) NP + VP by rule (1)
(iii) NP + Verb + NP by rule (2)
(iv) Det + N + Verb + NP by rule (3)
(v) Det + N + Verb + Det + N by rule (3)
(vi) he + Det + N + Aux + V + Det + N by rule (4)
(vii) the + N + Aux + V + Det + N by rule (5)
(viii) the + N + Aux + V + the + N by rule (5)
(ix) the + man + Aux + V + the + N by rule (6)
(x) the + man + Aux + V + the + ball by rule (6)
(xi) the + man + will + V + the + ball by rule (7)
(xii) the + man + will + hit + the + N by rule (8)

This is a simple phrase-structure grammar. It generates and thereby defines as grammatical such
sentences as "The man will hit the ball," and it assigns to each sentence that it generates a
structural description. The kind of structural description assigned by a phrase-structure grammar
is, in fact, a constituent structure analysis of the sentence.

In these rules, the arrow can be interpreted as an instruction to rewrite (this is to be taken as a
technical term) whatever symbol appears to the left of the arrow as the symbol or string of
symbols that appears to the right of the arrow. For example, rule (2) rewrites the symbol VP as
the string of symbols Verb + NP, and it thereby defines Verb + NP to be a construction of the type
VP. Or, alternatively and equivalently, it says that constructions of the type VP may have as their
immediate constituents constructions of the type Verb and NP (combined in that order). Rule (2)
can be thought of as creating or being associated with the tree structure in Figure 3.

Rules (1)-(8) do not operate in isolation but constitute an integrated system. The symbol S
(standing mnemonically for "sentence") is designated as the initial symbol. This information is
not given in the rules (1)-(8), but it can be assumed either that it is given in a kind of protocol
statement preceding the grammatical rules or that there is a universal convention according to
which S is always the initial symbol. It is necessary to begin with a rule that has the initial
symbol on the left. Thereafter any rule may be applied in any order until no further rule is
applicable; in doing so, a derivation can be constructed of one of the sentences generated by the
grammar. If the rules are applied in the following order: (1), (2), (3), (3), (4), (5), (5), (6), (6), (7),
(8), then assuming that "the" is selected on both applications of (5), "man" on one application of
(6), and "ball" on the other, "will" on the application of (7), and "hit" on the application of (8), the
following derivation of the sentence "The man will hit the ball" will have been constructed:

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Many other derivations of this sentence are possible, depending on the order in which the rules
are applied. The important point is that all these different derivations are equivalent in that they
can be reduced to the same tree diagram; namely, the one shown in Figure 4. If this is compared
with the system of rules, it will be seen that each application of each rule creates or is associated
with a portion (or subtree) of the tree. The tree diagram, or phrase marker, may now be
considered as a structural description of the sentence "The man hit the ball." It is a description of
the constituent structure, or phrase structure, of the sentence, and it is assigned by the rules that
generate the sentence.

It is important to interpret the term generate in a static, rather than a dynamic, sense. The
statement that the grammar generates a particular sentence means that the sentence is one of the
totality of sentences that the grammar defines to be grammatical or well formed. All the sentences
are generated, as it were, simultaneously. The notion of generation must be interpreted as would
be a mathematical formula containing variables. For example, in evaluating the formula y + y for
different values of y, one does not say that the formula itself generates these various resultant
values (2, when y = 1; 5, when y = 2; etc.) one after another or at different times; one says that
the formula generates them all simultaneously or, better still perhaps, timelessly. The situation is
similar for a generative grammar. Although one sentence rather than another can be derived on
some particular occasion by making one choice rather than another at particular places in the
grammar, the grammar must be thought of as generating all sentences statically or timelessly.

