TRANSFORMATIONAL/ GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

• The rules determining the structure and interpretation of sentences that speakers accept as belonging to the language.

THEORY OF COMPETENCE

• A model of psychological system of unconscious knowledge that underlies a speaker’s ability to produce and interpret utterances in a language

NOAM CHOMSKYNoam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky was born on the 7th of December 1928, in

Philadelphia. His father was a Hebrew grammarian and his mother a

teacher. Chomsky got his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania,where he studied linguistics under Zellig Harris. He took a position

inmachine translation and language teaching at the Massachusetts

Instituteof Technology. Eventually his ideas about the structure of languagetransformed the field of linguistics. Reviled by some and admired

byothers, Chomsky’s ideas have laid the groundwork for the discipline

oflinguistics, and have been very influential in computer science, and

philosophy.Chomsky is also one of the leading intellectuals in the anarchistsocialist movement. His political writings about the media and

politicalinjustice have profoundly influenced many. Chomsky is among the

mostquoted authors in the world (among the top ten and the only living

person on the list).

Underlying thesis of generative

grammar

is that sentencesare generated by a subconscious set of procedures (like computer programs).

Do Rules Really Exist?

Generative grammar claims to be a theory of cognitive psychology, It is a model of the psychology of Language.

prescriptiverules

“use whom not who,”

descriptive rulesdescribe how people actually speak, whetheror not they are speaking “correctly.”

Judgments as Science?

Many linguists refer to the grammaticality judgment task as “drawing upon our native speaker intuitions.”

Generative grammarian refers to “intuition” however, she is using the term to mean “tapping into our subconscious knowledge.”

GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENTS

When generative grammar was first proposed, it was widely hailed as a way of formalizing the implicit set of rules a person "knows" when they know their native language and produce grammatical utterances in it (grammaticality intuitions). However Chomsky has repeatedly rejected that interpretation; according to him, the grammar of a language is a statement of what it is that a person has to know in order to recognize an utterance as grammatical, but not a hypothesis about the processes involved in either understanding or producing language.

Kinds of Grammaticality Judgments

a) #The toothbrush is pregnant.b) *Toothbrush the is blue.

Sentence (11a) sounds bizarre (cf. the toothbrush is blue) because we knowthat toothbrushes (except in the world of fantasy/science fiction or poetry)cannot be pregnant. The meaning of the sentence is strange, but the form isOK. We call this semantic ill-formedness and mark the sentence with a #. Bycontrast, we can glean the meaning of sentence (11b); it seems semanticallyreasonable (toothbrushes can be blue), but it is ill-formed from a structuralpoint of view. That is, the determiner the is in the wrong placein the sentence. This is a syntactically ill-formed sentence. A native speakerof English will judge both these sentences as ill-formed, but for very differentreasons. In this text, we will be concerned primarily with syntacticwell-formedness.

WHERE DO THE RULES COME FROM?

The theory of generative grammar

Learning vs. Acquisition

Innateness: Language as an InstinctThe Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

• Learning vs. Acquisition• Cognitive scientists make a

distinction in how we get conscious

• and subconscious knowledge.

• Subconscious knowledge, like how to speak

• or the ability to visually identify discrete objects, is acquired. In part,

• this explains why classes in the formal grammar of a foreign language

• often fail abysmally to train people to speak those languages

•Conscious knowledge (like the rules•of algebra, syntactic theory, principles of organic chemistry, or how to take•apart a carburetor) is learned.

Innateness: Language as an Instinct

the most controversial claim of Noam Chomsky’s is that language is also an instinct. Many parts of Language are built in, or innate.

a human facility for Language (perhaps in the form

of a “Language organ” in the brain) is innate. We call this facility Universal

Grammar (or UG).

The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

The argument presented here is based on an unpublished paper by Alec Marantz,but is based on an argument dating back to at least Chomsky (1965).

Premise (i): Syntax is a productive, recursive and infinite system

Premise (ii): Rule governed infinite systems are unlearnable.

Conclusion: Therefore syntax is an unlearnable system. Since we have it,it follows that at least parts of syntax are innate.

