#transformational grammar

[farajsawani]

THE CHOMSKYAN THEORY: Past and Present

THE CHOMSKYAN THEORY: Past and Present

Introduction It is widely known that Chomsky has  brought about a revolution in the field of linguistics. He has postulated a syntactic base called deep structure that consists of phrase structure rewrite rules and a set of transformations. Those phrase rewrite rules generate base or kernel sentences. Then transformational rules transform these kernel sentences into derived ones the sentences of…

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[joshisanonymous]

Linguistics as engineering.

I’ve never liked Chomsky, despite never reading anything by him. His ideas are so prevalent in linguistics, at least in American universities, that you don’t really have to read his work to be exposed to his ideas. However, it’s important to me to have a good idea of the context within which ideas have been proposed and developed, so I finally read Syntactic Structures(Chomsky, 1957/2002), which…

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[brick-wahl]

Band names

Band names and transformational grammar

From a long thread on bands that have phrases for names, and why old people hate them: There is an automatic tendency to turn band names into partial phrases, even if they are not. Thus, Quicksilver Messenger Service became The Quicksilver Messenger Service, because we are programmed to think of that first noun as an adjective instead of a series of nonsense nouns. Jefferson Airplane became The…

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[ohlittlecloud-blog]

It is the height of spring. The trees are in full leaf. The shrubbery is in full leaf. The trees are green. The shrubbery is green. The green is intense. The trees are still. The shrubbery is still. The trees are shadowed. The shrubbery is shadowed. The shadows are complex. The sky is blue. The sky is still. The blue is whole. The pool is very still. The deck is very still. The poet is very still. The chair is very still. The table is very still. The trees are very still. The facade is very still. The pool is composed. The deck is composed. The poet is composed. The chair is composed. The table is composed. The trees are composed. The facade is composed. The pool is silent. The deck is silent. The poet is silent. The chair is silent. The table is silent. The trees are silent. The facade is silent. They are a tableau. The tableau is whole. The tableau is enclosed. The facade belongs to the home. The facade is at the rear. The silence is very nearly whole.

From: David Foster Wallace (1999) Death is Not The End in Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (having undergone transformations as posited by Ohmann (1964))

[rekognitionoisuled]

My toothbrush is pregnant again.

Andrew Radford, Transformational Grammar

#arguably my favorite semantically ill-formed sentence #"again"!

[lingcod]