The Beauty of Deep Structure

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-64
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Technical Level ◽  
Educational Funding ◽  
Transformational Grammar ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Cognitive Revolution

This chapter charts the rise of Noam Chomsky’s Transformational-Generative Grammar, from its cornerstone role in the cognitive revolution up to its widely heralded realization in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. That realization featured the development of an evocative concept, Deep Structure, a brilliant nexus of meaning and structure that integrates seamlessly with Chomsky’s companion idea, Universal Grammar, the notion that all languages share a critical, genetically encoded core. At a technical level, Deep Structure concentrated meaning because of the Katz-Postal Principle, stipulating that transformations cannot change meaning. Transformations rearrange structure while keeping meaning stable. The appeal of Deep Structure and Universal Grammar helped Transformational Grammar propagate rapidly into language classrooms, literary studies, stylistics, and computer science, gave massive impetus to the emergence of psycholinguistics, attracted substantial military and educational funding, and featured prominently in Chomsky’s meteoric intellectual stardom.

Generative Semantics 1: The Model

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-106
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Natural Extension ◽  
Homogeneous System ◽  
Transformational Grammar

This chapter follows the emergence of Generative Semantics from the Transformational Grammar developments codified in Noam Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. It was on George Lakoff’s mind from before Aspects but it only achieved the rhetorical, sociological, and theoretical conditions to thrive with that codification. Generative Semantics looked like a natural extension of Transformational Grammar, rooting itself in the semantic subsoil of Deep Structure and aligning closely with Universal Grammar. But that subsoil quickly proved to be less fertile than it had seemed, so Generative Semantics imported concepts from logic and philosophy of language; and Universal Grammar proved less substantial than it had seemed, so Generative Semantics solidified it with a Universal Base hypothesis. The resulting model was an extraordinarily elegant theory in which language passed through a homogeneous system of rules from thought and meaning to structure and expression, but it contained multiple seeds, both attitudinal and technical, of a challenge to Chomsky’s work.

scholarly journals The Linguistic Philosophy of Noam Chomsky

2014 ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Binoy Barman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Human Child ◽  
Mental Exercise ◽  
Linguistic Philosophy

Noam Chomsky, one of the most famous linguists of the twentieth century, based his linguistic works on certain philosophical doctrines. His main contribution to linguistics is Transformational Generative Grammar, which is founded on mentalist philosophy. He opposes the behaviourist psychology in favour of innatism for explaining the acquisition of language. He claims that it becomes possible for human child to learn a language for the linguistic faculty with which the child is born, and that the use of language for an adult is mostly a mental exercise. His ideas brought about a revolution in linguistics, dubbed as Chomskyan Revolution. According to him, the part of language which is innate to human being would be called Universal Grammar. His philosophy holds a strong propensity to rationalism in search of a cognitive foundation. His theory is a continuation of analytic philosophy, which puts language in the centre of philosophical investigation. He would also be identified as an essentialist. This paper considers various aspects of Chomsky’s linguistic philosophy with necessary elaborations.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/pp.v51i1-2.17681

The Vicissitudes of War

2021 ◽  
pp. 145-200
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Deep Structure ◽  
Transformational Grammar

This chapter charts the battles around the central notions of the Generative/Interpretive Semantics dispute: the existence of Deep Structure (rejected by Generative Semantics, redefined by Interpretive Semantics), the Katz-Postal Principle (rejected by both, in different ways), the notion of grammaticality (distended by Generative Semantics into contingencies and gradations, then rejected; retained by Interpretive Semantics). It also examines the rhetorical maneuvers around George Lakoff’s proposal of global rules (embraced as unfortunately inevitable by Generative Semantics, terminologically rejected but methodologically embraced by Interpretive Semantics). The chapter also documents some of the direct firefights and skirmishes across the Transformational Grammar battlefield, which left Generative Semantics in a position of clear ascendancy.

Computation, Interpretation, and Mediation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kockelman
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Anthropology ◽  
Linguistic Relativity ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Language Recognition ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Universal Turing Machine ◽  
Mathematical Abstraction

The chapter shows the fundamental importance of ideas from computer science to the concerns of linguistic anthropology (and to the concerns of culture-rich and context-sensitive approaches to communication more generally). It reviews some of the key concepts and claims of computer science (language, recognition, automaton, Universal Turing Machine, and so forth). It argues that the sieve, as both a physical device and an analytic concept, is of fundamental importance not just to anthropology, but also to linguistics, biology, philosophy, and critical theory. And it argues that computers, as both engineered and imagined, are essentially text-generated and text-generating sieves. In relating computer science to linguistic anthropology, this chapter also attempts to build bridges between long-standing rivals: face to face interaction and mathematical abstraction, linguistic relativity and universal grammar, mediators and intermediaries.

