Implications of Generative Grammar for Language Study
Contemporary linguistic research hasn't yet reached a consensus about precisely how sentence structure should be analyzed, and a variety of quite different possibilities are currently being explored. We'll try to introduce a simple version of generative grammar (or transformational grammar), currently the most popular and best known approach to syntactic analysis abroad. Although many linguists disagree with various features of this approach, it is very widely used in linguistics and other disciplines concerned with language (especially the cognitive approach). The theory of generative grammar arose in the late 1950s. In many ways this movement represents a natural development out of structural linguistics of the preceding decades. It was quite revolutionary. The most striking change was its strong psychological orientation, centered around the conviction that the study of language is essentially a study of one aspect of the human mind. Syntax of a human language is a system of rules that lies hidden in the minds of fluent speakers of the language.
Besides inquiring about the unconscious rules of particular languages, generative grammar has been concerned with a very difficult psychological problem. That part of what we know about our language is innate, that is, present by virtue of the nature of the human organism, rather than by virtue of our early experience with our language. In particular, although all human children clearly require help from their language environment in order to learn the rules of their language, there is much more evidence that their minds are provided ahead of time with unconscious principles that dictate what general kinds of rules are to be expected.
The contribution of these innate principles is shown in the following diagram:
A
cceptability
judgments
Rules
I nnate principles
Previously heard sentences
The present textbook will focus on the rules rather than on innate principles; particular principles will occasionally be mentioned.
Generative grammar thus consists of two related enterprises. One of these is concerned with discovering the rules of particular languages, for instance, English, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Tatar. The other is concerned with uncovering the/lost type genetically determined principles that make their effect felt in all languages. We can use the term universal grammar when we are talking about the genetically determined principles. A theory of grammar must enable us to devise a descriptively adequate grammar for every natural language - a theory of Universal Grammar (UG). A theory of UG does not simply list sets of universal properties of natural language grammars; on the contrary, a theory of UG must seek to explain the relevant properties.
Nature of Generative Grammar
The goals of the theory of generative grammar are to describe language as a property of the human mind and to explain how it is acquired. To achieve these goals, it establishes an apparatus of considerable complexity.
A generative grammar is one which sets out to specify, i.e. establish rules for the formation of grammatical structures. Of course, all grammars do this, but the key compo' word here is "formation". Generative linguists are interested in how PHRASES, CLAUSES and SENTENCES are created. They aim to provide a rigorous and explicit framework that can produce (or generate) from a small number of general principles, or rules, all the well-formed sentences of a language. The term 'generate' was introduced by Noam Chomsky. Sentences are seen as being formed according to a deep structure, and then transformed by various grammatical processes into surface structure. Since Chomsky, generative grammar incorporates a number of different theoretical approaches and developments. What they all have in common, however, is a rigously empirical, and formalist approach to language.
The ultimate concern of generative linguists is with the way in which the structure of language mirrors that of the human mind. Language is viewed as a mental property, the understanding of which can led to inlocking some of the secrets of the mind. In this respect, the most ambitious offshoot of generative grammar is universal grammar. The assumption of the grammarians working in this area is that linguistic knowledge is innate. What happens when a child encounters data from his or her native language is that various switches are thrown in the brain to lock onto it, rather like turning on a television set to receive a signal. The search for language universals has yielded a number of insights into the way languages operate. So, a term universal grammar is used to describe the grammatical principles which are held to be innately present in everyone's brain, regardless of what language they speak. For generative linguists the discovery of these principles, and the way in which they operate in particular languages, is the main goal of linguistics theory.
Brief History of Generative Grammar
Noam Chomsky introduced the term generative grammar in the 1950s. In his book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, he introduced what is often known as the Standard Theory or classical TG. Today there are very many different types of generative grammar which can be conceived of. But from the beginning, Chomsky himself favoured a particular type, to which he gave the name transformational grammar, or TG; TG has sometimes been called transformational generative grammar, or TGG.
