English of Department

Transformation grammar

Student:
Ayat Khouder Yas
Forth stage

Supervisor:
Dr_Hind Ismail

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Transformational Grammar

Transformational grammar is a theory of grammar that accounts for the construction of a language
by linguistic transformations and phrase structures. Also known as transformational generative
grammar or T-G or TGG Transformational grammar, it should be evident that the transformational
concept of embedding gave sentence combining a theoretical foundation upon which to build.
By the time Chomsky and his followers moved away from this concept, sentences combining had
enough momentum to sustain itself. “ (Ronald F. Lunsford,” Modern grammar and basic Writers,
(net). Our use of the word rule is different from that used in traditional. Grammar. A rule for a
transformationalist is not an explanation of how to punctuate a sentence or how to avoid errors.
Rather, it is a direction for forming a sentence or part of a sentence. The rules in a transformational
grammar will specify which combinations of words are grammaticality sentences. In addition to
rules that generate the sentences of English, we also have a means representing the exact choices
that are made in the deri-Vation of specific sentence. This is known as a tree.
(BRUCE L.:1971, 11_12)

There are three main school of grammar which are traditional grammar,structure
grammar and Transformational generative grammar. The pioneer of the last school is Chomsky. His
grammar consists of two parts. The first part is transformational rules which are four in number. They
are rearrangement. Example
Ali has repaired the cars. Active voice the cars have been repaired ( by Ali ) passive in this
example, There is addition, deletion replacement and rearrangement.
The second part is generative rules which are eight in number
1- S (sm )NUC

2- NUC NP +VP
Each sentence must contain NP +VP

3- VP Aux + Mv ( M)(P)(T)(R) verb phrase should contain Aux + Mv and

optional Elements which ( M)(P)(T)(R)

4- Aux Tense (M) ( have+en) (be+ing)

present
5- Tense

Past

NP

Be P

6- Mv
V (NP)

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7- NP (Det ) N ( pl )

8- Ap (niten) adjective

Example they are playing in the garden

NUC

NP VP

N AUX MU P

TENSE BE ING V PP

PRESENT P NPZ
PLA
Y

Det N

THEY ARE PLAYING IN THE GARDEN

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Not they are playing in the garden

Nu
c

s V
m P

Np AUX MU P

N TENSE BE ING V PP

PRESENT P NPZ
PLA
Y

Det N

Not they ARE PLAYING IN THE GARDEN

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They are not playing in the garden

NUS

V
P

Np AUX MU P

TENSE BE ING V PP

PRESENT P NPZ
PLA
Y

Det N

they ARE Not PLAYING IN THE GARDEN

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Q ) they are playing in the garden

sm np AUX MU P

TENSE BE ING V PP
N PRESENT PLA P NPZ
Y
Det N
Q they ARE Not PLAYING IN THE
GARDEN

Are they playing in the garden

Aux Np Vp

Aux Mv pp

Tense be N ing v p ND

Present pla Det Np

y

Pire they plying in the garden?

The book is playing in the garden.

This sentence is accept from syntactic point of view semantically is wrong sentence because
the lexical feature of the subject must be animate or human

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The question/interrogative transformation:
English has two main kinds of questions: they are yes/no questions and WH questions.
The idea of the interrogation” in the deep structure. This idea is expressed by the sentence
Modifier “Q” .

-Yes/No question
Examples :
Q the bell is ringing now ( Deep structure )
Rearrange the sentence to reach to the grammatical sentence.
is the bell ringing now? ( Surface Structure )
A grammatical sentence.
Q she knows my name ( Deep Structure )
Rearrange and add Aux to the sentence to reach to the grammatical sentence.
Does she know my name? ( Surface Structure )

-wh-question
We use wh words to ask about something or someone that is NP, so the WH
Transformation shifts the NP with WH attached
to it to the beginning of the sentence and substitutes the NP with the wh words
such as: what/who/whom/whose/which.

For examples:

Has she torn NP-WH ( Deep Structure )

To reach to a grammatical sentence we rearrange by putting (NP-WH) at the
Beginning of the sentence then change it by what.

What has she torn? ( Deep Structure )

The result confirm that the principle of our grammar is that transformations
affect “form” of a structure but not the “meaning”.

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