Answer the following questions. What semeiotic systems do you know?

What semeiotic systems do you know?

Describe the semeiotic systems of the traffic lights, Morse, and others.

Which is the most important semeiotic system of all?

In what sense are the lingual signs arbitrary?

Are lingual signals connected with the nature of things they refer to?

Where does this problem of reference arise?

In what sense are lingual signals not inherent?

What is the main principle of language description?

Which way of lingual communication is the primary object of descriptive lan­guage study?

What language material is Fries' book based on? What do you call the branch of linguistics dealing with graphic images of language?

What is meant by the basic assumption of Descriptive linguistics that the lin­guistic analysis must be objective?

* * *

What does the linguistic analysis compare with? What step does the linguistic analysis begin with?

What is a morpheme?

What are allomorphs?

What division of word-stock is put forward by Descriptive linguistics?

What are form-classes of words and how many are they? What is the technique by which the form-classes of words have been distinguished?

What is Harris' approach to the word-class classification? What is the diag­nostic environment?

What is the definition of the N-class and of the V-class according to Harris?

How are these form-classes of words designated by Fries and Harris?

Whose symbolic notation has been accepted?

What are the function words and how many are they?

In how many and in what subclasses are they grouped?

What is syntax?

* * *

What are the three levels of linguistic study?

How are sentences classified on the basis of the purpose of communication?

What is the principle of the classification of sentences in Fries' book' The Structure of English?

What is 'utterance' and why is it important for the study of unknown languages?

What are the limits of an utterance and are the utterance and the sentence equated?

How did Fries criticise the traditional analysis of the sentence into its parts?

How does the structural meaning manifest itself?

What are the four operations which form a syntactic construction (a sentence) and are they sufficient to reveal the structural meaning of a syntactic construc­tion?

Who introduced the 1С idea into American linguistics?

What does the 1С grouping compare with?

How are the 1С groupings marked in oral speech?

What is the analytical model of a sentence and how is it graphically repre­sented?

What is the derivation tree?

Lecture № 6

Transformational Grammar (T-Grammar)

The great advances in transportation and communication (radio, intervision) made by man have brought to light the value of world languages.

In the previous centuries it was reasonable and proper to study languages exclusively for the purpose of reading their literatures.

Now languages are studied for communication with native speakers of these languages.

Now the linguists who were given this important task had first to solve some fundamental problems, such as:

(1) why the young child has the ability to gain in a short time and with no special tuition, a command of his native language;

(2) why peoples speak their native languages however complex they may be.

And before beginning to work on this theory the linguist of our time was to revise the previously existing linguistic theories with the purpose of estab­lishing their fitness for the practical application. The practical application was understood in the sense that the theories were fit to sentences, the whole variety and complexity of them, to generate all the system of a language.

* * *

Linguists and psychologists have been puzzling over the phenomenon of the child's ability to learn his native language at an early age and with no tui­tion; and some children do more than this. If their homes are bilingual, they learn two languages.

And this is done in spite of the tremendous diversity of the sentence structures, in spite of the fact that there seems to be no end to the variety of the constructions.

When we look at this immense complexity of language we wonder how anyone or have a powerful enough memory to learn a language and use it. Yet all people do this. People master all the grammar of their native language and they achieve this without conscious study at a very early age.

We know that even illiterate people who can neither read nor write speak their native language freely, have the command of all its grammar, although their vocabulary may be limited.

The linguist's task is to seek out this simple system and to describe it in the shortest and simplest way possible.

Modern linguistic scientists and language teachers believe that the sys­tem of any language contains a rather small number of basic sentences and other linguistic forms, and all the other linguistic forms, sentences of different structure, are derived or generated from these kernel elements of certain deri­vation rules which are not very numerous or difficult.

It is the simplicity and regularity of the structure of any language that makes it possible for the child to grasp it and for human communities to speak.

This understanding of the system of any language, of its grammar is the main assumption of the Transformational grammar. The Transformational grammar, a new linguistic theory, appeared in the fifties of this century.

