Summary_on_T-G_grammar

Summary on T-G grammar This article is mainly about Chomsky’s Transformative-Generative Grammar and the whole passage can be divided into two parts. Chomsky’s Innateness Hypothesis is based on his observations on children’s learning and acquiring language. And he believes that language is innate and that children are born with LAD, which probably consists of three elements: a hypothesis maker, linguistic universal and an evaluation procedure. Additionally, Chomsky thinks that a generative grammar means a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural description to sentences. This is not limited to particular languages , but to reveal the unity of particular grammars and universal grammar. In hope of revealing human cognitive systems and the essential nature of human being by this method, Chomsky raised three levels to evaluate grammar on Observational Adequacy Level, Descriptive Adequacy and Explanatory Adequacy. All of these above should be Chomsky’s later breakthrough in his fluency. The Transformative –Generative grammar has been five stages of development since its birth. The first one is The Classical Theory, whose aim is to make linguistic a science. He raised three kinds of grammar: finite – state grammar, phrase structure and transformational grammar. Phrase structure has greater generative power than finite –state grammar, the simplest one. Due to three problems by the classical Theory, he made a change by including a semantic component in his grammatical model, whose improvements are shown in five aspects. In this theory, syntactic component is the base component. The semantic component makes phonological interpretation on the deep structure and the phonological makes phonological interpretations on the surface structure. Again, Chomsky also meets problems, such as the power of transformational rules etc. He made some changes. The most remarkable change is that he completely put semantic interpretation in the surface structure, leaving semantics out of domain of syntax. The forth is the Government and Binding Theory. The last one is the Minimalist Program. This one is motivated by two related questions: (1) what are the general conditions that the human language faculty should be expected to satisfy? (2) to what extent is the language faculty determined by these conditions, without a special structure that lies beyond them? The theory maintains that derivations and representations conform to an economy criterion demanding that they be minimal in a sense determined by the language faculty. Part 2: As to Transformative-Generative Grammar, it has been challenged like Case Grammar and Generative Semantic. In case grammar, the verb is regarded as the most important part of the sentence and has many relationships with various noun phrases. These relationships are called “case” Fillmore sees his case grammar as a substantive modification to Chomshy’s theo r y. But it isn’s that true. As to Generative Semantics, it holds that there is no principled distinction between syntactic processes and semantic processes. Generative Semantics attempted to show the existence of a level of deep structure distinct from semantic representation would demand the same generation be stated twice, once in the syntax and once in the semantics. Despite its work, Generative Semantics collapsed before the end of the 1970’s. From my perspective, Transformational - Generative Grammar has gone a lot and shows great promise in its development. At first, Chomsky just simply find the left-to-right order. But again and again he raised or revised one due to the problems from the previous one. The problems are mainly about the power of transformational rules, the generation of ill-formed sentences, the problems at transformation with three rules, the semantic interpretations and some others. Accordingly, Chomsky also tries to explain by way of tree diagrams. But not always perfect. In addition, Chomsky’s theory goes from the surface to the structure, because in the extended Standard Theory, semantics was left out, a remarkable change. But to find more, there is a long way to go to solve the problems concerning the “origanical structure of the brain” and the “creative and coherent ordinary use of language”.