Theoretical grammar

9. Find the included and the adjoined, positional variants;

1. "So here I am. For a few days," he added. 2. "What do you do when you are on leave? Play golf? Sail a boat? Go fishing?" 3. "Where do you come from?"--"Paris." 4. "I may get married."--"To"Celeste¹" --"Yes, to Celeste." 5. "What am I? Her uncle?" 6. "Where is he?"-- "Here." 7. "Harold was always very abstentions."--"Here," said the widow. "Did he drink?"--"Like a fish." 8. "Did you come to see your aunt?"--"No, to see my uncle." 9. "Do you like Bait, dear?"-- "Like him? We have nothing in common." 10. "This so-called town of yours hasn't any width. Just length."

Lecture № 4

Linguistics (descriptive) in the USA

Descriptive linguistics developed from the necessity of studying half-known and unknown languages of the Indian tribes.

At the beginning of the 20th century these languages were rapidly dying out under the conditions of 'American culture', or 'American way of life', which had brought the Indian peoples poverty, diseases and degradation. The study of these languages was undertaken from purely scientific interests.

The Indian languages had no writing and, therefore, had no history. The comparative historical method was of little use here, and the first step of work was to be keen observation and rigid registration of linguistic forms.

Furthermore, the American languages belong to a type that has little in common with the Indo-European languages: Descriptive linguists had to give up analysing sentences in terms of traditional parts of speech: it was by far more convenient to describe linguistic forms according to their position and their co-occurrence in sentences.

The description of a language became more refined at the beginning of the 20^th century due to the development of the concept of 'phoneme'. The concept of phoneme was worked out by the Russian linguists Baudouin de Courtenay and his student Kruszewski, and developed by the linguists of the Prague School

Franz Boas is usually mentioned as the predecessor of American Descriptive Linguistics.

The American linguists began by criticizing the Praguian oppositional method and claiming a more objective--distributional--approach to phonemes. But it soon became clear that the facts established were the same, and only the approach was different.

The American Descriptive School began with the works of Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield. American linguistics developed under the influence of these two prominent scientists.

Sapir studied a great variety of languages. He had many students who now teach in many universities in the USA and continue his work. His most known work is Language An Introductory to the Study of Speech.

Leonard Bloomfield is considered to be a more rigid theorist. His book of the same title as Sapir's Language, is more systematic than Sapir's, and the treatment of linguistic problems is more modern.

To have a deeper understanding of modern grammar we must get acquainted with the main concepts of Broomfield's book.

Broomfield understood language as a workable system of signals, that is linguistic forms by means of which people communicate:'"...every language consists of a number of signals, linguistic forms".

Broomfield's understanding of 'meaning' seemed to be very unusual at that time. Later his concept of 'meaning' was developed by Charles Fries but even now 'meaning' is one of the problems linguistics seeks to solve. According to Broomfield, "the meanings of speech-forms could be scientifically defined only if all branches of science, including, psychology and physiology, were close to perfection. Until that time, phonology, and with it all the semantic phase of language study, rests upon an assumption, the fundamental assumption of linguistics: we must assume that in every speech community some utterances are alike in form and meaning".

The quotations clarify two things:

the meaning of an utterance can be found through the response of the hearers;

a sentence has a grammatical meaning which does not depend on the choice of the items of lexicon.

This can be illustrated by the following:

1. The selection of 'none' instead of'someone¹ changes the meaning of an affirmative statement into negative ("Someone has come--None has come"): the selection of an animate noun instead of the inanimate is possible only with a changed meaning of the verb:

"The wind blew the leaves away--The man blew his nose."

Broomfield understood grammar as meaningful arrangement of linguistic forms from morphemes to sentences. He wrote that the meaningful arrangement of forms in a language constitutes its grammar, and in general, there seem to be four ways of arranging linguistic forms: (1) order; (2) modulation: "John!" (call), "John?" (question), "John" (statement); (3) phonetic modification (do--don't); (4) selection of forms which contributes the factor of meaning.