The first propounders of the Transformational grammar were Zeilig S. Harris and Noam Chomsky. Both these grammarians belonged to the Descrip­tive School of American linguistics; thus we may say that Transformational grammar was born inside the Descriptive linguistic trend.

* * *

There were two grammar theories which sought to teach how a sentence is generated.

The linear theory taught that a sentence is generated on a very simple model consisting of three elements: S+V+0 (sometimes P was used instead of V). This grammar may be traced in the Essentials of English Grammar.

This model is quite familiar to the English teachers who begin their first lessons explaining that in the English sentence subject stands first, then it is fol­lowed by a verb and then by an object.

The linear theory is rather trivial as it has no power to gener­ate different sentence structures but the simplest.

It will be extremely difficult to teach to build up the sentence like "A dir­tily clad old man with a long white beard jumped up suddenly and fell upon the younger man who was standing near the door which..." on the linear model be­cause it does not include the groupings. Besides, passive constructions, ex­clamatory sentences, negative or interrogative, will all need other models. The grammar will be too complicated to be grasped and held.

The 1С model is stronger than this because it shows rigid rules for the generating of the phrases, and the order of the sentence generating.

The 1С grammar says that each linguistic form is to be divided into two immediate constituents. Using this principle of the dichotomous division, we may work out rigid rules for generating sentences.

The set of rules showing how a sentence is generated are called 'rewriting rules'. Below are the representative rewrite rules for the sentence "The man hit the ball." Each rule is numbered and the sign of the arrow means 'rewrite'.

(1) Sentence NP + VP

(2) NP T + N (is a determined)

(3) VP V + NP

(4) T the

(5) N Man, ball, etc.

(6) Verb. Hit, took, etc

Given this set consisting of six rules, one can built up an English sen­tence or a number of sentences changing only.

The procedure of generating is as follows. Applying rule 1 to Sentence, we shall get:

NP + VP

Applying rule 2, T + N + VP

Applying rule 3, T + N + Verb + NP

Applying rule 4, The + N + Verb + NP

Applying rule 5, The + man + Verb + NP

Applying rule 6, The + man + hit + NP; for the second NP the same rules are applied:

Applying rule 2, The + man + hit + T + N

Applying rule 4, The + man + hit + the + N

Applying rule 5, The + man + hit + the + ball

In this way a sentence may be generated in a very exact form.

There is another representation of generation of a sentence on the basis of the 1С grammar. This is the 'derivation tree' diagram, which is as follows:

Sentence

The derivation tree diagram gives less information of how a sentence must be built up than the rewrite rules, because it does not show explicitly the order of the generation. But it illustrates the groupings of the 1С more clearly.

The 1С model is more powerful than the linear model. It has certain ad­vantages as a generating model because it indicates the groupings of the 1С and it shows the order in which the generating of a sentence must proceed.

In spite of certain merits it is open to criticism. First, if the sentence is expanded, then the rewrite rules become too numerous to hold and the genera­tion of the sentence hinders.

The interrogative and passive sentence-structures must have different set of rules which are difficult or impossible to work out on the dichotomous scheme.

There is another demerit in the 1С model, the model cannot sometimes show that the relations between the elements of the two sentences are different, e. g. "John is easy to please" and "John is eager to please" have the same deri­vation tree showing the 1С of the sentences:

S

		John is eager to please

S

Only the transformations of the two sentences can show the difference of the relations of their elements.

Thus the critical review of the linear theory and the 1С theory proves that their application as sentence-generating models is very limited. But of the two theories reviewed, the 1С theory is more fit, and kernel sentences must be gen­erated on this model. We must teach the 1С model as a means of producing kernel sentences, the simplest sentences of the language.

But we must keep in mind that kernel sentences, important as they are, are not many in number. All the other kinds of sentences are their transforms and are to be studied and learned to generate (build up) sentences by means of a still more powerful grammar, the Transformational grammar

II. Practical task