Andrés Bello

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-348
Author(s):  
Enrique Obediente ◽  
Francesco D’Introno
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Symbolic System ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Independent System ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Grammatical Analysis ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Andres Bello

Summary In this article we will analyze two aspects of Andrés Bello’s (1781–1865) grammatical thought: its relation to the English empiricists and its similarity with generative grammar. His relation to the English empiricists is due to the fact that Bello spent 19 years in London, where he became familiar with the work of Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Reid. In fact his philosophical work, Filosofía del entendimiento, sounds like some of those philosophers’ essays. From the empiricists Bello derives the idea that there is no innate universal grammar with rules present in all languages, as well as his concept of language as an independent system of arbitrary and conventional signs. From Reid he derived his interpretation of the evolution of the language: signs start as ‘natural’ (i.e., they allow humans to communicate without any particular language), and then they become ‘artificial’, i.e., arbitrary and conventional, particular to each grammatical system. Because of his philosophical position, Bello has been compared to structuralist linguists. Here we will show that some of Bello’s grammatical thoughts can be compared with those of Chomsky. The reason for this is that in his grammatical analysis Bello uses concepts reminiscent of generative grammar. For example, Bello proposes the notion of an ‘latent proposition’ similar to that of ‘deep sttaicture’. And when he analyzes for example relative clauses and elliptical constructions, he uses concepts that are familiar to generative grammarians. In other words, the paper tries to show that methodologically and analytically Bello shares some concepts present in Chomsky’s linguistic theory. It also shows differences between Bello and Chomsky, and concludes by pointing out that the major difference between the two linguists is that Bello assumes language can be learned through a symbolic system, while Chomsky assumes language to be innate and independent of other cognitive systemsof the mind.

English imperative sentences

1966 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. Thorne
Keyword(s):  
Deep Structure ◽  
Transformational Grammar ◽  
Selectional Restrictions ◽  
General Thesis

The fullest account of English imperative sentences considered in the context of a transformational grammar is contained in Katz & Postal (1964: 74–9). Their account forms part of a discussion of the general thesis that transformations do not affect the meaning of sentences, and of the proposal that follows as a natural corollary of this thesis, that the set of optional singulary transformations be restricted to those usually referred to as ‘stylistic’ transformations. Instead of treating imperative sentences as derived from declarative kernels, therefore, they postulate the occurrence of an imperative morpheme (Imp) in the underlying phrase-markers of imperative sentences. This, they assume, marks these structures as the domain of the imperative transformations and imposes certain selectional restrictions upon them. The notion of the Imp morpheme, which is the most original and most important part of Katz and Postal's analysis of imperative sentences, is adopted in this paper and the occurrence of the morpheme in the deep-structure of all imperative sentences is assumed throughout it. In the rest of their analysis, however, Katz and Postal draw upon more traditional ideas, one of which is disputable.

scholarly journals Chomsky's Contribution to Linguistics: A Review

2018 ◽  
Vol I (I) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Sonia Touqir ◽  
Amna Mushtaq ◽  
Touqir Nasir
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Acquisition Process ◽  
Principles And Parameters

This review seeks to highlight Chomsky's major contributions to the field of linguistics. He changed linguists' conception about the nature of language from an externalized to internalized approach. This shift also resulted in the language being thought of as a cognitive phenomenon rather than as a set of structures to be analyzed for their correctness or incorrectness to prove his stance introduced the concept of language faculty, its workings, Universal Grammar, Principles and Parameters, and Transformational and Generative Grammar. The TGG also significantly overhauled the existent phrase structure rules. These rules were brought to follow binarity principles that dictated that a node cannot have less than or more than two branches. Besides the concept of Universal Grammar, along with its principles and parameters, Chomsky simplified how the language acquisition process can be understood: instead of learning hundreds of rules, the human mind has to install a handful of principles and parameters.

scholarly journals A Brief Account of the Base Component of Transformational Generative Grammar

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed M. S. Alduais
Keyword(s):  
Surface Structure ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Base Component ◽  
Recent Modification

Purpose: To briefly introduce base component of transformational generative grammar (TGG). Method: The study is mainly descriptive where previous and related studies are reviewed and presented to reach a view about the base component of TGG. Results: Base component serves as input to two basic elements of language which are semantic rules and deep structure. Semantic rules give semantic representation. Deep structure leads to transformational rules or transformations which again lead to surface structure. Conclusions: Base component has been introduced and modified in different stages under standard theory (ST) and then it has been modified to extended standard theory (EST). Later on and as a recent modification of this theory, it has been introduced in terms of what is known in nowadays as revised extended standard theory (REST).

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