He produced the definition of the sentence that is now accepted by modern American linguistics. This definition is given in Ch. Fries's book The Structure of English as the best among other two hundred definitions, and it reads as follows: "...Each sentence is an independent linguistic form, not included by virtue of any grammatical construction into any larger linguistic form."

Broomfield also said that a sentence is marked off by a certain 'modulation' or intonation.

He stated that in English the most favourite type of sentence is the 'actor---action' construction having two positions. These positions are not interchangeable. All the forms that can fill in a given position thereby constitute a form-class. In this manner the two main form-classes are detected: the class of Nominal expressions and the class of finite verb expressions.

4. Thus Broomfield has shown a new approach to the breaking up of the word-stock into classes of words, the syntactical or the positional approach Broomfield writes: "We shall see that the great form-classes of a language are most easily described in terms of word-classes, because the form-class of a phrase is usually determined by one or more of the words which appear in it."

These long form-classes are subdivided into smaller ones.

In modern linguistic works the nominal phrase of a sentence is marked as the symbol NP, and the finite verb phrase-- as VP. The symbols N and V stand for the traditional parts of speech, nouns and verbs.

The selection of the subclasses of N and V leads to different sentence-structures.

The division of the word-stock into form-classes is developed in Fries' book “The Structure of English” and is dealt with in a most known article by Zellig S. Harris Co-Occurrence and Transformation in Linguistic Structure.

Perhaps Broomfield was one of the first to speak about 'utterance' as a linguistic unit. Meanwhile the concept of utterance is of importance for the study of unknown languages.

The first mentioning of the Immediate Constituents (1С) can also be found in Bloomfield's book. This theory of the IC which in the middle of .our century fascinated the minds of the linguists.

ІІ. Practical tasks

1. Answer the following question.

What gave rise to the advent of Descriptive linguistics?

Why was the comparative historic method of little use in the study of the languages of Indian tribes?

What was the first step of work in this field?

What type do American Indian languages belong to?

What does the term 'agglomerating language' mean?

What was the convenient method for describing such languages?

What concept contributed to a more refined description of languages?

By whom was the concept of phoneme worked out?

Whom do we usually mention as the predecessor of Descriptive linguistics?

What method did the Descriptive linguistics criticise and what approach to phonemes did it propose?

Which of the two methods--the oppositional or the distributional - gives a more exact description of the linguistic facts?

Who were the founders of Descriptive linguistics?

* * *

What was the role played by E. Sapir in Descriptive linguistics?

How can we characterise L. Bloomfield's works?

By whom were Bloomfield's ideas later developed?

What are Bloomfield's main ideas?

How did Bloomfield understand language?

What is the role of meaning in Bloomfield's theory?

Can you give the definition of meaning in accordance with Bloomfield's theory?

What is the grammatical meaning of an utterance?

How does Bloomfield understand grammar?

What is the definition of the sentence given by Bloomfield?

What is the favorite sentence-type in English according to Bloomfield?

* * *

What are the main positions of the ACTOR-ACTION sentence-type? How are the main form-classes defined?

What is the new approach to the breaking up of the word-stock into classes of words proposed by Bloomfield?

How are the form-classes of a language most easily described?

How are the long form-classes further subdivided?

What do the symbols N and V represent?

How do we understand the symbols NP and VP?

What is the furthest division of the N-class and the V-class?

What is the result of the selection of the N and V subclasses?

By whom was the division of the word-stock into form-classes further developed?

By whom was the concept of utterance introduced?

What prompted the introduction of this concept?

What is the theory of the Immediate Constituents?

Who was the first to introduce the 1С?

Who can we suppose might have influenced the idea of the 1С?

Lecture № 5

Сontemporary descriptive linguistics

The main contribution of the American Descriptive School to modern linguistics is the elaboration of the techniques of linguistic analysis. The main methods are the Distributional method and the method of Immediate Constituents.

