Syntactic Structures

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES
In the case of (42i), do is introduced by rule (40) as the bearer of
the unaffixed element 0. If C had been developed into S or past by
rule (29 i), rule (40) would have introduced do as a bearer of these
elements, and we would have such sentences as "does he arrive,"
"did he arrive." Note that no new morphophonemic rules are
needed to account for the fact that do + Ø -> /duw/, do + S → /dəz/,
do + past—> /did/ ; we need these rules anyway to account for the
forms of do as a main verb. Notice also that T q must apply after
(29 i), or number will not be assigned correctly in questions.
In analyzing the auxiliary verb phrase in rules (28), (29), we
considered S to be the morpheme of the third person singular and
0 to be the morpheme affixed to the verb for all other forms of the
subject. Thus the verb has S if the noun subject has Ø ("the boy
arrives") and the verb has Ø if S("the the boys subject arrive"). has
An alternative that we did not consider was to eliminate the zero
morpheme and to state simply that no affix occurs if the subject is
not third person singular. We see now that this alternative is not
acceptable. We must have the Ø morpheme or there will be no
affix in (42 i) for do to bear, and rule (40) will thus not apply to (42i).
There are many other cases where transformational analysis provides
compelling reasons for or against the establisment of zero morphemes.
As a negative case, consider the suggestion that intransitive
verbs be analyzed as verbs with zero object. But then the
passive transformation (34) would convert, e.g., "John — slept — Ø "
into the non-sentence "Ø — was slept — by John" "was slept by
John." Hence this analysis of intransitives must be rejected. We
return to the more general problem of the role of transformations
in determining constituent structure in § 7.6.
The crucial fact about the question transformation T q is that
almost nothing must be added to the grammar in order to describe
it. Since both the subdivision of the sentence that it imposes and
the rule for appearance of do were required independently for
negation, we need only describe the inversion effected by T q in
extending the grammar to account for yes-or-no questions. Putting
it differently, transformational analysis brings out the fact that
negatives and interrogatives have fundamentally the same 'struc-
SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH
ture', and it can make use of this fact to simplify the description
of English syntax.
In treating the auxiliary verb phrase we left out of consideration
forms with the heavy stressed element do as in "John does come,"
etc. Suppose we set up a morpheme A of contrastive stress to which
the following morphophonemic rule applies.
(45) .. V. . + A . .V' .., where ' indicates extra heavy stress.
We now set up a transformation TA that imposes the same
structural analysis of strings as does T not (i.e., (37)), and adds A to
these strings in exactly the position where T not, adds not or n't.
Then just as T not, yields such sentences as
(46) (i) John doesn't arrive (from John # S + n't arrive, by (40))
(ii) John can't arrive (from John # S + can + n't # arrive)
(iii) John hasn't arrived (from John # S + have + n't # en + arrive)
TA yields the corresponding sentences
(47) (i) John does arrive (from John # S + A # arrive, by (40))
(ii) John can arrive (from John # S + can + A # arrive)
(iii) John has arrived (from John # S + have+ A #en + arrive).
Thus TA is a transformation of 'affirmation' which affirms the
sentences "John arrives", "John can arrive", "John has arrived,"
etc., in exactly the same way as Tnot negates them. This is formally
the simplest solution, and it seems intuitively correct as well.
There are still other instances of transformations that are
determined by the same fundamental syntactic analysis of sentences,
namely (37). Consider the transformation T so that converts the
pairs of strings of (48) into the corresponding strings of (49):
(48) (i) John — S — arrive, I — Ø — arrive
(ii) John — S + can — arrive, I — Ø + can — arrive
(iii) John — S + have — en + arrive, I — Ø + have — en + arrive
(49) (i) John — S — arrive — and — so — Ø — I
(ii) John — S + can — arrive — and — so — Ø + can — I
(iii) John — S + have — en + arrive — and — so — Ø + have — I.
Applying rules (29 ii, iii), (40), and the morphophonemic rules, we
ultimately derive