Transformational generative grammar

Transformational grammar is an expression designating the type of generative grammar that uses transformational rules or other mechanisms to represent constituent displacement and other natural language phenomena. In particular, the term designates almost exclusively those theories that have been developed in the Chomskian tradition. This term is usually synonymous with the more specific Transformational Generative Grammar.

Generation of grammatical sentences

A generative grammar, in the sense that Noam Chomsky uses the term, is a system of rules formalized with mathematical precision that, without the need for information from outside the system, generates the grammatical sentences of the language that it describes or characterizes and assigns. to each sentence a structural description or grammatical analysis. All the concepts disclosed in this definition of "generative" They will be explained and exemplified in this section. Generative grammars are of two types: this article is primarily concerned with the type known as transformational (or simply transformational) generative grammars. Transformational grammar was pioneered by Zellig S. Harris in the development of work on what he called discourse analysis (the formal analysis of the structure of the continuous text). It was perfected by Chomsky, who also gave it a different theoretical basis.

Harris Grammar

Harris distinguished in the set of grammatical sentences of a given language two complementary subsets: nuclear sentences (kernel sentences) and non-nuclear sentences (nonkernel sentences).

Chomskian Grammar

Chomsky's system of transformational grammar, although developed on the basis of Harris's work, differs from it in several aspects such as that of but

Contextualization of Chomskian generativist theory

The nativist model emerged in the 1950s as a response to empiricism, advocating mainly the human capacity for language acquisition. This idea comes from Chomsky's reflection on the speed with which children acquire their mother tongue, inferring that the reason for this, instead of being learning, is really due to an innate human mechanism. He proposed several works that projected the two main ideas of his: Generative Grammar and Transformational Grammar. In 1957 he published his book "Syntactic Structures", which generated much debate and discussion for being able to explain only certain aspects of language, such as syntax, leaving out others such as phonology, morphology and semantics. His first model was the “First Generative Grammar”, which included concepts such as the “Standard Theory” or the “Aspect Model”, and later the “Extended Standard Theory”. This was in force from the mid-50s to the 80s. Later, it became the "Theory of Principles and Parameters" or "Reaction and Ligament", which includes the "minimalist program" and an approach naturalist, and whose model is still valid to this day. In this way, Generative Grammar has been changing and developing over time.

In turn, Chomsky's generativist theory revolutionized the conception of language until the 20th century. Although Ferdinand de Saussure's structuralism laid the foundations for the study of language as a scientific object, it was not until the publication of Noam Chomsky's “Syntactic Structures” in 1957 that a true scientific revolution occurred. Chomskian generativism caused a shift from the study of particular languages of structuralism to that of language capacity; of a psychological and universal nature. In turn, he assumed the hypothetical-deductive method, generating an abysmal change between this theory and the previous one.

Deep structure and surface structure

During the 1950s and 1960s, XX century, Noam Chomsky developed the concept that each sentence has two distinct levels of representation: a Deep Structure and a Surface Structure. The deep structure was a direct representation of the semantic information of the sentence, and was associated with the surface structure (the one that tends to reproduce the phonological form of the sentence) through transformations. There is a widespread misconception that the deep structure was assumed to be identical in all natural languages (to create the Universal Grammar), however that was not exactly what Chomsky suggested. Chomsky thought that there should be considerable similarities between the deep structure of different languages, and that these structures would reveal properties common to all languages that were hidden under the surface structure. It is arguable that the motivation for introducing the transformations was simply to make grammars more (mathematically) powerful, rather than to explain the origin of syntactic variations between languages. Although, for Chomsky, the ability of a grammatical theory to generalize in its analysis of different languages is essential, some key works at the beginning of Transformational Grammar (for example, Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax 1965) emphasize the role that transformations play in gaining the necessary level of mathematical power in the syntactic component of a grammar, which, in their opinion, the structuralist grammars popular at the time did not offer. Chomsky also emphasizes the importance of the devices provided by modern formal mathematics for the development of a grammatical theory.

Basics

Although transformations continue to be important to current theories advocated by Chomsky, he no longer advocates the original idea of deep and surface structures. Initially, two additional levels of representation were introduced: the Logical Form (LF) and the Phonetic Form (PF); later, in the 1990s, Chomsky introduced a new study program known as minimalism, in which Deep Structure and Surface Structure no longer fit, while PF and LF remained the only levels of representation.

Another factor that makes it even more difficult to understand the development of Chomsky's theories is the fact that the meaning of Deep Structure and Surface Structure has varied over time. During the 1970s, both were referred to simply as D-Structure and S-structure. The meaning of D-structure drifted further and further away from the initial given to Deep Structure during the 1960s. Specifically, the idea that the meaning of a sentence depended on the Deep Structure ceased to make sense when LF took its place. In this regard, it is convenient to refer to Chomsky's texts in his youth.