A recent development of Descriptive linguistics gave rise to a new method --the Transformational grammar. The TG was first suggested by Harris as a method of analysing the concrete utterances and was later elaborated by Noam Chomsky as a synthetic method of constructing sentences. The Transformational grammar refers to syntax only and presupposes the identification of such linguistic units as phonemes, morphemes and form-classes.

Bloomfield wrote but little about specific procedures and techniques of analysis. It was carried out by his followers and pupils.

The most widely known for his syntactic studies is Zellig S. Harris. A series of articles by Harris are to be found in Language--the journal of American Descriptive linguistics. Harris's main works are Method in Structural Linguistics and Co-Occurrence and Transformation in Linguistic Structure.

Charles Carpenter Fries is another prominent figure of American linguistic theory. His main work The Structure of English is widely known in our country.

* * *

The scientists belonging to this branch of linguistics understand language as one of the semeiotic systems, that is a system of signals by which people communicate.

Animals are supposed to have semeiotic systems of their own. This problem is now under investigation.

The vocal or natural language is the most important of all the semeiotic systems used by people. A natural language is a system of vocal signals. These signals are arbitrary in the sense that they are not inherent or anyhow connected with the nature of things they refer to. Every human being learns the system of the language of his community and by and by he begins to understand what people around him say and then begins to speak himself. The task of a scientist is to observe and to describe how people actually say things, but he should not prescribe how things should be said.

The research is carried out in the synchronic plane. Languages are studied as spoken languages only, the point of view of their historical development is utterly neglected for the time being.

No comparative studies are carried out, only one language; the given language is being studied. This principle has been the basic progressive feature of Descriptive linguistics; it enabled the Descriptive linguists to do away with the traditional approach that made the scholars understand any language through the norms of Latin grammar, thus distorting the peculiar structure of the language studied.

The most important part of the study is 'field-work' that comprises three parts: (1) the work with native informants (people who speak the language studied by the linguist as their mother-tongue); (2) the filing of results (different systems of indexes and slips are used): (3) systematization.

The writing systems also receive considerable attention. This branch of linguistics is called or 'Graphonomy¹.

When the methods of Descriptive linguistics were extended to the study of such languages as English and other languages well known to the linguists, the analysis was continued in such a way as if the language were unknown and the linguist was to decipher it as if it were the cracking of a code.

Descriptive theory recognises the following fundamental concepts for analysing linguistic material:

Utterance: "An utterance is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on the part of the person." Sentence: The definition given by Bloomfield is accepted. Structural meaning The structural meaning of a sentence is the meaning signaled by the parts of the sentence irrespective of their lexical meanings.

The ideas of structural meaning of a sentence-structure was introduced not only by L. Bloomfield, but also by Acad. L. V. Shcherba who gave his famous example of the structural meaning in the non-sensical sentence "Глокая куздра штеко будланула бокра и куздрячит бокренка".

Environment or position of an element is understood as a set of the neighboring elements.

Distribution: The distribution of an element is the total of all environments in which it occurs. There is a second definition used by Descriptive linguistics, namely: Distribution is the class of elements that occur in the same position.

Contrastive distribution is understood as a difference of two linguistic units occurring in the same environment and changing one linguistic form into another linguistic form.

Non-contrastive distribution is understood as a difference of two linguistic units occurring in the same environment without changing one linguistic form into another linguistic form.

Complementary distribution: Two units are said to be in complementary distribution if only one of them normally occurs in certain environments and only the other normally occurs in other surroundings, e.g. -(e)s [z], [s], [iz] in 'rooms', 'books', 'boxes', etc.

Morpheme: The morpheme is "a linguistic form which bears no partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other form."

Allomorph: An allomorph is a variant of a morpheme which occurs in certain environments. Thus a morpheme is a group of one or more allomorphs (or morphs).

The allomorphs of one and the same morpheme

must be in complementary distribution;

the sum of their environments must be equal to the sum of environments of some single morpheme in the language, e.g. the allomorphs [z], [s],[iz] together have the same set of environments as the single zero suffix: room--rooms, book--books, box--boxes, etc.;

they must be similar in meaning.