It has been noted that, whereas a phrase-structure grammar is one that consists entirely of phrase-
structure rules, a transformational grammar (as formalized by Chomsky) includes both phrase-

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PS rules NP – Aux – V – NP – Aux + be + en – V – by + NP
S A+B 1 2 1

B C+D
A a+b
C a+e+f
D d + structure
g+h and transformational rules (as well as morphophonemic rules). The transformational
T rules rules depend upon the prior application of the phrase-structure rules and have the effect of
(6) A + C + D D + A
converting, or transforming, one phrase marker into another. What is meant by this statement may
be clarified first with reference to a purely abstract and very simple transformational grammar, in
which the letters stand for constituents of a sentence (and S stands for "sentence"):

The first five rules are phrase-structure rules (PS rules); rule (6) is a transformational rule (T
rule). The output of rules (1)-(5) is the terminal string a + b + c + e + f + d + g + h, which has
associated with it the structural description indicated by the phrase marker shown in Figure 5
(left). Rule (6) applies to this terminal string of the PS rules and the associated phrase marker. It
has the effect of deleting C (and the constituents of C) and permuting A and D (together with
their constituents). The result is the string of symbols d + g + h + a + b, with the associated
phrase marker shown in Figure 5 (right).

The phrase marker shown in Figure 5 (left) may be described as underlying, and the phrase
marker shown in Figure 5 (right) as derived with respect to rule (6). One of the principal
characteristics of a transformational rule is its transformation of an underlying phrase marker into
a derived phrase marker in this way. Transformational rules, in contrast with phrase-structure
rules, are also formally more heterogeneous and may have more than one symbol on the left-hand
side of the arrow. The linguistic importance of these abstract considerations may be explained
with reference to the relationship that holds in English between active and passive sentences.

Chomsky's rule for relating active and passive sentences (as given in Syntactic Structures) is very
similar, at first sight, to Harris's, discussed above. Chomsky's rule is:

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This rule, called the passive transformation, presupposes and depends upon the prior application
of a set of phrase-structure rules. For simplicity, the passive transformation may first be
considered in relation to the set of terminal strings generated by the phrase-structure rules (1)-(8)
given earlier. The string "the + man + will + hit + the + ball" (with its associated phrase marker,
as shown in Figure 4) can be treated not as an actual sentence but as the structure underlying both
the active sentence "The man will hit the ball" and the corresponding passive "The ball will be hit
by the man." The passive transformation is applicable under the condition that the underlying, or
"input," string is analyzable in terms of its phrase structure as NP - Aux - V - NP (the use of
subscript numerals to distinguish the two NPs in the formulation of the rule is an informal device
for indicating the operation of permutation). In the phrase marker in Figure 4 "the" + "man" are
constituents of NP, "will" is a constituent of Aux, "hit" is a constituent of V, and "the" + "ball" are
constituents of NP. The whole string is therefore analyzable in the appropriate sense, and the
passive transformation converts it into the string "the + ball + will + be + en + hit + by + the +
man." A subsequent transformational rule will permute "en + hit" to yield "hit + en," and one of
the morphophonemic rules will then convert "hit + en" to "hit" (as "ride + en" will be converted
to "ridden"; "open + en" to "opened," and so on).

Every transformational rule has the effect of converting an underlying phrase marker into a
derived phrase marker. The manner in which the transformational rules assign derived constituent
structure to their input strings is one of the major theoretical problems in the formalization of
transformational grammar. Here it can be assumed not only that "be + en" is attached to Aux and
"by" to NP (as indicated by the plus signs in the rule as it has been formulated above) but also
that the rest of the derived structure is as shown in Figure 6. The phrase marker in Figure 6
formalizes the fact, among others, that "the ball" is the subject of the passive sentence "The ball
will be hit by the man," whereas "the man" is the subject of the corresponding active "The man
will hit the ball" (cf. Figure 4).

Although the example above is a very simple one, and only a single transformational rule has
been considered independently of other transformational rules in the same system, the passive
transformation must operate, not only upon simple noun phrases like "the man" or "the ball," but
upon noun phrases that contain adjectives ("the old man"), modifying phrases ("the man in the

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corner"), relative clauses ("the man who checked in last night"), and so forth. The incorporation,
or embedding, of these other structures with the noun phrase will be brought about by the prior
application of other transformational rules. It should also be clear that the phrase-structure rules
require extension to allow for the various forms of the verb ("is hitting," "hit," "was hitting," "has
hit," "has been hitting," etc.) and for the distinction of singular and plural.

