SERVICES OF CHOMSKY TO SYNTAX

Presentation by: Nabeela Taimur Ali

Avram Noam Chomsky (7-12-1928)

American Linguist, Philosopher, Cognitive scientist and logician.

Noam Chomsky is a prolific writer and

scholar of linguistics etc., written over 700

articles and more than 50 books during the

past 40 years.

In field of linguistics, he is known as father

of modern linguistics, and founder of TGG.

Chomskyian revolution, name given

to his theories; universal grammar n

role of brain in language use is center

of his theories

Was voted "world's top public intellectual" in a

2005 poll.

Many have said that his early works are "the

single most important books in cognitive

science."

Age 16; university of pennsylvania, Arabic. Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew; B-A.

revised it for M-A.

1975 book was published, The Logical Structure of Linguistic

Theory.

1955 he was awarded his PHD from the

university of Pennsylvania for a

thesis setting out his ideas on TG.

Syntactic Structures: his first book

published, caused upheaval. Later John Lyon asserted that it "revolutionized the scientific study of

language”.

Aspects of theory of linguistics. Topics in

the theory of Generative Grammar. Language and mind.

1959 he attracted further attention for

his review of B.F. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior in which he argued that Skinner ignored the role of human creativity in

linguistics.

Chomsky’s Linguistic Beliefs in a nutshell:

In the 1940s and 1950s, before Chomsky emerged on the scene, linguistic study focused mainly on performance (how people spoke – the language that came out of their mouths). Generally, what we might classify as a superficial view of language was held by many in the field. Language was thought to go in and to come out, and not much was believed to happen in between. In other words, linguists of the 1940s and 1950s thought that language existed in itself and that the brain was not involved in the use of language and its process.

Syntactic Structures(1957)

Competence; radically different view from

establish belief.

“Unconscious knowledge people have about

language”.

Chomsky criticized the establishment for

describing performance, and instead set out to explain competence.

Precisely; he wanted to study how the brain

processed and dealt with language. This was not

part of linguistics.

"Our natural order of thoughts is mirrored by

our words."

Language might be "unconscious" and “innate”

This idea was in direct contrast with the popular linguistic beliefs of 1950s.

This triggered; criticism and commentary on new

ideas.

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965)

Clarify and refine his abstract ideas.

Created mathematical formula that attempts to examine how language is

situated in the brain.

Deep structure/ base rules. These base rules generate

strings of "phrase markers," which are the elementary units of deep structure.

Surface structure/ phonetic interpretation of deep

structure. Though not always correlate one-to-one in his

formula.

In Chomsky’s theory, both operate as distinct, yet

related, entities. Syntax ties them together; made

Chomsky focus on Syntax.

First half; debunking traditional ideas. Second

half; mathematical structures of language.

Divided into two parts, surface structure and deep

structure,

He later recanted some of his ideas about deep structure and language, his theories

still provide basis for linguistics study.

Chomsky’s

Syntax!

Minimalism

Principles and Parameters Approach

Standard Theory/ Extended Standard

theory

Transformational Generative Grammar

Transformational Grammar.

Generative Grammar

TG/TGG

Deepstructure; invisible, inaudible

interface to the mental lexicon.

DS is converted by

transformational rules into

surface structure.

• Rationale:certain

constructions at surface

structure n deep

structure.

TGG syntactic theory is the

theory of competence.

Few principleand concepts.

1.Speaker-listener

competence. 2. Language is creative and innovative.

3.TGG is a set of grammatical rules

that provide clarity to the

sentence. 4.The language is a

mirror of mind.

Standard theory.

Theory corresponds

to the original

model of generative grammar.

It’s core aspect is a distinction

between two different

representations of a

sentence.

At first in TGG,

active/passive pairs had identical

deep structures.

Need/result… active/passive pairs had almost-but-

not-quite identical

deep structures.

Semantic component was added.

Extended Standard Theory

(1965–1973)

Had two important features.

Syntactic constraints

.

Generalized phrase

structures (X-bar theory)

Government and Binding theory’s view is that Universal Grammar can be broken down into two main components: levels of representation and a system of constraints.

Lexicon

D-structure

Move-a

S-structure

Move-a

Stylistic and

Phonological

rules

PF LF

Standard

Theory

GB Theory

a. deep structure D- structure

b. surface

structure

S- structure

c. phonological

rules

Phonetic form or

PF rules

d. semantic

component

Logical form or

LF rules

P and P is a framework within generative linguistics in which the

syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with

general principles and specific parameters that for particular

languages are either turned on or off.

Central idea of P & P is that a person's syntactic knowledge can be

modeled with two formal mechanisms:

1.A finite set of fundamental principles . 2. A finite set of parameters that determine syntactic variability amongst

languages

Principles and Parameters is also known as

GB theory. Both refers to the

same school in the generative

tradition grammar of

phrase structure.

Within this framework goal of linguistics is to identify all the principles

and parameters that are

universal to human

language.

Some of the most important technical

innovations are:

1. The generalization of X-bar theory into the

bare phrase structure. Bottom-up sentence construction/ Top-

down….x-bar.

2. Eliminating the distinction between deep structure and surface structure.

3. The elimination of the notion of government.

4. The idea that syntactic derivations proceed by

clearly delineated stages called phases.

5. The inclusion of a single point of

interaction between syntax and the interfaces;

called Spell out.

Two Basic Theories Related To The

Economy:

Economy of derivation; movements (i.e.

Transformations) only occur in order to match

interpretable featureswith uninterpretable

features.

Economy of representation;

grammatical structures must exist for a purpose.

MP is a major line of inquiry

developed inside

generative grammar, Chomsky

presents MP as a program not as

a theory. For Chomsky there are minimalist questions and there answers

can form a theory. The one question which

plays most crucial role is; why language

has the properties it

has?

CONCULSION: Chomsky brought revolution in the world of linguistics; by

focusing on syntax. That’s the reason why he was voted as one of world’s top public intellectuals. From 1950 till now he is continuously working hard; bringing positive changes to his theories; facing criticism and moving ahead with his head held high. His works at first faced criticism, but later accepted by other linguists and explored further. His latest work Minimalist Program faced criticism too, but by his past records he proved that he takes them positively and keeps on striving for better results. That’s the reason why he is called father of modern linguistics.