Prof. A. Smirnitzky, who recognised the above mentioned criteria, pointed out that the basic phonetic variants of the three allomorphs [z]. [s]. [iz] and [d], [t], [id] are respectively [z] and [d ], as they are produced by native speakers in conditions where any variant could appear--after vowels; the voiceless variants [s], [t] are the result of assimilation to the preceding voiceless consonants, and [iz], [id] represent the historically earlier forms with an [i] preserved between two phonemes of a similar character.

We may note that the differences in the environments are the same for such series of pairs as:

boy - boys	pay - paid
book - books	talk - talked
man - men	take - took
sheep - sheep	cut - cut

The first series of minimal pairs fits in the environments:

"The - is here," "The--s are here"; the second--in the environments: "I'll -- with you," "I --ed with you yesterday." From these sequences we may extract such series as 'boy, book ...' and 'pay, talk...' and not only [s] or [z] and [t] or [d] but also the changes of [ж] to [e] and of [ei] to [u]. Thus we may say that the replacement of [ж] by [e] in 'man' yields 'men' in exactly the same way as the addition of [z] to 'boy' yields 'boys': and the replacement of [ei] by [u j in 'take' yields 'took' in exactly the same way as does the adding of [d ] to 'pay'.

The same criteria hold for identifying suppletive forms. According to Prof. A. Smirnitzky, the paradigm of the verb 'go' is recognised on the basis of three features (when compared to the paradigm of such a verb as 'look': (1) the lexical meaning of the forms is identical, (2) they are in complementary distribution, (3) the set of environments of suppletive forms is the same as that of the suffixed forms, namely:



go	-	look
-	went	looked
gone	-	looked

Instances of complementary distribution are numerous in morphology. Forms with phonemic replacement and suppletive forms can be described in terms, of complementary distribution on the basis of pattern congruity, e.g.

book - books	look - looked
class - classes	start - started
man - men	write - wrote
	go - went

Form-classes or positional classes: In Structural linguistics this classification is set up on the basis of a particular choice of diagnostic co-oceurrents: 'cloth' and 'paper' both occur, say, in "The -- is" where 'diminish' does not appear:

we call this class N. And 'diminish' and 'grow' both occur, say, in "It will --" where 'paper' and 'cloth' do not: we call this class V.

Construction: A construction is any significant group of words or morphemes.

Constituent: A constituent is a linguistic form that enters into some larger construction, e.g. the constituents "the old man" and "has gone to his son's house" constitute a sentence.

Immediate constituent: An immediate constituent is one of the two constituents of which the given linguistic form is directly built up. The dichoto-mous division of a construction begins with the larger elements and continues as far as possible, e.g. The old man ] went to his son's house.

The old man | went to his son's house.

The ||old man | went || to his son's house.

The || old ||| man | went || to ||| his son's house.

The || old ||| man | went || to ||| his son'| s |||| house.

The || old ||| man | went || to ||| his son'|||| s ||||| house.

Endocentric construction: Endocentric constructions are of two kinds: coordinate and subordinate; they have the following distinctive feature in common: the position of the construction in the sentence is the same as the position of one of its constituents, e.g.

"Boys and girls came in" or "boys came in" or "girls came in" are equally analysable into 1С. The same holds for "very fresh milk" or "fresh milk" or "milk" in "Cats like--."

Exocentric constructions differ from endocentric constructions in that they have a position (or function) different; from the position of either of their constituents, e.g. "John worked," "with me," "by running away." As Bloomfield phrases it: "The resultant phrase belongs to the form-class of no immediate constituent".

Linguistic levels: The main elements of language are usually recognised by Descriptive linguistics: the phoneme and the morpheme. A third level is often recognised, the level of constructions or the syntactic level.

Any utterance or part of utterance can be described in terms of morphemes and any morpheme can be described in terms of phonemes. Thus any utterance can be presented on the phonemic level (as a sequence of phonemes) and on the morphemic level (as a sequence of morphemes).

The notion of levels is closely connected with that of isomorphism. Isomorphism means similarity of relations between the units concerned.

