REFLECTION PAPER

AMALIA MACHDI FIBIARTY

A83211119
CELESTIAL UNINTELLIGIBILITY
Why does linguistics propose such bizarre grammar?
My understanding is not different before and after doing presentation. The whole chapter
is telling about the effort of Noam Chomsky to create an explicit set of internalized rules in our
brain. He found some patterns which convey the “rules” but it doesn’t prove anything. The
discussion starts when the emperor of Jupiter asked Noam to write down a pattern which could
represent the human’s thought. As a native English speaker, Chomsky knows how to use
“language”, but he was difficult to explain it explicitly. Noam’s effort is successful to create a
pattern which closely representing; how sentence can construct. It is called sentence tree. The
sentence’s construction is build from a basic noun phrase and verb phrase. Then, go down branch
until sentences which intend were creating. But, it has some rejection from some linguistics,
about his last pattern. It is unworkable in some sentences. The linguistics realized that they
cannot create an explicit speaker’s internalized rules in our brain. They explained if a good
sentence is build up by considering 2 things: Observational Adequate and Descriptively
Adequate. Observational adequate is a sentence (in each language) which has its own
characteristics of structure. We are impossible to make sentence from all language by using one
structure. In the other hand, descriptively adequate means a sentence will approve by human’s
thought, when its language make a sense. Language in use is not always to follow a tight of
specifics grammar. It should be accepted in commonsense. So, it will produce a good
communication one to another.
Some pattern in language which has same meaning but it has so many pattern, make
emperor as non linguistics doesn’t understand, why it should provide so many “transformation
pattern” while the intention is same? Some linguistics explained it cause of the relation of deep
structure and surface structure in our brain. Transformational rules are operating deep structure
and provide surface structure. Transformational Rules will delete, add, and move material which
has been applied to the deep structure, then produce as the surface structure. The importance
thing in this chapter is neither new nor old system (transformational grammar) which exists, but
how the language is use. It is not only the competence of the speaker which represent their
knowledge about language (semantic feature, phonological, structure) but also the performance
which involve knowledge for using competence, the process of sentence production and
understanding. It is the true how language can work well.