Transformation Grammar

 Definition:

A theory of grammar that accounts for the constructions of a language by linguistic transformations and phrase structures.

Following the publication of Noam Chomsky's book Syntactic Structures in 1957, transformational grammar (also known as transformational-generative grammar) dominated the field of linguistics for the next three decades.

Observations:

• "The new linguistics, which began in 1957 with the publication of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures, deserves the label 'revolutionary.' After 1957, the study of grammar would no longer be limited to what is said and how it is interpreted. In fact, the word grammar itself took on a new meaning. The new linguistics defined grammar as our innate, subconscious ability to generate language, an internal system of rules that constitutes our human language capacity. The goal of the new linguistics was to describe this internal grammar.
  
  "Unlike the structuralists, whose goal was to examine the sentences we actually speak and to describe their systemic nature, the transformationalists wanted to unlock the secrets of language: to build a model of our internal rules, a model that would produce all of the grammatical--and no ungrammatical--sentences."
  (M. Kolln and R. Funk, Understanding English Grammar. Allyn and Bacon, 1998)



• "When it comes to syntax, [Noam] Chomsky is famous for proposing that beneath every sentence in the mind of a speaker is an invisible, inaudible deep structure, the interface to the mental lexicon. The deep structure is converted by transformational rules into a surface structure that corresponds more closely to what is pronounced and heard. The rationale is that certain constructions, if they were listed in the mind as surface structures, would have to be multiplied out in thousands of redundant variations that would have to have been learned one by one, whereas if the constructions were listed as deep structures, they would be simple, few in number, and economically learned."
  (Steven Pinker, Words and Rules. Basic Books, 1999)



• "[F]rom the word go, it has often been clear that Transformational Grammar was the best available theory of language structure, while lacking any clear grasp of what distinctive claims the theory made about human language."
  (Geoffrey Sampson, Empirical Linguistics. Continuum, 2001)



• Transformational Grammar and the Teaching of Writing
  "Though it is certainly true, as many writers have pointed out, that sentence-combining exercises existed before the advent of 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, sentence combining had enough momentum to sustain itself."
  (Ronald F. Lunsford, "Modern Grammar and Basic Writers." Research in Basic Writing: A Bibliographic Sourcebook, ed. by Michael G. Moran and Martin J. Jacobi. Greenwood Press, 1990)



• The Transformation of Transformational Grammar
  "Chomsky initially justified replacing phrase-structure grammar by arguing that it was awkward, complex, and incapable of providing adequate accounts of language. Transformational grammar offered a simple and elegant way to understand language, and it offered new insights into the underlying psychological mechanisms.
  
  "As the grammar matured, however, it lost its simplicity and much of its elegance. In addition, transformational grammar has been plagued by Chomsky's ambivalence and ambiguity regarding meaning. . . . Chomsky continued to tinker with transformational grammar, changing the theories and making it more abstract and in many respects more complex, until all but those with specialized training in linguistics were befuddled. . . .
  
  "[T]he tinkering failed to solve most of the problems because Chomsky refused to abandon the idea of deep structure, which is at the heart of T-G grammar but which also underlies nearly all of its problems. Such complaints have fueled the paradigm shift to cognitive grammar."
  (James D. Williams, The Teacher's Grammar Book. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999)



• "In the years since transformational grammar was formulated, it has gone through a number of changes. In the most recent version, Chomsky (1995) has eliminated many of the transformational rules in previous versions of the grammar and replaced them with broader rules, such as a rule that moves one constituent from one location to another. It was just this kind of rule on which the trace studies were based. Although newer versions of the theory differ in several respects from the original, at a deeper level they share the idea that syntactic structure is at the heart of our linguistic knowledge. However, this view has been controversial within linguistics."
  (David W. Carroll, Psychology of Language, 5th ed. Thomson Wadsworth, 2008)

Also Known As: transformational-generative grammar or T-G or TGG

 

source:  http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/trangrammterm.htm

Definition of Surface Structure

Definition:

In transformational grammar, the outward form of a sentence. In contrast to deep structure (an abstract representation of a sentence), surface structure corresponds to the version of a sentence that can be spoken and heard.

In transformational grammar, deep structures are generated by phrase-structure rules, and surface structures are derived from deep structures by a series of transformations. 