The structure of language is understood as consisting of different levels connected with each other by the relation of hierarchy. Hierarchy means that the units of a lower level are elements of which elements of a higher level are built up and into which they are analysable.

Charles Carpenter Fries's book The Structure of English must attract our closest attention because it served as theoretical basis for the compiling of several Fries's series, that is English text-books for foreign students.

In accord with one of the main assumptions of Descriptive linguistics the material which furnished the linguistic evidence for the analysis and discussions in Fries's book were some fifty hours of recorded conversations-- conversations in which the participants were entirely unaware that their speech was being recorded.

Sentences and Their Classification'

Fries adopts the definition of the sentence given by Bloomfield and the definition of the utterance by Harris. He develops Bloomfield's idea of the meaning of the linguistic form as the response to it. Instead of classifying sentences in accord with "the purpose of communication" Fries classifies them in accord with the responses sentences elicit. The utterances that begin conversation and elicit responses are called "situation utterance units." The responses and the sentences that follow the situation sentences in the same utterance are called "sequence sentences." They are also called non-situation sentences. The situation utterances (or sentences) are further classed into three major groups in accord with the responses they elicit, namely.

utterances that are immediately and regularly followed by oral responses only: (a) greetings, (b) calls, (c) questions;

utterances regularly eliciting 'action'-responses: requests or commands;

utterances regularly eliciting conversational signals of attention to continuous discourse: statements.

This utterance-response theory is a basis for training exercises aiming at the development of correct and natural responses of students of foreign languages.

The idea of situation sentences and sequence sentences is also very useful because it involves the study of substitutes and other means of connecting sentences in natural discourse.

The Revision of the Classical Parts of the Sentence and the

Parts of Speech

In Fries's book we can find a critical revision of the classical analysis of the parts of the sentence. Fries writes that this kind of analysis is of no value for an effective practical command of English. This classical analysis consists solely in ascribing the technical terms 'subject', 'predicate' , 'indirect object', 'direct object' to certain parts of the sentence.

The grouping of morphemes into positional classes with the help of'environments' suggested by Harris led to the recognition of a few 'diagnostic frames' in Charles Fries' work.

Fries chose three patterns of English sentences as 'frames' to fill the positions with the words under the test.

If a word could fit into a position without causing a change of the structural meaning of the sentence, the word was considered to belong to a certain form-class.

	1	2	3	4
Frame A	The concert 1	was 2	good 3	(always) 4
Frame B	The clerk 1	remembered 2	the tax 3	(suddenly)
Frame C	The term	Went	-	there

Part II

Thus the words were divided into four form-classes. Fries gives no names to these four classes of words, except the numbers: Class 1. Class 2. Class 3, Class 4.

The Function Words

Besides the four classes Fries also distinguishes function words. These words do not fill in the forms of the sentence frames. They are grammatical signals of the structural meaning of the sentence (There was a man in the room), (Please dance); or they are signals of the grammatical meaning of the words in the sentence (Give me a sheet of paper --Give me the (that) sheet of paper). Fries estimates the number of the function words as 154.

Here belong: (1) 'determiners' as occur in the same position as 'the', that is with Class 1 words; (2) 'modal and auxiliary verbs' as occur with Class 2 words; (3) words of the 'very' type as occur with Class 3 words (very good'. 'extremely bad'); (4) conjunctions; (5) prepositions; (6) introducers (there, it); (7) interrogative words (when, where, who, what, how, etc.); (8) interjections; (9) the words 'yes' and 'no'; (10) attention getting signals (look, say, listen); (11) the polite formula 'please'; (12) 'lets' as a device which includes the speaker into a request and some other smaller divisions of the third group.

The Grammatical Meaning of a Sentence

Fries develops the idea of the grammatical meaning of the sentence suggested by Bloomfield.

He says that it is the classes of the words used in the sentence, their formal devices (morphemes), and their positions that signal the structural meaning of a sentence and its parts, not the concrete lexical meaning of the words.

