Name: Doni Setiawan Sinaga

Nim: 2191121001

English Education 2019 A

Surface sentence, Deep Sentence and Ambiguous Sentence

Deep structure is basic sentence and surface structure is transformed structure. The deep
structure is simple, assertive, declarative and active in form. It is the abstract structure that
allows a native speaker to know what the sentence means. The surface structure shows how
the speaker actually uses it in communication. It can be concluded that deep structure
expresses the semantic content of the sentence, where as the surface structure its phonetic
form

Surface structures can be defined as the syntactic form they take as actual sentences. In
other words, they are modified/transformed sentence forms. Consider these sentences:

(1) You close the door.

(2) The door is closed by you.

(3) Close the door!

The first sentence is active, the second is passive, and the last is imperative. However, if
one looks closely, one will find that the three are very closely related, even identical. They
appear to be identical, because they share the same fundamental abstract representation
called inner structure. It is defined as the abstract level of structural organization in which all
the elements that determine the structural interpretation are represented. If one wants to
analyze the relationship between the three sentences, one must first know the internal
structure, because the internal structure is the input of the transformation rule. One cannot
apply transformation rules if one does not have deep structure. A transformation rule is a set
of rules that will change or move the constituents in a structure derived from a phrase
structure rule.

It can be concluded that deep structure refers to concepts, thoughts, ideas & feelings
whereas surface structure refers to the words / language we use to represent the deep
structure. Deep structure is what we wish to express and surface structure how we express it
in with the help of words and sentence.

The another example If I were to tell you that “I bought colorful clothes”. This is a surface
structure representing a more detailed and elaborate experience (deeper structure). The deep
structure will contain a lot more details like:
 1. How many clothes?
2. Which types?
3. What colors?
4. Which clothes did I discarded while buying the ones I bought?
5. Where did I buy them from?
6. Who I was with when I bought the clothes?
7. What was the overall experience of buying these clothes
8. How I felt while buying these clothes?
9. What were the factors based on which I bought some clothes and discarded others?
10. How much did it cost?

Now if a particular deep structure could have been represented by only one surface
structure and a particular surface structure could only represent one deep structure there
would be no scope for misunderstanding and hence there wouldn't have been any need to
question the surface structure. But alas that is not the case. Because of the nature of language,
a particular deep structure can be represented by multiple surface structure sentences.

“I bought colorful clothes” and “Colourful clothes were bought by me” are two different
surface structure sentences that mean exactly the same thing i.e. represent the same deep
structure. Also a particular surface structure sentence can be used to represent multiple deep
structures.

“Speaking to you as an intelligent person” is a surface structure that could represent two
different deep structures. Does the sentence represent a deep structure where:

1. I think of you as an intelligent person? or

2. I think of myself as an intelligent person who is speaking to you?

This creates a scope of misunderstanding as the speaker may have used surface structure to
represent deep structure 1 but the listener may have understood deep structure 2 because of
ambiguity or lack of specific details. Now the decisions and actions of the listener are based
on the deep structure 2 instead of the deep structure 1.

Ambiguous Sentence

With all combining proposition and condensing surface sentence, many sentences turn out
to be ambiguous. Some surface sentence correspond to two or more underlying
representation.

For Example:

1 I disapprove of John's drinking

This sentence can refer either to the fact of John's drinking or to its character. The ambiguity
is resolved, in different ways, in sentences :

2. I disapprove of John's drinking the beer.

3. I disapprove of John's excessive drinking.

It is clear that grammatical processes are involved. Notice that we cannot simultaneously
extend in both of the ways illustrated in sentences; that would be:

4. I disapprove of John's excessive drinking the beer.

The fact that 4 is deviant requires explanation. The explanation in this case would be provided, at
the level of particular grammar, by formulation of the grammatical rules that assign alternative deep
structures and that in each case permit one but not the other of the extensions to 2 or 3 . We would
then explain the deviance of 4 and the ambiguity of 4 by attributing this system of rules to the person
who knows the language, as one aspect of his knowledge. we might, of course, try to move to a
deeper level of explanation, asking how it is that the person has internalized these rules instead of
others that would determine a different sound–meaning correlation and a different class of generated
surface structures (including, perhaps, 4). This is a problem of universal grammar, in the sense
described earlier. Using the terminology of note 2, the discussion at the level of particular grammar
would be one of descriptive adequacy, and at the level of universal grammar it would be one of
explanatory adequacy.