Examples and Observations:

• "The surface structure of a sentence is the final stage in the syntactic representation of a sentence, which provides the input to the phonological component of the grammar, and which thus most closely corresponds to the structure of the sentence we articulate and hear. . . . This two-level conception of grammatical structure is still widely held, though it has been much criticized in recent generative studies. An alternative conception is to relate surface structure directly to a semantic level of representation, bypassing deep structure altogether. . . . The term 'surface grammar' is sometimes used as an informal term for the superficial properties of the sentence."
  (David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 4th ed. Blackwell, 1997)



• "[T]he generative grammar of a language specifies an infinite set of structural descriptions, each of which contains a deep structure, a surface structure, a phonetic representation, a semantic representation, and other formal structures. The rules relating deep and surface structures--the so-called 'grammatical transformations'--have been investigated in some detail, and are fairly well understood. The rules that relate surface structures and phonetic representations are also reasonably well understood (though I do not want to imply that the matter is beyond dispute: far from it). It seems that both deep and surface structures enter into the determination of meaning. Deep structure provides the grammatical relations of predication, modification, and so on, that enter into the determination of meaning. On the other hand, it appears that matters of focus and presupposition, topic and comment, the scope of logical elements, and pronominal reference are determined, in part at least, by surface structure. The rules that relate syntactic structures to representations of meaning are not at all well understood. In fact, the notion of 'representation of meaning' or 'semantic representation' is itself highly controversial. It is not clear at all that it is possible to distinguish sharply between the contribution of grammar to the determination of meaning, and the contribution of so-called 'pragmatic considerations,' questions of fact and belief and context of utterance."
  (Noam Chomsky, lecture given in January 1969 at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. Rpt. in Language and Mind, 3rd ed. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006)



• "A deep structure is . . . the underlying form of a sentence, before rules like auxiliary inversion and wh-fronting apply. After all raisings apply, plus relevant morphological and phonological rules (as for forms of do), the result . . . is the linear, concrete, surface structure of sentences, ready to be given phonetic form."
  (Grover Hudson, Essential Introductory Linguistics. Blackwell, 2000)

source: http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/Surface-Structure-term.htm

theta roles

Theta roles are stored in a verb's theta grid. Grids typically come in two forms. The simplest and easiest to type is written as an ordered list between angle brackets. The argument associated with the external argument position (which typically ends up being the subject in active sentences) is written first and underlined. The theta roles are named by the most prominent thematic relation that they contain. In this notation, the theta grid for a verb such as give is . The other notation (see for example the textbook examples in (Haegeman 1994) and (Carnie 2006)) separates the theta roles into boxes, in which each column represents a theta role. The top row represents the names of the thematic relations contained in the theta role. In some work -- e.g., (Carnie 2006), this box also contains information about the category associated with the theta role. This mingles theta-theory with the notion of subcategorization. The bottom row gives a series of indexes which are associated with subscripted markers in the sentence itself which indicate that the NPs they are attached to have been assigned the theta role in question. The theta grid for give Agent source DP theme DP goal PP i j k When applied to the sentence [S[NP Susan]i gave [NP the food]j [PPto Reggie]k the indices mark that Susan is assigned the external theta role of agent/source, the food is assigned the theme role, and to Reggie is assigned the goal role. The theta criterion (or θ-criterion) is the formal device in Government and Binding Theory for enforcing the one to one match between arguments and theta roles. This acts as a filter on the D-structure of the sentence. If an argument fails to have the correct match between the number of arguments (typically NPs, PPs, or embedded clauses) and the number of theta roles, the sentence will be ungrammatical or unparseable. (Chomsky 1981, p. 36)'s formulation is: The theta criterion Each argument bears one and only one θ-role, and each θ-role is assigned to one and only one argument. Although it is often not explicitly stated, adjuncts are excluded from the theta criterion.

