Syntactic Structures

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Ts SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES (104) (i) the boy studying in the library was known (by John) (ii) the boy studying in the library was found (by John) (iii) the boy was found studying in the library (by John) (105) the boy was known studying in the library (by John) The passive transformation applies only to sentences of the form NP — Verb — NP. Hence, to yield (104 ii), (103 ii) must be analyzable as (106) John — found — the boy studying in the library, with the noun phrase object "the boy studying in the library," (103i) will have a corresponding analysis, since we have the passive (104 i). But (103 ii) also has the passive (104 iii). From this we learn that (103 ii) is a case of the verb + complement construction studied in ob epfrom the § 7.4; i.e., that it is derived by the transformation underlying string (107) John — found studying in the library — the boy, with the verb "found" and the complement "studying in the library." The passive transformation will convert (107) into (104 iii), just as it converts (90) into (89). (103 i), however, is not a transform of the string "John — knew studying in the library — the boy" (the same form as (107)), since (105) is not a grammatical sentence. By studying the grammatical passives, then, we determine that "John found the boy studying in the library" (= (103 ii) is analyzable ambiguously as either NP — Verb — NP, with the object "the boy studying in the library," or as NP — Aux + V — NP — Comp, a transform of the string (107 which has the complex Verb "found studying in the library." "John knew the boy studying in the library" (= (103i)), however, has only the first of these analyses. The resulting description of (103) seems quite in accord with intuition. As another example of a similar type, consider the sentence (108) John came home. SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH Although "John" and "home" are NP's, and "came" is a Verb, investigation of the effect of transformations on (108) shows that it cannot be analyzed as a case of NP — Verb — NP. We cannot have "home was come by John" under the passive transformation, or "what did John come" under the question transformation T. We must therefore analyze (108) in some other way (if we are not to complicate unduly the description of these transformations), perhaps as NP — Verb — Adverb. Apart from such considerations as these, there do not appear to be very strong reasons for denying to (108) the completely counterintuitive analysis NP — Verb — NP, with "home" the object of "came". I think it is fair to say that a significant number of the basic criteria for determining constituent structure are actually transformational. The general principle is this: if we have a transformation that simplifies the grammar and leads from sentences to sentences in a large number of cases (i.e., a transformation under which the set of grammatical sentences is very nearly closed), then we attempt to assign constituent structure to sentences in such a way that this transformation always leads to grammatical sentences, thus simplifying the grammar even further. The reader will perhaps have noted a certain circularity or even apparent inconsistency in our approach. We define such transformations as the passive in terms of particular phrase structure analyses, and we then consider the behavior of sentences under these transformations in determining how to assign phrase structure to these sentences. In § 7.5 we used the fact that "John was drunk by midnight" (= (102)) does not have a corresponding 'active' as an argument against setting up a passive-to-active transformation. In § 7.6 we have used the fact that "John came home" ( = (108)) does not have a passive as an argument against assigning to it the constituent structure NP — Verb — NP. However, if the argument is traced carefully in each case it will be clear that there is no circularity or inconsistency. In each case our sole concern has been to decrease the complexity of the grammar, and we have tried to show that the proposed analysis is clearly simpler than the rejected alternatives. In some cases the grammar becomes simpler if we reject a certain
SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES transformation: in some cases reassignment of constituent structure is preferable. We have thus been following the course outlined in § 6. Making use of phrase structure and transformations, we are trying to construct a grammar of English that will be simpler than any proposed alternative; and we are giving no thought to the question of how one might actually arrive at this grammar in some mechanical way from an English corpus, no matter how extensive. Our weaker goal of evaluation instead of discovery eliminates any fear of vicious circularity in the cases discussed above. The intuitive correspondences and explanations of apparent irregularities seem to me to offer important evidence for the correctness of the approach we have been following. Cf. § 8. 8 THE EXPLANATORY POWER OF LINGUISTIC THEORY 8.1 So far we have considered the linguist's task to be that of producing a device of some sort (called a grammar) for generating all and only the sentences of a language, which we have assumed were somehow given in advance. We have seen that this conception of the linguist's activities leads us naturally to describe languages in terms of a set of levels of representation, some of which are quite abstract and non-trivial. In particular, it leads us to establish phrase structure and transformational structure as distinct levels of representation for grammatical sentences. We shall now proceed to formulate the linguist's goals in quite different and independent terms which, however, lead to very similar notions of linguistic structure. There are many facts about language and linguistic behavior that require explanation beyond the fact that such and such a string (which no one may ever have produced) is or is not a sentence. It is reasonable to expect grammars to provide explanations for some of these facts. For example, for many English speakers the phoneme sequence /əneym/ can be understood ambiguously as either "a name" or "an aim". If our grammar were a one-level system dealing only with phonemes, we would have no explanation for this fact. But when we develop the level of morphological representation, we find that, for quite independent reasons, we are forced to set up morphemes "a", "an", "aim" and "name", associated with the phonemic shapes /əə/, /ən/, /eym/ and /neym/. Hence, as an automatic consequence of the attempt to set up the morphology in the simplest possible way we find that the phoneme sequence /əneym/ is ambiguously represented on the morphological level. In general,
Page 1 and 2: A Mouton Classic "I had already dec
Page 3 and 4: Mouton de Gruyter Berlin • New Yo
Page 5 and 6: vi Introduction by David W. Lightfo
Page 7 and 8: x by David W. Lightfoot Introductio
Page 9 and 10: xiv Introduction by David W. Lightf
Page 11 and 12: xviii Introduction by David W. Ligh
Page 13 and 14: TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction to S
Page 15 and 16: I NTRODUCTION provide, in particula
Page 17 and 18: SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES fled in any wa
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Page 67: BIBLIOGRAPHY 23., A manual of phono

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