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:

Acceptability judgments

Rules

Innate 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.