To elucidate this he presents a set of sentences with nonsensical words, whose grammatical meaning is quite clear, though. They are:

Woggles	ugged	diggles
Uggs	woggled	diggs
Woggs	diggled	uggs

The structural signals of these sentences make us understand that 'woggles' 'uggs' and 'woggs' are the words of the First Class, that is 'thing words' of some kind; that in each case there are more than one of these 'things', and that they, at some time in the past, performed certain 'actions' (denoted by the Class 2 words): and that these actions were directed towards other 'things', denoted as 'diggles', 'diggs', and 'woggles'.

There is another proof that a syntactic structure has a meaning of its own, irrespective of the meaning of the words used in the sentence, [f the construction of the sentence is not clear, we shall hesitate in understanding the sentence, although we have command of the words used in it.

Thus a telegram "Ship sails today" is ambiguous: the sentence could be understood as a statement and as a command. The ambiguity arises because of the uncertainty of the positions: is 'ship' position 1 or 2? Is 'sails' position 2, or 3? (as in "The clerk remembered the tax.")

Thus Fries confirms Bloomfield's idea that a sentence needs the following means or ways, to be a complete grammatical unit: (1) the selection of the part of speech units, (2) the forms of these items (morphemes), (3) the arrangement of positions, and (4) the intonation or sequences of pitch.

But Fries finds that these means are not sufficient to arrive at the complete structural meaning of any utterance.

The Phrase Grammar

To arrive at the complete structural meaning of a sentence, to know how the sentence is built we must determine how the separate units of the sentence its constituents, are grouped.

Fries introduces in the analysis of the sentence the idea of phrases consisting of the immediate constituents.

To show the importance of the phrase grammar he compares in his book the phrase grammar with the mathematical grouping of" the items in a problem.

He shows that the answer to a very trivial problem such as "Five plus four times six minus three" will vary with each different grouping of the constituents, although there will be each time the same items: 5, 4, 6. and 3 and the same three operations: addition, multiplication and subtraction. Depending on different grouping there may be four different answers'

(5+4)(6-3)=27; 5+(4x6)-3=26;

5+4(6-3)= 17; [(5+4)x6]-3=51

This problem shows how important the grouping of the constituents is.

English Phrases

Each language has its own system of structural grouping and the signals of the groups (or phrases). In English there are generally two Phrase Grammar in a phrase. English has dichotomous phrase structure, which means that the phrase in English can always be divided into two elements. One of the signals of the group boundaries is the function word-preposition.

In spoken language the structural phrases are shown by intonation and pauses. This suggests teaching the phrase grammar together with the rhythmical division of the chunks of speech. The practical value of this theory is great, because it gives correct division of speech into phrases that signals the meaning of the syntactic constructions and gives the speech its natural rhythm.

It is a well-known fact that a speaker of a foreign language who has a perfect command of the sounds, but whose phrase pauses are wrong, cannot be understood by native listeners. This proves the practical value of the phrase grammar.

The Analytical Model of the Sentence

Charles Fries has suggested the following diagramme for the analysis of he sentence which also brings forth the mechanism of generating sentences.

The largest 1С of a simple sentence are the NP and the VP. The boundary between them goes between the word of Class 1 and the word of Class 2. The NP in English has two 1С--the determiner and Class 1 word (N). The vertical lines must show the boundary inside the phrase. If the word of the first class has an attribute to it (as is the case in our sentence below), this small phrase must be again divided into the 1С. The VP comprises two 1С: the verb itself, and either NP (if the V is transitive), or a word of Class 4 if the V is intransitive. Thus we must show the boundary between the V and the NP ('his promotion'), then analyse the NP-- 'his promotion'.

The deeper the layer of the phrase (the greater its number), the smaller the phrase, and the smaller its 1С.

The analysis is begun with the largest 1С and comes down to the smallest phrases. If the sentence is complex the largest 1С are the sentences included into the complex construction.