Innate linguistic knowledge

Terms such as "transformation" they may give the impression that transformational generative grammar theories are meant to model the processes through which the human mind constructs and understands sentences. Chomsky believes that this is not the case: generative grammar models only the knowledge that underlies the human ability to speak and understand. One of Chomski's main ideas is that most of this knowledge is innate and that all languages are composed from a series of principles, which only vary in certain parameters (and of course, the vocabulary). Therefore, a baby may have high expectations about the structure of language in general, and only need to deduce the values of certain parameters for the language(s) she is learning. Chomsky was not the first to suggest that all languages share certain aspects; he cites philosophers who had postulated the same ideas several centuries ago (for example: Plato, Descartes or Humboldt), ideas that had not yet been integrated into a scientific project. Chomsky formulated a scientific theory of innateness, in response to the then dominant model (behaviorism). Additionally, he designed a set of quite sophisticated technical proposals in relation to the structure of language and, in addition, he elaborated fundamental criteria about how the quality of a Theory of Grammar should be evaluated.

Chomsky even goes so far as to say that babies do not need to learn constructions that are specific to each language. And the reason for this statement is that all languages seem to follow the same pattern of rules, which is known as Universal Grammar. But the effect of these rules and the interaction between them can vary enormously depending on the values of certain universal linguistic parameters (language use). This resounding premise is one of the aspects in which Transformational Grammar differs from most schools.

Grammatical Theories

During the 1960s, Chomsky introduced two central ideas for the construction and evaluation of grammatical theories. The first was the distinction between linguistic competence and performance. Chomsky refers to the evidence that people, when we speak in everyday life, often make mistakes (for example, starting a sentence and leaving it halfway). These errors in linguistic use are irrelevant for the study of linguistic competence, since competence is the knowledge that allows human beings to construct and understand sentences.

The second idea that Chomsky introduced was related to the evaluation of grammatical theories. Chomsky distinguishes between those that achieve descriptive adequacy and those that go further and achieve explanatory adequacy. Descriptive ones define the (infinite) set of grammatical sentences in a particular language, whereas a grammar that achieves explanatory adequacy penetrates the universal properties of language that result from the innate linguistic structures found in the human mind. Therefore, if a grammar is to be explanatory adequacy, it must be able to explain the nuances of different languages as relatively small variations on universal language patterns. Chomsky said that, although linguists are still far from achieving grammars of descriptive adequacy, to progress in said grammatical description it is essential to set explanatory adequacy as a goal. In other words, the actual nuances of individual languages can only be known through the comparative study of a large number of languages.

"I-language" and "E-language"

In the 1980s, Chomsky proposed to distinguish between I-Language and E-Language. Distinction similar, but not identical to that of competence and use of the language. The language-I in reference to the internal language, is the object of study of the syntactic theory, it is the mental representation of the linguistic knowledge that a native speaker of a language has, and it is, therefore, a mental aspect. From this perspective, almost all linguistics would be a branch of psychology. E-Language refers to many other notions of what language is, for example: language as a body of knowledge or behavioral habits shared by a community. Chomsky argues that such notions of what language is are not useful for the study of innate knowledge of language, such as competence. Even still being able to be sensible, intuitive and useful in other areas of study. Competence can only be studied if language is treated as a mental object.

Grammaticality

Chomsky contradicted the hegemonic criteria during the XX century, suggesting that the notions grammatical and ungrammatical could be defined in a useful and meaningful way. A radical behavioral linguist would say that language can be studied only with recordings or transcripts of actual conversations. The role of the linguist would focus on the search for aspects through the analysis of said conversation, but he should not propose hypotheses about why these aspects exist, nor should he label said expressions as & # 34; grammatical & # 34; or "ungrammatical". Chomsky argues that the intuition of a native speaker is enough to define the grammaticality of a sentence. In other words, if a native Spanish speaker finds it difficult or impossible to understand a certain sequence of words in Spanish, that sequence of words can be said to be ungrammatical. This concept freed many linguists from studying the language through corpora. of speech, since now the study through ideal sentences was considered feasible. Without this change in the philosophy of linguistic study, the construction of generative grammars would have been practically impossible, since it is often the obscure and rarely used aspects of a language that give key information to determine its structure, and such examples are very difficult. to find in the daily use of the language.

Minimalism

The minimalist program bears no relation to the minimalist cultural and artistic movement.

A significant part of the current study of transformational grammar is inspired by Chomsky's minimalist program, described in his book The Minimalist Program (1995). The new direction of study involves the derivation economics and the representation economics that began to be significant in the 1990s, but was still a rather peripheral aspect of the theory of Transformational Generative Grammar. Derivation economics is a principle that transformations only occur when they are absolutely necessary to relate interpretive features to non-interpretive features. An example of an interpretive feature is the inflection in regular Spanish nouns to build the plural. dogs. The word dogs can only be used to refer to several dogs, never in reference to just one. In this way, inflection contributes to the meaning of the word, making it interpretive. When the information that appears in the verbal inflection repeats information that has already been said by the subject, then that information is considered non-interpretive. The economy of representation is the principle that grammatical structures must have a reason why they are used and exist. For example, the structure of a sentence should not be longer or more complex than required to cover grammatical needs (this principle does not apply in all cases). The description of both concepts made in this article is quite vague, in fact, the precise formulation of these principles is a task of current controversy among different linguists.

