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.doc3. The description of the lexicon in generative grammar
The creative potential of the lexicon brings about another possibility of defining what kind of a structural entity the lexicon might be. The elementary units, or constituents of the system at the same time can function as the starting point for the generation of other units, also lexical by nature. Henceforth a question arises: does the lexicon also embrace the rules, or operations on lexical units to generate novel lexical units in reply to the communicative needs. This brings to light various theories of the lexicon within a fairly new school of thought known as generative grammar. In order to comprehend the complicated design according to which the lexicon is fused into the language structure one has to keep in mind that in the generative tradition grammar embraces the whole of the language system: elements, sets of rules and conditions that allow people to speak and understand a language. Grammar in this sense of the term consists of the following components: Phonetics, the function of which is the articulation and perception of speech sounds, Phonology aimed at the patterning of speech sounds, Morphology, concerned with word and word-formation, Syntax, or sentence formation, and Semantics the interpretation of words and sentences. This understanding of grammar goes as far back as the 1960-s when N.Chomsky, an outstanding American linguist, published his dissertation, titled as «Syntactic Structures» in which he made an attempt at modeling the language system to find answers to the following problems which he worded in the following way:
The 1st version of this Grammar as construed by Chomsky consisted of the syntactic component, phonological component, semantics and the transformational component the rules of which were to map the generated structures onto the surface, i.e. phonetic level. The lexicon, as one can clearly see, had no place in the grammar and constituted merely a list of ready-made units each of which was assigned some categorial and sub-categorial features, like Countable/Uncountable, Animate/Unanimate for nouns, Transitive/Intransitive for verbs, etc. The lexicon happens is a list of units introduced at a definite syntactic level. 1960 saw the rise of dissident theories: with the publication of N.Chomsky’s “Notes on Nominalization” and R.Lees’s “The Grammar of English Nominalizations”. The first became the manifesto of the lexicalist approach to the lexicon, the other – of the transformationalist school of thought.
The main idea of the lexicalist treatment of the lexicon is that due to the idiosyncratic nature of complex lexical units (cf. worker, writer, transmission, etc. which develop specific senses not predicted by the rules of their formation) or admission, permission, the phonological forms of which turn to be alternating and specific as compared to split - splitting, sit - sitting, the whole lexicon should be entered into the generative model in the form of a list. The gist of the transformationalist approach lies in the fact that a great number of lexical units are patterned according to some derivation rules which are very much similar to syntactic rules. This allows a more economical treatment of the lexicon where complex units are generated on the basis of simple forms via rules of derivation while non-derived forms and rules are presented in the form of a list.
The dispute between the lexicalist and the transformationalist approaches gave birth to a great number of theories of the lexicon within generative grammar, morphology– both flectional and derivational – appearing as a crucial point in all these descriptions. A few examples are given below.
Halle’s latest version is oriented towards a solution of the major problem of grammar which is to describe the inventory of all the words really existent in the language, the order of arrangement of morphemes within words and idiosyncratic properties of individual words. His theory is a model in which the lexicon is a list of morphemes, on the basis of which via derivation rules all the words of the language are derived. To prevent the generation of non-existent or ungrammatical words Halle introduces a filter with the help of which all idiosyncratic properties of a lexical unit (which include semantic, morphological and other peculiarities of a unit) are assigned.
M.Aronoff’s version differs from that of Halle in one crucial feature. The starting point for all derivation processes is not a list of morphemes but that of words. The lexicon for M.Aronoff is a list of words, which function as bases. Word composition is a part of syntax, there is no list of morphemes nor is there a filter just as regular patterns devoid of idiosyncratic features are not part of the lexicon.
There are variations in the treatment of morphemes – morphemes as things in which morphemes are autonomous units which in the processes of affixation, compounding, etc. are combined; 2) morphemes as rules in which rules, or operations play a predominant role.