LANGUAGE STRUCTURE THEORY:GENERATIVE-TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR AND ITS IMPLICATION TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Presented by:

Nailun NajaMahbubiyah Ulfah

This Paper covers the following topics:• Theory of Language• What is Grammar?• What is Generative-Transformational Grammar?• Deep and surface structure• The Syntactic component of Grammar• Competence and Performance• The Power of Generative-Transformational Grammar• Critisizm to Generative-Transformational Grammar• The implication of Generative-Transformational Grammar in ELT

THEORY OF LANGUAGE

Theory of Language Structure

Theory of Language Acquisition

Theory of Language Use

to formulate detailed descriptions of particular language that is the study of PARTICULAR GRAMMAR.

TRADITIONAL VIEW

Grammar is an account of COMPETENCE

Ability of a speaker to understand an arbitrary sentence of his language

Ability to produce an appropriate sentence on a given occasion

PEDAGOGIC GRAMMAR LINGUISTIC/SCIENTIFIC GRAMMAR

GRAMMAR

To provide the students with the ability of how to understand and to

produce sentences

To discover and exhibit the mechanism that

makes the achievement possible

It is emphasized that traditional grammars make an essential appeal to the intelligence of the reader. They do not formulate the rules of the grammar, but rather give examples and hints that enable the intelligent reader to determine the grammar.

Generative grammar has adopted this traditional framework of interest and concerns. It attempts to go beyond traditional grammar in fundamental way.

In the decade from 1955 to 1965 the foundation of Generative Grammar were laid and a complex technical formalism was developed (Horrocks, 1987:27).

Traditionally....

•Grammars have not been characterised with sufficient precision • The rules they embody have not been frame in a

sufficiently explicit way for observational adequacy to be achieved.

To be observationally adequate,

a grammar must be fully explicit.

In 1957, Chomsky postulated the Generative – Transformational Grammar.....

The objective is to construct models that would represent the psychological process of language.

Noam Chomsky believed that grammar has recursive rules allowing one to generate grammatically correct sentences over and over. Our brain has a mechanism which can create language by following the language principles and grammar.

SO......

Generative-Transformational Grammar implies a finite set of rules that can be applied to generate sentences, at the same time

capable of producing infinite number of strings from the set rules.

DEEP STRUCTURE – SURFACE STRUCTURE

Deep Structures represents the meaning of the sentence.

Surface Structures represents sentences that express those meanings (superficial appearance).

Consider the following sentences....

•Charlie broke the window.•The window was broken by Charlie.

These two sentences have the same deep structure but are expressed in different surface structure.

Some Implication of DS and SS

Meaning is contained in deep structure. Language has a deep structure which is often different in form

from the surface structure A small number of phrase structure rules can desribe the deep

structure. Surface structures usually consist of rearrangements and

reoccurrences of the elements of the deep strucure. For a grammar to be adequate, it must take all of these things

into account and provide a description whose rules will enable us to generate an infinite number of surface structure

THE SYNTACTIC COMPONENTS OF GRAMMAR

1. Phrase Structure Rules

2. Transformational Rules

Phrase Structure Rules

•A Phrase Structure is, in fact, a very natural device for assigning a system of grammatical relations and functions to a generate string. • S ----> NP + VP or S

NP VP

Basic Phrase Structure Rules

S ----> NP + VP NP ----> {Det + (Adj) + N}

{PN} VP ----> V + NP + (PP) + (Adv) PP ----> Prep + NP

Examples• N ----> (boy, girl, horse) V ---> (saw, followed, helped)• PN----> (George, Myrna) Prep --> (with, near)• Det ---> (a, the) Adv --> (yesterday, recently)• Adj ---> (small, crazy)

The girl followed the boy. Myrna helped George recently. George saw a horse yesterday. A small horse followed Myrna. The small boy saw George with a crazy horse recently.

* Boy the Myrna saw. * Small horse with a girl.

Grammatical

Ungrammatical

Transformational Rules

Phrase Structure rules are not adequate to handle certain characteristic constructions in natural languages. In order to provide a principled account of the syntax of these construction, we need to posit an additional level of structure known as deep structure.Two level of structures (deep and surface structures) are inter-related by a set of movement rules known technically as Transformations.

Types of Transformation

1. Obligatory Transformation

2. Optional Transformation

Obligatory Transformations:

Particle Separation Transformation (Pronoun) Number Transformation (NP singular, NP plural) Auxiliary Transformation Word Boundaries Transformation Do Transformation

KERNEL SENTENCE (simple, declarative, active sentence)

Optional Transformation:

example: JOHN EATS AN APPLE. Transformation of Affirmation -- > John can eat an apple. Negative Transformation ---- > John does not eat an apple. Interrogative Transformation --> Does John eat an apple ? Wh Question Transformation -- > What does John eat? Passive Transformation ---- > An apple is eaten by John.

Besides, there are some other transformations that are known as generalized Transformations:

Nominalizing Transformation Conjunction Transformation So-Transformation

Competence and Performance(Chomsky, 1965: 4)

COMPETENCE

PERFORMANCE

the knowledge of the language

the actual use of language in concrete situations

GRAMMATICALCOMPETENCE

SENTENCE STRUCTURES

INTUITION (judgement)

WELL-FORMED

SENTENCE

The POWER of Generative-Transformational Grammar

This grammar will generate well-formed syntactic structures (e.g. sentences) of the language.

This grammar will have a finite (i.e. limited) number of rules but will be capable of generating an infinite number of well-formed structures.

The rules of this grammar give ‘recursiveness’, that is the capacity to be applied more than once in generating a structure.

This grammar is also capable of revealing the basis two other phenomena:

How some superficially distinct sentences are closely related. How some superficially similar sentences are in fact distinct.