Preliminaries

PREMISE (I): SYNTAX IS A PRODUCTIVE, RECURSIVE AND INFINITE SYSTEM

Language is a productive system. That is, you can produce and understand sentences you have never heard before.

The magic of syntax is that it can generate forms that have never been produced before. Another example of the productive quality lies what is called recursion.

It is always possible to embed a sentence inside of a larger one. This means that Language is a productive (probably infinite) system.

PREMISE (II): RULE GOVERNED INFINITE SYSTEMS ARE UNLEARNABLE.

premise (ii): The idea that infinite systems are unlearnable. In order to make this more concrete, let’s consider an algebraic treatment of a linguistic example. Imagine that the task of a child is to determine the rules by which her language is constructed. Further, let’s simplify the task, and say a child simply has to match up situations

in the real world with utterances she hears.4 So upon hearing the utterance the cat spots the kissing fishes, she identifies it with an appropriate situation in the context around her .

A. Models of transformational grammar

A. Standard Theory (1957-1965)B. Extended Standard Theory (1965-

1973)C. Revised Extended Standard Theory

(1973-1976)D. Relational grammar (ca. 1975-1990)E. Government and binding/Principles

and parameters theory (1981-1990)F. Minimalist Program (1990-present)

Standard Theory (1957-1965)

Major criticism of the Standard Theory came from within generative grammar itself.

Some of the Chomsky’s students felt that the scope of grammar was too narrow and should be extended into other areas of language, particularly into semantics.

Extended Standard Theory (1965-1973)

The major change inthe Extended Standard Theory wasthat semantic interpretation could notbe based on the deep structure alone,but that it is determined by the deepstructure as well as by the surface structure.However, the deep structurekeeps its important syntactic role.

Revised Extended Standard Theory (1973-1976)

Revised Extended Standard TheoryIs a strict delimitation of the differentgrammatical components, thatis syntax, semantics, as well as phonology,stylistics and pragmatics.

Relational grammar (ca. 1975-1990)

An alternative model of syntax based on the idea that notions like Subject, Direct Object, and Indirect Object play a primary role in grammar.

Government and binding/Principles and parameters theory (1981-1990)

It is based on the principlesand parameters theory, which statesthat there is a finite set of fundamentalprinciples common to all natural languagesand a finite set of binaryparameters that determine the rangeof permissible variability in language,language acquisition and languageunderstanding.

It is the aim of GB-theory to find theprinciples and parameters commonto all languages so that the syntax of aparticular language can be explainedalong these lines.

Binding theory poses locality conditions on certain processes and related items. The central notion of government theory is the relation between the head of a construction and categories dependent on it.

It is also concerned with relations of anaphors, pronouns, names and variables to possible antecedents.

Minimalist

Program (1990-present)

an approach tothe study of the human language facultychiefly associated with NoamChomsky.

In The Minimalist Program (1995),the latest step in the continuousdevelopment of transformational generativegrammar, Chomsky provideda radically new approach to theimplementation of his underlyingideas. The well-established conceptsof D-structure and S-structure havebeen discarded as well as government,the central element in GB-theory. Eventhe ubiquitous phrase-structure ruleshave been eliminated from the theoryto a large degree

The only conceptuallynecessary categories left are thelexicon and the two levels of phoneticform and logical form* and it is therole of a grammar to map them ontoeach other.

CONTEXT-FREE GRAMMARS

Is a formal system that describes a language by specifying how any legal text can be derived from a distinguished symbol called the axiom, or sentence symbol. It consists of a set of productions, each of which states that a given symbol can be replaced by a given sequence of symbols.

MUSIC THEORY

Generative grammar has been used to a limited extent in music theory and analysis since the 1980s.[3][4] The most well-known approaches were developed by Mark Steedman[5] as well as Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff,[6] who formalised and extended ideas from Schenkerian analysis.[7] More recently, such early generative approaches to music were further developed and extended by several scholars

End of my report…Thank you..

REFERRENCES

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/carnie/samplechap/Carnie_chapter_1.pdf

www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_10525.pdf

Reported by:

LEILANI GRACE M. REYES

MELT 104: Grammatical Structure of English

Master in Education-Teaching English Language

2nd Trimester S.Y. 2012-2013