评乔姆斯基的转换生成语法 Comments on Chomsky’s TG-grammar

语言学期末论文

评乔姆斯基的转换生成语法Comments on Chomsky’s TG-grammar

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Comments on Chomsky’s TG-grammar

Ⅰ. Introduction

Transformational-generative grammar is a theory of grammar which was proposed by the American linguist Chomsky in 1957. It experiences five stages which are The Classical Theory, The Standard Theory, The Extended Standard Theory, The Revised Extended Standard Theory (or GB) and The Minimalist Program. The theory has become one of the most popular theories in the world.

There are some leading theories in Chomsky’s Transformational-generative grammar. Chomsky believes that language is somewhat innate, and that children are born with what he calls a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them for language learning. He argues the child comes into the world with specific innate endowment, not only with general tendencies or potentialities, but also with knowledge of the nature of the world, and specifically with knowledge of the nature of language.

According to the LAD, children are born with an innate faculty for language in general, a blueprint for languages, not just for any particular language. From this, he would then suppose that if children are predisposed for learning any language, human languages in the world must have the same underlying principles in common. This is what Chomsky called language universals or linguistic universals.

He also puts forward the concept of the Deep Structure and the surface structure. Every sentence exists on two levels: the Surface structure which corresponds to the actual spoken sentence and the Deep structure which underlies meaning of the sentence. These two structures are transferable with each other. Chomsky has proposed an additional level of rules which can help transform the deep structure into the surface structure.

Ⅱ. Previous Studies

Lilu, a professor in Harbin Normal Universalistic, thinks that there are several theories of Chomsky worthing our further considerations. [1]He doubts that whether his theories of Innateness, Language Acquisition Device and linguistic Universals really exist, because there are no any exact evidences for them.

[2]Another professor, in Guangdong Province, whose name is Zhang Hongqun says that the appear of Transformational-generative grammar has violently punched the prevailing structuralist descriptive linguistic s and it is named “Chomsky’s Revolution” by people. He thinks that the Transformational-generative grammar has made great progresses in the our mother tongue acquisition and syntactic structure and provides a new direction for the linguists. He calls up the linguists to study it and give it a further development.

Du Yaoxuan gives lots of critical comments on the theory of Transformational-generative grammar. [3]He says that Transformational-generative grammar can only serve as a new theory to be explored and to broaden our eyes, but it is quite impossible to apply it into the education of linguistic study, because he considers Chomsky’s theory exotic, Deep Structure suppositional, and grammar rules limited.

Xingxin, whose comments o n Chomsky’s Transformational-generative grammar are quite opposite to that of Du Yaoxuan, thinks that hypothesis plays an important role in the developments of science in that we can receive a lot of truths from a supposed idea. She also says that the Deep structure is reasonable and it can help us solve many concrete problems.

Ⅲ. My Opinions

I think that every coin has two sides, so does Chomsky’s Transformational-generative grammar. Anyhow, his theory has offers us a new angle of view which will help us to study the linguistics deeply and then make great progresses. The theory of Deep Structure and Surface Structure well explains such questions as why there are sentences expressing same meaning but different in forms and why there is one sentence or phrase having two or more meanings. It also has some weaknesses in the