Most types of generative grammar can be viewed as working as follows: starting with nothing, the rules of the grammar build up the structure piece by piece, adding something at each step, until the sentence structure is complete. The goal of Chomsky's research programme is to identify that class of generative grammars that matches the properties of human languages most perfectly.
Over the last 20 years, a number of alternatives to TG have been developed. The first major alternative was Relational Grammar (RG), which appeared in the 70s. This was followed at the end of the 70s by Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG).
The most prominent theory in the 1980s was Chomsky's Government and Binding Theory (GB), first presented in detail in Chomsky's Lectures on Government and Binding in 1981 and revised in important ways in his Barriers in 1986. The new framework presented there became known as the Goverment and Binding Theory (GB) or as the Principles-and-Parameters approach.
GB represents a great departure from its transformational ancestors: while it still remains a single transformational rule, the framework is different from what preceded it.
GB is .based upon two ideas: First, the grammars of all languages are embedded in a universal grammar, conceived as a set of universal principles applying equally to a grammar of every language. Second, within universal grammar, the grammars of particular languages differ only in small and specified respects; these possible variations are conceived as parameters, and the idea is that the grammar of any single language will be characterized by the use of any particular setting for each one of these parameters.
GB has a modular framework. Its machinery is divided up into several distinct modules, or components. Each of these modules is responsible for treating different aspects of sentence structure, and each is subject to its own particular principles and constraints. A sentence structure is well-formed only if it simultaneously meets the independent requirements of every one of the modules.
Recently, Chomsky initiated the Minimalist Programme, in which almost all of the elaborate machinary of GB is rejected in favour of a very different approach.
Generativism As One of the Modern Schools and Movements and Its Relation to the Previous Linguistic Theories
The term 'generativism' (used by Lyons 1997:297) refers to the theory of language that was developed by Chomsky and his followers. 'Generativism', in this sense, has been enormously influential, not only in linguistics, but also in philosophy, psychology and other disciplines concerned with language.
Generativism is usually presented as having developed out of, and in reaction to, the previously dominant school of post-Bloomfieldian American descriptivism: a particular version of structuralism. But Chomsky himself came to realize later, there are many respects in which generativism constitutes a return to older and more traditional views about language.
Creativity is, in Chomsky's view, a peculiarly human attribute, which distinguishes men from machines and animals. But it is a rule-governed creativity. The utterances we produce have a certain grammatical structure, they have rules of grammaticality and this gives rise to a connection between creativity and productivity. So, our creativity in the use of language manifests itself within the limits set by the productivity of the language system. And the very central component in Chomsky generativism is that the rules that determine the productivity of human languages have formal properties due to the structure of human mind. This brings us to mentalism. Chomsky believes that linguistics has an important role to play in the investigation of the nature of the mind. Chomsky wishes to study language within the framework of concepts and assumptions provided by natural sciences.
The attitude towards linguistic universals in Chomsky's generativism and both Bloomfieldian and post-Bloomfieldian structuralism is quite different. Bloomfield and his followers emphasized the structural diversity of languages. Generativists, in contrast, are more interested in what languages have in common. Another difference is that Chosmky attaches more importance to the formal properties of languages and to the nature of the rules that their description requires than he does to the relations that hold between language and the world.
A further difference between generativism and Bloomfieldian and post-Bloomfieldian structuralism - though in this respect generativism is closer to Saussurian structuralism - relates to the distinction that Chomsky draws between competence and performance. The competence-performance distinction, to be discussed in more detail below, is at the very heart of generativism. The distinction between competence and performance, as drawn by Chomsky, is similar to Saussure's distinction between langue and parole.
But the most controversial aspects of generativism are its association with mentalism and its reassertion of the traditional philosophical doctrine of innate knowledge. Generativism has associated itself with post-Bloomfieldian structuralism, Saussurean structuralism and the Prague school. For example, it continues the post-Bloomfieldian A tradition in syntax by making the morpheme the basic unit of analysis. Its n commitment to the autonomy of syntax may also be attrubuted to its post-Bloomfieldian heritage.
