General Principles of Transformational Grammar but Have Challenged Chomsky

7/31/2019 General Principles of Transformational Grammar but Have Challenged Chomsky

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general principlesof

transformationalgrammar but have

challengedChomsky's

conceptionof deep structure


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as a separate and

identifiable level

of syntactic

representation. Intheir opinion,

the basiccomponent of the

grammar shouldconsist of a set of


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words with an

assigned surface-

structure syntactic

analysis, therebeing no place in

the passage fromsemantic

representation tosurface structure


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identifiable as

Chomsky'sdeep

structure.

Chomsky himselfhas denied that

there is any realdifference

between thetwo points of view


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and has

maintained that the

issue is purely one

of notation. Thatthis argument

can be putforward by one

party to thecontroversy and


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rejected by the

other is perhaps a

sufficientindicatio

n of theuncertainty of the

evidence. Ofgreater importance

than the overtissues, in so far as


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they are clear, is

the fact that

linguists are now

studying muchmore intensively

than they haveinthe past the

complexities of theinterdependence of


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syntax, on the one

hand, and

semantics

andlogic, on theother. Whether it

will provepossible to handle

all thesecomplexities


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within

acomprehensive

generative

grammar remainsto be seen.The

role of thephonological

component of agenerative


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grammar of the

type outlined

byChomsky is to

assign a phonetic"interpretation" t

o the strings of words generated by

thesyntacticcomponent. These


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strings of words

are represented in

a phonological

notation(takenfrom the le

xicon) and havebeen provided w

ith a surface-structure analysi


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s by thetransform

ational rules

(seeFigure 7). The

phonological

elements out ofwhich the word

formsarecomposed are
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/CL/volk/SyntaxVorl/gifs/olingua007a4.gifhttp://www.ifi.unizh.ch/CL/volk/SyntaxVorl/gifs/olingua007a4.gif


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segments

consisting of what

are referred to

technically asdistinctive

features(followingthe usage of the

Prague school, seebelow


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The Prague

school

). For example, the

wordform "man,"

represented

phonologically, iscomposed of three

segments: the firstconsists of
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5003/79/25.html&%20#40126http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5003/79/25.html&%20#40126http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5003/79/25.html&%20#40126http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5003/79/25.html&%20#40126


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features [+

consonantal], [+

alveolar], [+

nasal], etc.(Thesefeatures should be

taken as purelyillustrative; there

is some doubtabout the


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definitive listof

distinctive

features.)

Although thesesegments may be

referred to as the"phonemes" /m/,

/a/,and /n/, theyshould not be


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identified

theoretically with

units of the kind

discussed in thesectiononPhonology

under

Structurallinguistics.
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5003/79/11.html&%20#40127http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5003/79/11.html&%20#40127


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They are closer to

what many

American

structurallinguistscalled

"morphophonemes" or the Prague

school linguistslabelled


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"archiphonemes,"

being unspecified

for any feature that

is contextuallyredundant or

predictable. Forinstance, thefirst

segment of thephonological


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representation of

"man" will not

include the feature

[+ voice];TRANSFORMATI

ONALGRAMMAR_Task.

rtf arranged byAch. Philip, S.Pd


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17

because nasal

consonants arealways

phoneticallyvoiced in this

position inEnglish, the


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feature[+ voice]

can be added to

the phonetic

specification by arule of the

phonologicalcomponent.One

further importantaspect of


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generative

phonology (i.e.,

phonology carriedout withinthe

framework of anintegrated

generativegrammar) should


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be mentioned: its

dependence

uponsyntax. Most

Americanstructural

phonologistsmade it a point of

principle that thephonemicanalysis


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of an utterance

should be carried

out without regard

to its grammaticalstructure.

This principle wascontroversial

among Americanlinguists and was


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not generally

accepted

outsideAmerica.

Not only has theprinciple been

rejected by thegenerative

grammarians, butthey


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havemade the pho

nological descript

ion of a language

much more dependent upon its

syntacticanalysisthan has any

other school of linguists. They


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have claimed, for

example, that the

phonological rules

that assigndifferent degrees

of stress to thevowels in English

wordsand phrases and a


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lter the quality of

the relatively unst

ressed vowel con

comitantly mustmakereference to

the derivedconstituent

structure ofsentences and not


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merely to the form

class of

theindividual

words or theplaces in

which the wordboundaries occur

TRANSFORMATIONAL


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GRAMMAR_Task.

rtf arranged byAch. Philip, S.Pd

18References

1.Boey, Lim

Kiat. (1975).


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An Introduction

to Linguistics for

The Language

Teacher.Singapore.

SingaporeUniversity

Press.2.Yule, George.


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The Study of

Language: An

Introduction.Sydney.

Cambridge

UniversityPress.3.Jacobs, Roderick

A. et al.


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General Principles of Transformational Grammar but Have Challenged Chomsky

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