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Lecture 13
Theme: The origin of Transformational grammar.
a) International communications and state of linguistics.
b) The young child’s speech problem.
c) The previously existing grammars.
1. The linear grammar.
2. The Immediate Constituent grammar (1C grammar, Phrase grammar),
a) the 1C model as a means of producing kernel sentences.
a) The great advances in transportation and communication (radio, itervision) made by man have bought to light value of world languages.
In the previous centures it was reasonable and preper to study languages exclusively for the purpose of reading their literatures.
Now languages are studied for communication with native speakers of these languages.
But the speed and frequency of international communication have outstripped the speed of
teaching and learning languages. There appeared a great demand for efficient methods of teaching. It became clear that a systematic scientific investigation is needed to advance the teaching of languages. Linguistics was given the Task of working out an efficient workable theory to be applied to practical problems such as information data (deita-данные, факты) processing, electronic machine translation patterning, oural comprehension of speech which seem to have direct application to classroom language teaching.
The linguistic who were given this important task had first to solve some fundamental problems, such as: 1) Why the young child has the ability to gain in a short time and with no special tuition, a command of his native language;
2) Why peoples speak their native languages however complex they may be.
The solving of these puzzles was believed to help create a linguistic theory suitable for the practical needs of the 20th century.
Before beginning to work on this theory the linguistics of our time were to revise the previously existing linguistic theories with the purpose of establishing their fitness for the practical application. The practical application was understood in the theories were fit to “generate” (build up) sentences and to generate all the system of a language.
a) Linguistics and psychologists have been puzzling over the phenomenon of the young child’s ability to learn his native language at an early age and with no tuition. If their homes are bilingual, they learn two languages.
When we look at this immense complicity of language we wonder how anyone can be bright enough or have a powerful enough memory to learn a language (through not all of its vocabulary) and they achieve this without conscious study at a very early age.
The contemporary American scientist Paul Roberts wrote, “If there is any explanation at all, it must be that language structure is not really as complicated as it looks at first. There must be some system to it simple enough to be grasped and held by any human mind, however ordinary”1.
We know that even illiterate people who can neither read nor write speak their native
language freely, have the command of all its grammar, although their vocabulary may be limited.
The linguistic task is to seek out this simple system and to describe it in the shortest and simplest way possible.
This is how the problem of the young child’s ability of leaning his native language is understood. This understanding explain the problem why peoples speak their native languages,
natural languages, which may seem tremendously complicated if you have not grasped their system.
Modern linguistic scientist and language teachers believe that the system of any language contains a rather small number of “Kernel” (basic) sentences and other linguistic forms (such as morphemes and phonemes), and all the other linguistic forms, sentences of different structure,
are derived or generated from this kernel elements by certain rules which are not very numerous or difficult.
It is the simplicity and regularity of the structure of any language that makes it possible for the child to grasp it and for human communities to speak it.
This understanding of the system of any language, of its grammar (both terms are used:
“The system of a language “, “The grammar of a language”) is the main assumption of the Transpormational grammar. The Transpormational grammar a new linguistic theory, appeared in
the fifties of the 20th century.
The first propounders of the Transpormational grammar were Zellig S.Harris and Noam Chomsky. These grammarians belonged to the Descriptive linguistics. Thus we may say that the Transpormational grammar was born inside the Descriptive linguistic trend.
a) The Previously Existing grammars/
There were two grammar theories which sought to teach how a sentence is generated. These are the Linear grammar and the Immediate Constituent grammar (1C grammar, phrase grammar).
The Linear theory taught that a sentence is generated on a very simple model consisting of three elements: S+V+O. This grammar may be traced in the Essentials of English grammar by Otto Jespersen.
This model is quite familiar to the English teachers who begin their first lessons explaining that in the English sentence subject stands first, then it is followed by a verb (or predicated) and then by an object.
The Linear theory (or model) is rather trivial as it has no power to generate different sentence structures but the simplest.
It can’t even do this properly as it does not indicate the groupings of the sentence. It may be easy to fill in the world “John” in the S-position, in the world “took” in the V-position, but it will be wrong to fill in “book” in the O-position, because an NP, not a word must stand here, e.g. “a book”, or ”the book” or “my book”. If a sentence is complex, the Linear theory will fail to construct it although the sentence has but three elements: s-v-o and their groups of the constituents.
It will be extremely difficult to each to build up the sentence like: “A dirtily clad old man with a long white beard jumped up suddenly an fell upon the younger man who was standing near the door which…”, on the Linear model because it does not include the groupings. Besides, passive constructions, exclamatory sentences, negative or interrogative, will all need other modes.
The 1C model is stronger than the first, because it shows rigid rules for the generating of the phrases, and the order of the sentence generating (including each phrases).
The 1C grammar says that each linguistic form is to be divided into two immediate constituents. Using this principle of the division, we may work out rigid rules for generating (building up) sentence.
The set of rules showing how a sentence is generated are called “rewrite rules” or “rewriting rules”. Below are the representative rewrite rules for the sentence “The man hit the ball”. Each rule is numbered and sign of the arrow means “rewrite”.
a) Sentence ->NP+VP.
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