The diagramme may be drawn somewhat differently without changing its principle of analysis. This new diagramme is called a 'candelabra' diagramme:

In fact, if we turn the analytical (candelabra) diagramme upside down, we get a new diagramme which is called a 'derivation tree.' because it is tit not to analyse sentences, but shows how a sentence is derived (or built, or generated) from the 1С

The Derivation Tree Diagramme

The derivation tree is drawn as two branches forking out from the sign S (sentence).

Each branch has nodes (joints or knots) in it from which smaller branches fork out. Each node corresponds to a phrase, the two forking branches correspond to the '1С of the phrase. The diagramme below is a derivation tree for generating simple sentences with a transitive verb.

To generate a sentence we must know that it consists firstly of an NP and a VP, that an NP consists of a determiner and an N, that a VP with a transitive V consists of a V and an NP, that the NP again has a determiner and an N. All this is shown by the diagramme called the 'derivation tree.' The generating of the sentence involves first only the classes of words and the function words. Only on the lowest level (the morphemic level) we choose the concrete lexical elements.

II. Practical tasks

1. Answer the following questions.

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:

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

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:

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:

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

1. Answer the following questions.

What made it necessary to work out more efficient language teaching methods?

What was the purpose of language teaching in the previous centuries?

What is the purpose of language teaching today?

What task is linguistics given?

What were the fundamental problems for the linguists to solve before working out an efficient theory for language teaching?

Does the solution of these problems help work out a workable linguistic theory?

Why was it necessary to revise the previously existing theories?

What can the practical application of the linguistic theory be?

Why has the young child's speech problem come to light?

Why do some children easily learn two languages?

Is there any limit to the variety of linguistic constructions?

Are the syntactic constructions diverse or do they only seem to be so?

Why does it seem impossible to master a language?

Do all people know all of its vocabulary?

Do all people master their native languages through conscious study?

What is the explanation of the puzzling phenomenon of learning the native language without conscious study or tuition at a very early age?

What explanation is offered by Paul Roberts?

Do you think that language structure is as complicated as it looks at first glance?

Would you understand Danish at first hearing or would it sound an incoherent jumble to you?

Do illiterate people speak their native language freely?

Does it prove that they have got the command of its grammar?

What enables people to learn and use natural languages with ease?

What is the task of the linguist who understands the simplicity of language system?

What do modem linguists and language teachers believe the system of any language to contain?

What is the kernel of a language?

Do many sentences belong to the kernel?

What kind of sentences belong to the kernel?

How do all the other constructions come into being?

Are derivation rules numerous and difficult?

What makes it possible for the child to grasp his native language and for human communities to speak it?

What is the main assumption of the Transformational grammar?

Is the Transformational grammar a new linguistic theory?

Who were the first propounders of the Transformational grammar?

What linguistic school gave rise to the Transformational grammar?

What non-transformational theories do you know?

What grammars sought to teach how a sentence is generated?

What is the model of the linear theory?

Why is P sometimes used instead of V?

In whose book is the model S--V--0 given?

Is the linear theory made use of in the draft syllabus of foreign languages of 1965?

Is the linear model familiar to the English teachers?

How did your first teacher of English explain the formation (generation) of the English sentence to you?

Why could you say that the linear theory is rather trivial?

What criticisms of the linear theory are generally offered?

Does the S--V--0 model indicate the grouping of the sentence?

What do we mean when we say that it doesn't?

* * *

Can the linear theory be applied to constructing sentences? If not, why?

Can passive constructions, exclamatory, interrogative and negative be built on the same model?

Does their formation need other models?

Will a number of models make grammar too complicated to be grasped and held in the mind?

Is the 1С model supposed to be stronger than the linear model?

What is its strong point?

What is a very important assumption of the dichotomous division?

What is meant when we say that all the linguistic forms are dichotomous?

What are rewriting rules?

What are the 1С rules by which a sentence is generated?

Why are they called rewriting rules?

How many elements can be rewritten or changed at a time?

What does the arrow sign denote?

Can you construct any other sentences using the same set of rewriting rules?

How does the procedure of sentence generation work?

What are the other ways of graphic representation of the sentence generation?

