Syntactic Structures after 60 Years

The Impact of the Chomskyan Revolution in Linguistics

Norbert Hornstein, Howard Lasnik, Pritty Patel-Grosz, Charles Yang, Norbert Hornstein, Howard Lasnik, Pritty Patel-Grosz, Charles Yang

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781501506864
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Grammar & Punctuation
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume explores the continuing relevance of Syntactic Structures to contemporary research in generative syntax. The contributions examine the ideas that changed the way that syntax is studied and that still have a lasting effect on contemporary work in generative syntax. Topics include formal foundations, the syntax-semantics interface, the autonomy of syntax, methods of data analysis, and detailed discussions of the role of transformations. New commentary from Noam Chomsky is included.

Part I: Syntactic Structures

PREFACE

This study deals with syntactic structure both in the broad sense (as opposed to semantics) and the narrow sense (as opposed to phonemics and morphology). It forms part of an attempt to construct a formalized general theory of linguistic structure and to explore the foundations of such a theory. The search for rigorous formulation in linguistics has a much more serious motivation than mere concern for logical niceties or the desire to purify well-established methods of linguistic analysis. Precisely constructed models for linguistic structure can play an important role, both negative and positive, in the process of discovery itself. By pushing a precise but inadequate formulation to an unacceptable conclusion, we can often expose the exact source of this inadequacy and, consequently, gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic data. More positively, a formalized theory may automatically provide solutions for many problems other than those for which it was explicitly designed. Obscure and intuition-bound notions can neither lead to absurd conclusions nor provide new and correct ones, and hence they fail to be useful in two important respects. I think that some of those linguists who have questioned the value of precise and technical development of linguistic theory may have failed to recognize the productive potential in the method of rigorously stating a proposed theory and applying it strictly to linguistic material with no attempt to avoid unacceptable conclusions by ad hoc adjustments or loose formulation. The results reported below were obtained by a conscious attempt to follow this course systematically. Since this fact may be obscured by the informality of the presentation, it is important to emphasize it here.

Specifically, we shall investigate three models for linguistic structure and seek to determine their limitations. We shall find that a certain very simple communication theoretic model of language and a more powerful model that incorporates a large part of what is now generally known as “immediate constituent analysis” cannot properly serve the purposes of grammatical description. The investigation and application of these models brings to light certain facts about linguistic structure and exposes several gaps in linguistic theory; in particular, a failure to account for such relations between sentences as the active-passive relation. We develop a third, transformational model for linguistic structure which is more powerful than the immediate constituent model in certain important respects and which does account for such relations in a natural way. When we formulate the theory of transformations carefully and apply it freely to English, we find that it provides a good deal of insight into a wide range of phenomena beyond those for which it was specifically designed. In short, we find that formalization can, in fact, perform both the negative and the positive service commented on above.

During the entire period of this research I have had the benefit of very frequent and lengthy discussions with Zellig S. Harris. So many of his ideas and suggestions are incorporated in the text below and in the research on which it is based that I will make no attempt to indicate them by special reference. Harris’ work on transformational structure, which proceeds from a somewhat different point of view from that taken below, is developed in items 15, 16, and 19 of the bibliography (p. 115). In less obvious ways, perhaps, the course of this research has been influenced strongly by the work of Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine. I have discussed most of this material at length with Morris Halle, and have benefited very greatly from his comments and suggestions. Eric Lenneberg, Israel Scheffier, and Yehoshua Bar-Hillel have read earlier versions of this manuscript and have made many valuable criticisms and suggestions on presentation and content.

The work on the theory of transformations and the transformational structure of English which, though only briefly sketched below, serves as the basis for much of the discussion, was largely carried out in 1951 – 55 while I was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. I would like to express my gratitude to the Society of Fellows for having provided me with the freedom to carry on this research.

This work was supported in part by the U.S.A. Army (Signal Corps), the Air Force (Office of Scientific Research, Air Research and Development Command), and the Navy (Office of Naval Research); and in part by the National Science Foundation and the Eastman Kodak Corporation.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Modern Languages and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Cambridge, Mass. August 1, 1956.

NOAM CHOMSKY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

1.Introduction

2.The Independence of Grammar

3.An Elementary Linguistic Theory

4.Phrase Structure

5.Limitations of Phrase Structure Description

6.On the Goals of Linguistic Theory

7.Some Transformations in English

8.The Explanatory Power of Linguistic Theory

9.Syntax and Semantics

10.Summary

11.Appendix I: Notations and Terminology

12.Appendix II: Examples of English Phrase Structure and Transformational Rules

Bibliography

1

INTRODUCTION

Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis. More generally, linguists must be concerned with the problem of determining the fundamental underlying properties of successful grammars. The ultimate outcome of these investigations should be a theory of linguistic structure in which the descriptive devices utilized in particular grammars are presented and studied abstractly, with no specific reference to particular languages. One function of this theory is to provide a general method for selecting a grammar for each language, given a corpus of sentences of this language.

The central notion in linguistic theory is that of “linguistic level.” A linguistic level, such as phonemics, morphology, phrase structure, is essentially a set of descriptive devices that are made available for the construction of grammars; it constitutes a certain method for representing utterances. We can determine the adequacy of a linguistic theory by developing rigorously and precisely the form of grammar corresponding to the set of levels contained within this theory, and then investigating the possibility of constructing simple and revealing grammars of this form for natural languages. We shall study several different conceptions of linguistic structure in this manner, considering a succession of linguistic levels of increasing complexity which correspond to more and more powerful modes of grammatical description; and we shall attempt to show that linguistic theory must contain at least these levels if it is to provide, in particular, a satisfactory grammar of English. Finally, we shall suggest that this purely formal investigation of the structure of language has certain interesting implications for semantic studies.1

2

THE INDEPENDENCE OF GRAMMAR

2.1From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements. All natural languages in their spoken or written form are languages in this sense, since each natural language has a finite number of phonemes (or letters in its alphabet) and each sentence is representable as a finite sequence of these phonemes (or letters), though there are infinitely many sentences. Similarly, the set of ‘sentences’ of some formalized system of mathematics can be considered a language. The fundamental aim in the linguistic analysis of a language L is to separate the grammatical sequences which are the sentences of L from the ungrammatical sequences which are not sentences of L and to study the structure of the grammatical sequences. The grammar of L will thus be a device that generates all of the grammatical sequences of L and none of the ungrammatical ones. One way to test the a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Part I: Syntactic Structures
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Part II: Syntactic Structures after 60 Years