3.Five stages of development
1) The Classical Theory, which aims to make linguistics a science. Syntactic Structures,1975 2)The Standard Theory, which deals with how semantics should be studied in a linguistic theory Aspects of the Theory of Syntax,1965 3)The Extended Standard Theory, which focuses discussion on language universals and universal grammar Studies on Semantic in Generative Grammar,1972 4)The Revised Extended Standard Theory (or GB), which focuses on Government and Binding Lectures on Government and Binding,1981 5)The Minimalist Program, which is a further revision of the previous theory. The Minimal Program,1995 Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework,1998
4)What is a generative grammar? ①By a generative grammar， Chomsky simply means
“a system of rules that in some explicit and welldefined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences”. He believes that every speaker of a language has mastered and internalized a generative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language. “Thus a generative grammar attempts to specify what the speaker actually knows， not what he may report about his knowledge.” (Chomsky, 1965) ②To generate is to predict what could be the possible sentences of language. ③Transformation is a kind of process that transforms one sentence into another. It uses a finite number of rules to produce infinite number of sentences.
ⅡThe Classical
Theory and the Standard Theory
1.How to begin the study of Language Universal?
1)Chomsky believes that every speaker of language has mastered and internalized a generative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language. And the generative grammar, means “a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences ”. 2)In order to reach his ultimate goal, Chomsky puts forward three different levels to evaluate grammars on: ①the observational adequacy level ②the descriptive adequacy level ③the explanatory adequacy 3)Contrary to Bloomfield’s data-oriented discovery procedure, Chomsky insists on the Hypothesis-deduction method and his research is called evaluation process
2.The classical Theory
1)It aims to make linguistics a science: 2)Its features: ①emphasis on generative ability of language ② introduction of transformational rules ③grammatical description regardless of meaning 3)Chomsky put forward three kinds of grammar: ①finite state grammar ②phrase structure grammar ③transformational grammar
4.The Innateness Hypothesis ( Why should there be a TG Grammar?)
When as a student of Hebrew with the structuralist methodology, he found that the classification of structural elements of language according to distribution and substitution had its limitation……he believes that language is somewhat innate, and that children are born with what he calls a Language Acquisition Device, which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them for language learning ......According to him, the study of language, or the structure of language, can throw some light on the nature of the human mind.
Hypothesis is based on some important facts: 1).Children learn their native language very fast and with little effort. 2).Children learn their mother tongue in very different environments, but they follow more or less the same stages in acquisition: ①the babbling stage ②nonsense word stage ③holophrastic stage ④two-word utterance ⑤developing grammar ⑥near-adult grammar ⑦full competence
Main interests Linguistics ·Psychology ·Philosophy of language · Philosophy of mind ·Politics ·Ethics Notable ideas Generative grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, government and binding, X-bar theory, Chomsky hierarchy, context-free grammar, principles and parameters, the minimalist program, language acquisition device, poverty of the stimulus, Chomsky-Schützenberger theorem, Chomsky
Transformational-Generative Grammar
ⅠThe Birth of TG Grammar And the Innateness Hypothesis
1.Founder:American linguist Noam Chomsky
Full name Avram Noam Chomsky Born 7 December 1928 (1928-12-07) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Era 20th/21st-century philosophy Region Western Philosophy School Linguistics, Analytic
Normal Form, propaganda model
2.The mark of the beginning
The publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957 In Syntactic Structures, Chomsky tries to construct a "formalized theory of linguistic structure" and places emphasis on "rigorous formulations" and "precisely constructed models".