Why do we say that the derivation tree yields less information about the sentence formation than the rewriting rules?

What is clearly shown by the derivation tree?

Why do we say that the 1С model is more powerful than the linear model?

What are the advantages of the 1С model? Why is it still open to criticism?

Can it generate expanded sentences?

Is it reasonable or profitable to generate expanded sentences on the 1С model?

Is it possible at all to develop a set of rewriting rules for generating questions?

Are there cases when the 1С model cannot show that the relations between the elements of the two sentences are different?

Are the derivation trees of "John is easy to please" and "John is eager to please" the same?

What transformations will show the difference?

Is the application of the linear theory for generating sentences advisable?

Is the application of the 1С theory for generating sentences inadvisable or only limited?

Lecture № 7

Transformations in simple sentences

The two fundamental problems of the T-grammar are: (1) the establishment of the domain of the kernel sentences), and (2) the establishment of the set of transformation rules for deriving all the other sentences as their transforms.

Thus a fundamental distinction is made between two kinds of sentences: kernel sentences and transforms.

A third and a less important problem of the T-grammar is the establishment of the order in which the transformations occur.

The first problem has been dealt with in several works of contemporary linguists.

Z. S. Harris gives the following list of kernel sentences of the English language:

N vV (for the V that occurs with-out object)	The team went there.
N vV N	We'll take it.
N vV PN (for PN that have restricted co-occurrence with particular V)	The teacher looked at him.
N is N	He is an architect.
N is A	The girl is pretty.
N is PN	The paper is of importance.
N is D	The man is here.

Harris also includes a few 'minor constructions' into the set, such as

"N is between N and N" and some inert constructions which hardly enter into transformations: e. g. N! (a call), Yes.

He also makes a very important observation that a different set of kernel sentences may be yielded.

In accord with the valence of the V in the structure the set of kernel or basic sentences may be enlarged. Some authors distinguish three more basic structures in connection with the completeness of the VP (verb phrase) in the sentence, and also with regard to the capability of the structure to undergo different transformations.

The following sentence-structures are added to the kernel:

N vV N N (for the V of the GIVE subclass)	The teacher gave him his pen.
N v V N D (for the V of the PUT subclass)	He threw his coat on the sofa

Thus there may be different estimations of the kernel set, but it should be borne in mind that a smaller or greater number of the kernel sentences does not make the general idea of the T-grammar representation of the structure of a language. The later development of the T-grammar gave rize to the concept of the deep sentence formed on the basis of the obligatory valence of the V and its subclasses.

The set of kernel sentences reveals that they belong to two classes, those with a V and others with BE.

Some modern grammarians do not include BE into the V class. They say that BE is unique: most of the grammatical rules that apply to verbs do not apply to BE, most of those which apply to BE do not apply to verbs, to whose rules it (BE) almost always constitutes an exception.

All the kernel sentences can be regularly generated by means of the 1С rules, i. e. by means of the rewriting rules.

The problem of the transformational rules must begin with the definition of the term 'transformational rules' and the definition of the transform.

A transformational rule is a rule which requires or allows us to perform certain changes in the kernel structure. The product of a transformation is a transform It retains the grammatical and semantic relations of the kernel sentence it is derived from.

"A transformational rule tells us how to derive something from something else by switching things about, putting things in or leaving them out, and so on."

The transformational rules may be called also 'derivation rules' because they tell us how a variety of sentence structures and nominal structures are derived or generated from the kernel sentences.

E. g., from the kernel word 'love' a number of derivative words can be generated by means of certain rules, telling us what morphemes must be added and to what kernel they must be added (V or N):

love (N)	love (V)
lovely (A)	loving (A)	lovingly (D)
loveliness (N)	lovable (A)
loveless (A)	beloved (A)
	lover (N)

This shows that the kernel of a word may generate about ten new words. A kernel sentence structure also gives out a number, and an even much larger number, of derived transforms.

S NP	S S
the work of the machine	The machine does work.
the machine's work	Does the machine work? ...

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