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    Evolution of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar
    Evolution of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar
    Evolution of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar
    Ebook254 pages1 hour

    Evolution of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar

    By El Mouatamid Ben Rochd

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    In his early plastic age, the child presents an asymmetrical growth in what concerns his motor system, when compared with his cognitive system. The latter seems to be far ahead of the former. It consists of many sub-systems; the most outstanding of which being language. TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR has been striving for more than half a century to try and deal with this phenomenon. It has evolved from a model of rules to a model of principles, to end up with the Minimalist Program. This book presents the successive approximations that Transformational Grammar has gone through since its early insemination in1957 up to the Minimalist Program. After which, there is a critical chapter called "Occam's Razor". Finally, there is a chapter on "Logical Form" and an appendix that deals with the major transformations of early transformational grammar.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooks on Demand
    Release dateJul 24, 2020
    ISBN9782322196210
    Evolution of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar
    Author

    El Mouatamid Ben Rochd

    THE AUTHOR Dr. El Mouatamid Ben Rochd graduated from Fez University in 1978 (BA in American Civilization), obtained his Masters from York University in 1982 (MA in French Syntax) and his Doctorate in 1990 from the National University of Ireland (PhD in Theoretical Linguistics and the Structure of Arabic). He spent one year as Visiting Professor at the University of Washington. He is currently a freelance scholar of languages, cultures and philosophy.

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      Book preview

      Evolution of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar - El Mouatamid Ben Rochd

      CONTENTS

      Acknowledgment

      Introduction

      CHOMSKY'S T.G.

      1.1. First Version

      1.1.1. Phrase Structure Rules

      1.1.2. Transformations

      1.2. Standard Theory

      1.2.1. Phrase Structure Rules & Lexicon

      1.2.2. Transformations

      1.3. Extended Standard Theory (E.S.T.)

      1.3.1. X-bar theory²

      1.3.2. Lexicon

      1.3.3. Movements

      1.3.4. Constraints

      1.4. Government and Binding

      1.4.1. GB Principles and Parameters1

      1.4.2. Empty Categories

      1.4.3. CP/IP Barriers

      1.4.4. Cliticization

      1.5. Chomsky’s Minimalist Program & Arabic Non-Concatenative Morphology

      1.5.1. PHILOSOPHY

      1.5.2. MINIMALIST GUIDELINES

      1.5.3. MINIMALIST MODEL:

      1.5.4. LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY (SVO/VSO)

      1.5.5. TENSE OR ASPECT?

      1.5.6. NON-CONCATENATIVE MORPHOLOGY

      1.5.7. PERFECTIVE TRANSFORMATION

      1.5.8. CASE FILTER

      1.5.9. 4/10 AGREEMENT

      1.5.10. CHOMSKY’GREED

      1.5.11. PHONETIC FORM IN ARABIC

      1.5.12. LOGICAL FORM

      1.5.13. LCA SUPERSEDES X-BAR

      OCCAM’s Razor¹

      2.1. Parametric theory

      2.1.1. X- bar Theory

      2.1.2. Move Alpha (Bounding theory)

      2.1.3. Case theory

      2.1.4. Binding Theory

      2.1.5. Control Theory

      2.2. Occam’s Razor

      2.2.1. DP Hypothesis

      2.2.2. Headship

      2.3. Case

      2.4. Noun Phrase or Small Clause?⁵

      2.5. QP hypothesis (and demonstratives)

      2.6. Bound Variables

      Logical Form

      3.1. Word Meaning

      3.1.1. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

      3.1.2. SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE

      3.1.3. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

      3.1.4. MORPHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

      3.2. Sentence Meaning (LF)

      3.2.1. Predicate Calculus

      3.2.2. Binding Theory

      3.3. Idiomatics

      3.4. Contradiction

      3.4.1. PREDICATIVES

      3.4.2. CONDITIONALS

      3.4.3. DISJUNCTIVE

      3.4.4. Contradiction

      Appendix: TRANSFORMATIONS

      REFERENCES

      Acknowledgment

      Many thanks are due to my students, relatives, friends and colleagues in particular Dr. Khalid Chaouch, Dr. Ahmed Elheggach, Dr. Amr Sellam, Dr. Mostafa Shoul, Dr. Reitha Ben Rochd, for their invaluable help. Above all our thanks must go to Professor Avram Noam Chomsky, from whom we learnt this most elegant theory of language, which filled an infinity of hours of teaching – it is indeed GENERATIVE & TRANSFORMATIONAL.

      "Money takes you nowhere,

      Friends take places, indeed!"

      Introduction

      The material dealt with in linguistics is so vast and complicated. Languages¹ are said to be inflectional, concatenative... They belong to families: Indo-European, Semitic.., sub-families: Romance, Germanic..etc. There are old and modern, spoken and written, standard and colloquial versions of every language. In syntax - let alone the levels of linguistics - many problems exist.

      The linguistic investigation of sentence structure is, in a way, similar to what happens in arithmetic theory. When a set is discovered to be inadequate to cope with a mathematical item or mathematical class, the mathematicians opt for a new set (that includes the preceding one). The subtraction 2-3 is an impossible operation within the framework of N² so Z is established to cope with it, but within the latter 50/3 is impossible so Q is created. √2 does not exist in Q so R is set forth. √-2 is not allowed in R so C is created and so on and so forth.