It is important to note that, unlike Harris's, Chomsky's system of transformational grammar does
not convert one sentence into another: the transformational rules operate upon the structures
underlying sentences and not upon actual sentences. A further point is that even the simplest
sentences (i.e.,kernel sentences) require the application of at least some transformational rules.
Corresponding active and passive sentences, affirmative and negative sentences, declarative and
interrogative sentences, and so on are formally related by deriving them from the same
underlying terminal string of the phrase-structure component. The difference between kernel
sentences and nonkernel sentences in Syntactic Structures (in Chomsky's later system the
category of kernel sentences is not given formal recognition at all) resides in the fact that kernel
sentences are generated without the application of any optional transformations. Nonkernel
sentences require the application of both optional and obligatory transformations, and they differ
one from another in that a different selection of optional transformations is made.

H. MODIFICATIONS IN CHOMSKY'S GRAMMAR

Chomsky's system of transformational grammar was substantially modified in 1965.

Perhaps the most important modification was the incorporation, within the system, of a semantic
component, in addition to the syntactic component and phonological component. (The
phonological component may be thought of as replacing the morphophonemic component of
Syntactic Structures.) The rules of the syntactic component generate the sentences of the
language and assign to each not one but two structural analyses: a deep structure analysis as
represented by the underlying phrase marker, and a surface structure analysis, as represented by
the final derived phrase marker. The underlying phrase marker is assigned by rules of the base
(roughly equivalent to the PS [Phrase-Structure] rules of the earlier system); the derived phrase
marker is assigned by the transformational rules. The interrelationship of the four sets of rules is
shown diagrammatically in Figure 7. The meaning of the sentence is derived (mainly, if not
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wholly) from the deep structure by means of the rules of semantic interpretation; the phonetic
realization of the sentence is derived from its surface structure by means of the rules of the
phonological component. The grammar ("grammar" is now to be understood as covering
semantics and phonology, as well as syntax) is thus an integrated system of rules for relating the
pronunciation of a sentence to its meaning. The syntax, and more particularly the base, is at the
"heart" of the system, as it were: it is the base component (as the arrows in the diagram indicate)
that generates the infinite class of structures underlying the well-formed sentences of a language.
These structures are then given a semantic and phonetic "interpretation" by the other components.

The base consists of two parts: a set of categorial rules and a lexicon. Taken together, they fulfill
a similar function to that fulfilled by the phrase-structure rules of the earlier system. But there are
many differences of detail. Among the most important is that thelexicon (which may be thought
of as a dictionary of the language cast in a particular form) lists, in principle, all the vocabulary
words in the language and associates with each all the syntactic, semantic, and phonological
information required for the correct operation of the rules. This information is represented in
terms of what are called features. For example, the entry for "boy" might say that it has the
syntactic features: [+ Noun], [+ Count], [+ Common], [+ Animate], and [+ Human]. The
categorial rules generate a set of phrase markers that have in them, as it were, a number of "slots"
to be filled with items from the lexicon. With each such "slot" there is associated a set of features
that define the kind of item that can fill the "slot." If a phrase marker is generated with a "slot" for
the head of a noun phrase specified as requiring an animate noun (i.e., a noun having the feature
[+ Animate]), the item "boy" would be recognized as being compatible with this specification and
could be inserted in the "slot" by the rule of lexical substitution. Similarly, it could be inserted in
"slots" specified as requiring a common noun, a human noun, or a countable noun, but it would
be excluded from positions that require an abstract noun (e.g., "sincerity") or an uncountable
noun (e.g., "water"). By drawing upon the syntactic information coded in feature notation in the
lexicon, the categorial rules might permit such sentences as "The boy died," while excluding (and
thereby defining as ungrammatical) such nonsentences as "The boy elapsed."