The Defenition of Deep Structure

Deep structure From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In linguistics, specifically in the study of syntax in the tradition of generative grammar (also known as transformational grammar), the deep structure of a linguistic expression is a theoretical construct that seeks to unify several related structures. For example, the sentences "Pat loves Chris" and "Chris is loved by Pat" mean roughly the same thing and use similar words. Some linguists, in particular Noam Chomsky, have tried to account for this similarity by positing that these two sentences are distinct surface forms that derive from a common deep structure. [1] The concept of deep structure plays an important role in transformational grammar. In early transformational syntax, deep structures are derivation trees of a context free language. These trees are then transformed by a sequence of tree rewriting operations ("transformations") into surface structures. The terminal yield of a surface structure tree, the surface form, is then predicted to be a grammatical sentence of the language being studied. The role and significance of deep structure changed a great deal as Chomsky developed his theories, and since the mid 1990s deep structure no longer features at all (see Transformational grammar). It is tempting to regard deep structures as representing meanings and surface structures as representing sentences that express those meanings, but this is not the concept of deep structure favoured by Chomsky. Rather, a sentence more closely corresponds to a deep structure paired with the surface structure derived from it, with an additional phonetic form obtained from processing of the surface structure. It has been variously suggested that the interpretation of a sentence is determined by its deep structure alone, by a combination of its deep and surface structures, or by some other level of representation altogether (logical form), as argued in 1977 by Chomsky's student Robert May. Chomsky may have tentatively entertained the first of these ideas in the early 1960s, but quickly moved away from it to the second, and finally the third. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the generative semantics movement put up a vigorous defence of the first option, sparking an acrimonious debate, the "Linguistics Wars".[2] The "surface" appeal of the deep structure concept soon led people from unrelated fields (architecture, music, politics, and even ritual studies) to use the term to express various concepts in their own work. In common usage, the term is often used as a synonym for universal grammar—the constraints which Chomsky claims govern the overall forms of linguistic expression available to the human species. This is probably due to the importance of deep structure in Chomsky's earlier work on universal grammar, though his concept of universal grammar is logically independent of any particular theoretical construct, including deep structure. According to Middleton (1990), Schenkerian analysis of music corresponds to the Chomskyan notion of deep structure, applying to a two-level generative structure for melody, harmony, and rhythm, of which the analysis by Lee (1985) of rhythmical structure is an instance General references Noam Chomsky (1957). Syntactic Structures. Mouton. Noam Chomsky (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press. Noam Chomsky (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Mouton. Noam Chomsky (1986). Barriers. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs. MIT Press. C. S. Lee (1985). "The rhythmic interpretation of simple musical sequences: towards a perceptual model", in P. Howell, I. Cross and R. West (eds.), Musical Structure and Cognition (Academic Press), pp. 53–69. Richard Middleton (1990). Studying Popular Music. Open University Press. Samovar, L, & Porter, R (August 2003). Communication between Culures .Wadsworth Publishing. Definition: In transformational grammar, the underlying syntactic structure (or level) of a sentence. In contrast to surface structure (the outward form of a sentence), deep structure is an abstract representation that identifies the ways a sentence can be analyzed and interpreted. In transformational grammar, deep structures are generated by phrase-structure rules, and surface structures are derived from deep structures by a series of transformations. Examples and Observations: "[Noam] Chomsky had identified a basic grammatical structure in Syntactic Structures [1957] that he referred to as kernel sentences. Reflecting mentalese, kernel sentences were where words and meaning first appeared in the complex cognitive process that resulted in an utterance. In [Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965], Chomsky abandoned the notion of kernel sentences and identified the underlying constituents of sentences as deep structure. The deep structure was versatile insofar as it accounted for meaning and provided the basis for transformations that turned deep structure into surface structure, which represented what we actually hear or read. Transformation rules, therefore, connected deep structure and surface structure, meaning and syntax." (James D. Williams, The Teacher's Grammar Book. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999) "The remarkable first chapter of Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) set the agenda for everything that has happened in generative linguistics since. Three theoretical pillars support the enterprise: mentalism, combinatoriality, and acquisition. . . . "A fourth major point of Aspects, and the one that attracted most attention from the wider public, concerned the notion of Deep Structure. A basic claim of the 1965 version of generative grammar was that in addition to the surface form of sentences (the form we hear), there is another level of syntactic structure, called Deep Structure, which expresses underlying syntactic regularities of sentences. For instance, a passive sentence like (1a) was claimed to have a Deep Structure in which the noun phrases are in the order of the corresponding active (1b): (1a) The bear was chased by the lion. (1b) The lion chased the bear. Similarly, a question such as (2a) was claimed to have a Deep Structure closely resembling that of the corresponding declarative (2b): (2a) Which martini did Harry drink? (2b) Harry drank that martini. . . . Following a hypothesis first proposed by Katz and Postal (1964), Aspects made the striking claim that the relevant level of syntax for determining meaning is Deep Structure. "In its weakest version, this claim was only that regularities of meaning are most directly encoded in Deep Structure, and this can be seen in (1) and (2). However, the claim was sometimes taken to imply much more: that Deep Structure is meaning, an interpretation that Chomsky did not at first discourage. And this was the part of generative linguistics that got everyone really excited--for if the techniques of transformational grammar could lead us to meaning, we would be in a position to uncover the nature of human thought. . . . "When the dust of the ensuing 'linguistic wars' cleared around 1973 . . ., Chomsky had won (as usual)--but with a twist: he no longer claimed that Deep Structure was the sole level that determines meaning (Chomsky 1972). Then, with the battle over, he turned his attention, not to meaning, but to relatively technical constraints on movement transformations (e.g. Chomsky 1973, 1977)." (Ray Jackendoff, Language, Consciousness, Culture: Essays on Mental Structure. MIT Press, 2007) transformational grammar (TG) Definition: A theory of grammar that accounts for the constructions of a language by linguistic transformations and phrase structures. Following the publication of Noam Chomsky's book Syntactic Structures in 1957, transformational grammar (also known as transformational-generative grammar) dominated the field of linguistics for the next three decades. Observations: "The new linguistics, which began in 1957 with the publication of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures, deserves the label 'revolutionary.' After 1957, the study of grammar would no longer be limited to what is said and how it is interpreted. In fact, the word grammar itself took on a new meaning. The new linguistics defined grammar as our innate, subconscious ability to generate language, an internal system of rules that constitutes our human language capacity. The goal of the new linguistics was to describe this internal grammar. "Unlike the structuralists, whose goal was to examine the sentences we actually speak and to describe their systemic nature, the transformationalists wanted to unlock the secrets of language: to build a model of our internal rules, a model that would produce all of the grammatical--and no ungrammatical--sentences." (M. Kolln and R. Funk, Understanding English Grammar. Allyn and Bacon, 1998) "When it comes to syntax, [Noam] Chomsky is famous for proposing that beneath every sentence in the mind of a speaker is an invisible, inaudible deep structure, the interface to the mental lexicon. The deep structure is converted by transformational rules into a surface structure that corresponds more closely to what is pronounced and heard. The rationale is that certain constructions, if they were listed in the mind as surface structures, would have to be multiplied out in thousands of redundant variations that would have to have been learned one by one, whereas if the constructions were listed as deep structures, they would be simple, few in number, and economically learned." (Steven Pinker, Words and Rules. Basic Books, 1999) "[F]rom the word go, it has often been clear that Transformational Grammar was the best available theory of language structure, while lacking any clear grasp of what distinctive claims the theory made about human language." (Geoffrey Sampson, Empirical Linguistics. Continuum, 2001) Transformational Grammar and the Teaching of Writing "Though it is certainly true, as many writers have pointed out, that sentence-combining exercises existed before the advent of 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, sentence combining had enough momentum to sustain itself." (Ronald F. Lunsford, "Modern Grammar and Basic Writers." Research in Basic Writing: A Bibliographic Sourcebook, ed. by Michael G. Moran and Martin J. Jacobi. Greenwood Press, 1990) The Transformation of Transformational Grammar "Chomsky initially justified replacing phrase-structure grammar by arguing that it was awkward, complex, and incapable of providing adequate accounts of language. Transformational grammar offered a simple and elegant way to understand language, and it offered new insights into the underlying psychological mechanisms. "As the grammar matured, however, it lost its simplicity and much of its elegance. In addition, transformational grammar has been plagued by Chomsky's ambivalence and ambiguity regarding meaning. . . . Chomsky continued to tinker with transformational grammar, changing the theories and making it more abstract and in many respects more complex, until all but those with specialized training in linguistics were befuddled. . . . "[T]he tinkering failed to solve most of the problems because Chomsky refused to abandon the idea of deep structure, which is at the heart of T-G grammar but which also underlies nearly all of its problems. Such complaints have fueled the paradigm shift to cognitive grammar." (James D. Williams, The Teacher's Grammar Book. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999) "In the years since transformational grammar was formulated, it has gone through a number of changes. In the most recent version, Chomsky (1995) has eliminated many of the transformational rules in previous versions of the grammar and replaced them with broader rules, such as a rule that moves one constituent from one location to another. It was just this kind of rule on which the trace studies were based. Although newer versions of the theory differ in several respects from the original, at a deeper level they share the idea that syntactic structure is at the heart of our linguistic knowledge. However, this view has been controversial within linguistics." (David W. Carroll, Psychology of Language, 5th ed. Thomson Wadsworth, 2008)