As we have seen, Chomskyan generativism is closer to Saussurian, and post-Saussurian structuralism in the necessity of drawing a distinction between language- pi system and the use of that system in a particular context of utterance. It is also closer to Saussurian structuralism in its attitude towards semantics. Finally, it takes into consideration the Prague School notion on phonology, without accepting the principles of functionalism.
Concept of Grammar
Grammar is traditionally subdivided into different but inter-related areas of study - morphology and syntax. Morphology is the study of how words are formed out of smaller units (morphemes), and the study of principles which determine the ways the parts are combined together to form the whole. Syntax is concerned with the ways in which words can be combined together to form phrases and sentences, and the study of principles which determine the ways the words can be combined together to form phrases and sentences.
However, grammar is traditionally concerned not just with the principles which determine the formation of words, phrases and sentences, but also with the principles which govern their interpretation - i.e. with the principles which tell us how to interpret (to assign meaning to) words, phrases, sentences. For example, any comprehensive grammar of English will specify that compound words like man-eater and man-made have very different interpretations: in a compound like man-eater, the word man is traditionally said to have a patient interpretation, in the sense that man is the patient on whom the act of eating is going to be performed; by contrast, in compounds like man-made, the word man is said to have an agent interpretation, in the sense that man is the agent responsible for the act of making. Thus, the structural aspect of meaning is traditionally said to be part of the domain of grammar. We might therefore characterize grammar as the study of the principles which govern the formation and interpretation of words, phrases, and sentences.
The aims of linguistics are often summarized by Chomsky in the form of three questions (Chomsky 1991):
1. What constitutes knowledge of language7. The linguist's duty is to describe what people know about language - whatever it is that they have in their minds when they know English, Tatar or Russian or any language.
2. How is such language acquired7 A second aim is to discover how people acquire this knowledge. Studying acquisition of language knowledge means first establishing what the knowledge that is acquired actually consists of, i.e. on first answering question.
3. How is such knowledge put to use7 A third aim is to see how people use this acquired lanhuahe knowledge. Again, investigating how knowledge is used depends on first establishing what knowledge is.
Any native speaker of a language can be said to know the grammar of his or her native language. Native speakers clearly know how to form and interpret words, phrases and sentences in their native language. We might say that native speakers have grammatical competence in their native language - that is, the fluent native speaker's subconscious knowledge of his language. In work dating back to the 1960s, Chomsky has drawn a distinction between competence and performance (what people actually say or understand by what someone else says on a given occasion).
If we say that grammar is the study of grammatical competence, then we are implicitly taking a cognitive view of the nature of grammar. If the term grammatical competence is used to denote what native speakers subconsciously know about the grammar of their language, then grammar is part of the more general study of cognition (i.e. human knowledge). In the terminology adopted by Chomsky (1986), our ultimate goal is to characterize the nature of the internalized linguistic system (or I-language, as Chomsky terms it) which enables humans to speak and understand their native language.
One aim of generative grammar is to make a contribution to the problems of universals (Universal Grammar (UG)). UG is a theory of knowledge, not behavior; its concern is with the internal structure of the human mind. The nature of this knowledge is inseparable from the problem of how it is acquired. A proposal for the nature of language knowledge necessitates an explanation of how such knowledge came into being. UG theory holds that the speaker knows a set of principles that apply to all languages, and parameter that vary from one language to another. The importance of UG theory is its attempt to integrate grammar, mind and language at every moment.
Speaking briefly, from the point of view of generative grammar:
A grammar of a language is a model of the grammatical competence of the fluent native speaker of the language, and the grammatical competence is reflected in the native speaker's intuition about grammaticality and interpretation.
The theory of grammar is concerned with characterizing the general properties and organization of grammars of natural languages.
Any adequate theory of language should be universal, explanatory and restrictive, and should provide grammars which are minimally complex, and learnable.
There is an innateness hypothesis put forward by Chomsky, under which the course of language acquisition is genetically predetermined by innate language faculty.
The language faculty incorporates a set of UG principles (universal grammatical principles), for example structure dependence principle.
Languages differ in their structure along a range of different grammatical parameters, for example: the wh-parameter. The null subject parameter and the head parameter.