      In linguistics, there are many old and new schools. Traditional grammar, the Neo-grammarians, the Tagmemic school (the followers of which believe that linguistic structure can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of SLOTS and FILLERS) and the systemic linguists who work by RANK, SYSTEM and DELICACY.

      For Bloomfieldians (Bloomfield et al.) the sentence is the syntactic unit because it shows greater freedom of occurrence in speech. Every sentence is marked by a particular intonation. In writing, it starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, a question or an exclamation mark. They deal with the surface structure as a sequence of adjacent items, but do recognize hierarchies of immediate constituents by opposition to Ferdinand de Saussure³ who is a 'dualist'. He distinguishes LANGUE (i.e., language) from PAROLE (i.e., speech).

      Chomsky is a still more explicit 'dualist' than Saussure .He distinguishes between COMPETENCE⁴ and PERFORMANCE as well as between DEEP and SURFACE STRUCTURE. His approach - a computer-like grammar (the word GENERATIVISM⁵ itself is taken from mathematics) - gives us syntactic models that can predict and recognize, more or less explicitly, the sentences of natural languages.

      Some psychologists assume, against Chomsky's point of view, that the deep structure matches what actually exists within the speaker's mind. Furthermore, Chomskian linguists consider the actual utterances as incomplete and non-representative, because they are continually broken by slips of tongue, self-corrections and interruptions. So the actual performance is to be replaced, in the linguistic inquiry, by the competence of an imagined ideal native speaker in an ideal speech environment (cf. Labov's Functional Competence). This process is known as scientific idealization.

      Linguistics is meant to be scientific. For the linguist's attitude is just like that of a physicist, who wants to describe, for instance, the motion of a shell. He first limits himself to four variables - say the length of the cannon, the weight of the shell, the distance of the target at and the angle made by the cannon and earth. Then, if there's and outside interference at the time of the firing like - say wind - he/she, or the engineer, will have to assess the force and the direction of the interference and correct the first equation accordingly.

      Likewise in linguistics, we must limit our scope to a small area of language at the beginning. Our method must be as systematic and economic as possible. As for any empirical attempt, we must proceed from a hypothesis towards a conclusion by means of observation and testing. Ultimately, we can build a model of what natural language patterns might be. We must confine our analysis to language structure, not refer to the outside world, and express the results of our discoveries in purely formal terms.

      The segmentation of language remains, however, only a matter of trial and error, far more than what happens in Physics. An unknown language can only be identified phonetically and transcribed in an impressionistic fashion. But neither phonetics nor phonology can catch other patterns bigger than the sound system. So the linguist must learn the language he wants to investigate (or, at least, use the services of informants), notice the regular occurrences of items bigger than the sound segment and ask native speakers about the relevance of the samples he may come to describe.

      The linguist can also start with his own language (idiolect) and proceed gradually to the investigation of his language family, then to human language (i.e. UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR). He can also proceed from level one of linguistics to the other levels in the same language. He can use the most practical grammar (simple and accurate) available to him, try it and eventually replace it, when he comes to its limitations and discovers a better one.

      After (or apart from) Phonology and Morphology, Syntax is proposed to cope with the structure of a given language. It is claimed that syntax is the key the process of learning⁶ and understanding a language. The sentence is generally considered the upper unit, but syntax deals also with the clause, the phrase and the word. Syntax deals with word-relations and the structure of the sentence in the most systematic way possible.

      Years ago, as I was writing at the railway station of York city, I met an English student of history. He tried to tell me about his sister who had gone sightseeing to Tangiers in Tunisia (sic!). Then he said that he would be delighted to come and see my country. I told him that he was most welcome to my home in Tokyo!) We laughed a lot and he concluded saying; Actually, you're right, I might go to a travel agency, book for a country and end up in another!"

      This student of history had a good approximation (knowledge) about the geography of Africa. At least, he knew that Tangiers is a city (and not something to eat!). He had a second approximation which told him that it is a city in Africa and not in Asia or Australia. He even knew that it is situated in North Africa (which is a third approximation). Of course, he needed two more approximations: he needed to shift Tangiers to the Moroccan territory and finally, spot it in the north of Morocco (fifth approximation).

      Although this student may have seemed silly at first, in fact his approach is perfectly valid. It is actually used by all researchers and working scientists who are silly, in that sense. They work by successive approximations. Likewise, the linguist works step-by-step towards a system of rules and principles that are part of the native speaker's competence. He formulates a RULE, comes across a counter-example, formulates a new rule and so on and so forth.

      In syntax, this approach is applicable. Consider the rule known as QUESTION TAG:

      It has a bell, hasn't it?

      1st approximation:

      a) locate the verb and copy it to the right of the sentence. If the original verb is positive, make the copy negative, and vice versa.

      b) locate the subject of the sentence and copy it to the right of the verb.

      * The boys are in town, aren't the boys?

      2nd approximation:

      a) locate the verb and

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