One of the most controversial topics in the development of transformational grammar is

the relationship between syntax and semantics. Scholars working in the field are now agreed that
there is a considerable degree of interdependence between the two, and the problem is how to
formalize this interdependence. One school of linguists, called generative semanticists, accept the
TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR_Task.rtf arranged by Ach. Philip, S.Pd 16
general principles of transformational grammar but have challenged Chomsky's conception of
deep structure as a separate and identifiable level of syntactic representation. In their opinion, the
basic component of the grammar should consist of a set of rules for the generation of well-formed
semantic representations. These would then be converted by a succession of transformational
rules into strings of words with an assigned surface-structure syntactic analysis, there being no
place in the passage from semantic representation to surface structure identifiable as Chomsky's
deep structure. Chomsky himself has denied that there is any real difference between the two
points of view and has maintained that the issue is purely one of notation. That this argument can
be put forward by one party to the controversy and rejected by the other is perhaps a sufficient
indication of the uncertainty of the evidence. Of greater importance than the overt issues, in so far
as they are clear, is the fact that linguists are now studying much more intensively than they have
in the past the complexities of the interdependence of syntax, on the one hand, and semantics and
logic, on the other. Whether it will prove possible to handle all these complexities within a
comprehensive generative grammar remains to be seen.

The role of the phonological component of a generative grammar of the type outlined by
Chomsky is to assign a phonetic "interpretation" to the strings of words generated by the
syntactic component. These strings of words are represented in a phonological notation (taken
from the lexicon) and have been provided with a surface-structure analysis by the
transformational rules (see Figure 7). The phonological elements out of which the word forms are
composed are segments consisting of what are referred to technically as distinctive features
(following the usage of the Prague school, see below The Prague school). For example, the word
form "man," represented phonologically, is composed of three segments: the first consists of the
features [+ consonantal], [+ bilabial], [+ nasal], etc.; the second of the features [+ vocalic], [+
front], [+ open], etc.; and the third of the features [+ consonantal], [+ alveolar], [+ nasal], etc.
(These features should be taken as purely illustrative; there is some doubt about the definitive list
of distinctive features.) Although these segments may be referred to as the "phonemes" /m/, /a/,
and /n/, they should not be identified theoretically with units of the kind discussed in the section
on Phonology under Structural linguistics. They are closer to what many American structural
linguists called "morphophonemes" or the Prague school linguists labelled "archiphonemes,"
being unspecified for any feature that is contextually redundant or predictable. For instance, the
first segment of the phonological representation of "man" will not include the feature [+ voice];

TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR_Task.rtf arranged by Ach. Philip, S.Pd 17

because nasal consonants are always phonetically voiced in this position in English, the feature
[+ voice] can be added to the phonetic specification by a rule of the phonological component.

One further important aspect of generative phonology (i.e., phonology carried out within
the framework of an integrated generative grammar) should be mentioned: its dependence upon
syntax. Most American structural phonologists made it a point of principle that the phonemic
analysis of an utterance should be carried out without regard to its grammatical structure. This
principle was controversial among American linguists and was not generally accepted outside
America. Not only has the principle been rejected by the generative grammarians, but they have
made the phonological description of a language much more dependent upon its syntactic
analysis than has any other school of linguists. They have claimed, for example, that the
phonological rules that assign different degrees of stress to the vowels in English words and
phrases and alter the quality of the relatively unstressed vowel concomitantly must make
reference to the derived constituent structure of sentences and not merely to the form class of the
individual words or the places in which the word boundaries occur

TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR_Task.rtf arranged by Ach. Philip, S.Pd 18

 References

1. Boey, Lim Kiat. (1975). An Introduction to Linguistics for The Language Teacher.
Singapore. Singapore University Press.
2. Yule, George. The Study of Language: An Introduction. Sydney. Cambridge University
Press.
3. Jacobs, Roderick A. et al. English Transformational Grammar. John Wiley and Sons.
New York.
4. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Internet

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