An additional aspect of minimalist thinking is the idea that derivation of syntactic structures should be uniform, which means that syntactic rules should not be applied arbitrarily in a derivation process. For this reason, the deep structure and the surface structure are not referents in the minimalist study of syntactic theory.

Mathematical representation

Regarding the mathematical study of grammar, a significant feature of transformational grammars is that they are more powerful than context-free grammars. This idea was formulated by Noam Chomsky in Chomsky's Hierarchy. Currently there seems to be a consensus that it is impossible to achieve the description of natural languages through the use of context-free grammars (at least, if said description is based on Chomskian criteria).

Transformations

Some rules of Transformational Generative Grammar are quite simple, such as:

• Nucleus at the beginning of the syntagma
  • I ate an apple. verbal syntagma
  • "destruction of the city"
  • "in the soil"

• core at the end of the sintagma.
  • "valuely I'll go."verbal syntagma
  • "the great and white house"Normal syntagma

Most languages tend to favor these structures, although there are exceptions. Japanese is a language that tends to place the syntactic head at the end of the phrase, while English is a language that usually places the head at the beginning of the phrase. Few languages follow the structural example of Japanese.

While Chomsky and many other linguists have abandoned many aspects of Transformational Generative Grammar, this theory continues to be applied in syntactic analysis and in the study of language acquisition during childhood.

The main nativist arguments

Chomsky states that learning a language is hampered mainly by insufficient stimulus. He is based on the argument that language is highly creative and that, consequently, previously unheard sentences can be generated, because with a limited number of linguistic elements infinite sentences can be created. According to the generativist, this process could not be carried out through imitation or association (defended by behaviorism), so it necessarily comes from an innate property. Thus, the stimuli would help children to acquire the mother tongue, but we could not deduce it only through these factors, rather the abstract principles of language are located in the innate Faculty of Language of human beings, this being what makes acquisition possible. of that language.

According to Chomsky, the Faculty of Language is a genetically transmitted mental and linguistic component that allows children to quickly acquire a complex linguistic system, this being the main idea of his theory of language. In fact, he affirms that without this Faculty of Language it would not be possible to learn a mother tongue in such a short time, generate and understand new sentences or conceive of the relationships between the different words in a sentence.

In conclusion, the objective of Chomsky's linguistic study is the discovery of those mechanisms of the Faculty of Language that enable the speaker of a language to generate and understand its grammatical structures; for that reason his theory is known as Generative Grammar or Universal Grammar.

Poverty of Stimulus Problem or Plato's Problem

Plato wonders: “How is it possible that a child speaker has the ability to internalize and acquire a particular language naturally, taking into account that the data he acquires from his environment are poor, few and not systematic, but nevertheless, in a similar period of time, all children acquire the complexity of knowing a language and in this way can understand and produce it?

In view of this, Chomsky responds that it is impossible for a child to learn his mother tongue in such a short time and with so few elements provided by his linguistic community, therefore, what allows him to acquire that language is his Innate Language Faculty, which all humans possess biologically and genetically. It is a complex system located in our mind-brain that has the innate condition because we are born with it, so it is the initial state of the speaker's mind. When it begins to receive input from the environment, it obtains information about particular rules, so that a linguistic competence is established and Language I (Internal, Individual, Indivisible) is acquired.

Language Creativity Problem or Descartes Problem

Descartes wonders: “Why are we capable of generating novel expressions that we have not necessarily known before?”

Chomsky counters that the speaker's ability to create those new sentences of a particular language without having previously heard them cannot be due to experience, but the reason for it is his Active Mechanism, which is found in the mind-brain of humans, allows them to deduce them and, ultimately, it is the finite set of elements that allows you to generate infinite sentences. This is possible thanks to the creative capacity of the speaker in the use of his language. In fact, although Chomsky's Generative Grammar has been transformed over time, what has remained constant is the characteristic of language creativity, so that according to him, the function of the linguist is to seek explanations about the ability of language to express infinite thoughts from a minimum of means.

Response to certain criticisms

The main criticism of Chomsky's generative theory is a misinterpretation based on the belief that the author denies the need for experience when learning a language. Given this, Chomsky responds that experience is indeed required for learning a language, given that unless there are certain linguistic stimuli or input from some natural language, innate principles do not allow the development of that Execution or Language E, and therefore Therefore, the language could not be learned.

Another problem arises from Chomsky's postulation that language is a mental organ formed by certain linguistic principles and parameters and that its development is similar to that of other innate biological systems (for example, vision). Cognitive sciences misinterpreted this statement and understood that generativism understood linguistic behavior as genetic inheritance. However, what Chomsky really refers to is the innateness of certain mechanisms of the components of the Faculty of Language, which is the one in charge of acquiring it, and affirms that experience is also necessary. In this way, he defends the need for this innate biological organ, that is, the Faculty of Language, so that when faced with certain stimuli, we can learn and develop language.