5. Grammar and mind
1.
Transformational
Grammar
A
grammar of language may be regarded as a
set of rules operating upon certain data for certain purposes. First, the rules
of a grammar of English must generate all and only sentences in English. A
fluent speaker of English is capable of recognizing an infinite number of
strings of words as being grammatical sentences, and an infinite number of
strings of words as being grammatical. The rules of grammar must generate all
and only those he would recognize as grammatical. Second, the rules of the grammar must enable
us to exhibit the structure of grammatical sentences.
A
Phrase-Structure grammar of English can be thought of as a sophisticated
version of the sort of grammar we did at school, where our concern was to parse
sentences into various components, and to assign these components to such
categories as Noun, Verb, Adverb, etc.
Take
the sentence ‘The boy hit the girl’. We could represent the structure of this
sentence in the form of the following PS-rules :
1)
Sentence
NP + VP
2)
NP
ART + N
3)
VP V
+ NP
4)
ART
‘the’
5)
N
‘boy’ , ‘ girl ‘
6)
V
‘hit’
7)
VP
v transitive + N
V intransitive
8)
V V
+ s / in the context NP singular +.....
There
are three various types of Transformation rules. They are :
1.
Rules which alter the order of the words.
The form
is NP1 – V – NP2 NP 2 - be+ en – V – by + NP1
Example : “The movie is seen by my brother”
2. Rules which delete certain words.
The form is
NP1 – V – NP2; NP3 – V – NP2
NP1 + and + NP3 – V – NP2
Example : a.
the boy hit the girl b. the
man hit the girl
“The boy and the man hit the girl”
3. Rules which add certain words .
The form is NP1 – V – NP2 NP2 – be – V – by + NP1
Example : “The girl was hit by the boy”
It is essential to realize that
T-rules differ in several respects from PS-rules. The differences between them
are :
1) A
PS-rule only permits us to replace one symbol in a string at a time. Futher PS-
rules do not allow us to alter the order of the symbols, but merely to replace
any symbol by one or more symbols.
2) Symbols
like NP1 or V, as they appear in T-rules, are variable; whereas, when they
appear i PS-rules, they are constants. A PS-rule simply tells us that a certain
symbol can be replaced by another symbol. But T – rules tell us that anything
which is of a certain grammatical form can be transformed into something of a
different grammatical form.
3) Finally,
T-rules can, and PS-rules cannot, make use of information concerning the
history of a string’s derivation. J.J Katz expresses this point in the
following way :
Transformational rules thus differ from
phrase structure rules in that, while a phrase structure rules can only make
use of information contained in the linear context of the symbol to be
rewritten, a transformational rule can use any information in phrase marker to
which it applies.
From
that explanation above, we can conclude that transformational grammar is a
grammar which contains T-rules as well as PS-rules.
2. Languange and Innate Knowledge
James Beattie wrote “the principle
of grammar form an important and very curious, part of the philosophy of the
human mind” and Chomsky claims that ‘linguistics is subfield of psychology. It
is not surprising that a study of language should reveal things about the
nature of the mind. But how can a theory of grammar relate to psychology and
the philosophy of mind? The connection is that a grammar of language may be
regarded not simply as a description of that language, but as model which helps
explain how people actually produce and understand language. So when linguists
study the rules of the grammar, they are also studying an aspect of the human
mind.
According to Chomsky, speakers have
‘internalized’ a system of rules. But what must the human mind be like in order
to have internalized these rules? Chomsky’s answer is that we must attribute to
the mind an innate, unlearned, comple structure in order to account for this
internalization, sound like there are innate ideas; there is innate knowledge.
In
order to see what about the innateness, it will be following by simple model:
·
AD is some acquisition
device capable of receiving input data and of producing some output. A typical AD would be a computer which
receives and process information. We may regard the human mind as an AD.
·
The input into the
human mind will be the data received through sense-experience sounds, etc.
· The
output will be a wide range of intellectual activities.
The question is what must this AD,
the mind, be like in order for an input of this sort to be transformed into an
output of this sort? Empiristicst said AD is the only capacities ascribed to
the mind are 1) the capacity to observe through the sense, 2) the capacity to
associate elements in experience, and 3) the capacity for making inductive
generalization on the basis of observed association. Rationalist, on the other hand, ascibes a
richer content to the mental AD than those mentioned above.
The problem of innateness as it
relates to the specific question of language question. First, what is the input
to the language AD? It is not entirely clear what we should include- but we
must at least include the utterance which the child has heard in its environment,
especially those which his parents have made. Second, what counts as the output
of the language AD? It is tempting to count the sum total of utterance the
speaker makes as input.
It should be clear that no denial
of the importance of experience in the acquisition of language is being made.
Without the hearing of utterance there would be nothing for the child’s
hypotheses to be tested against. Only when fed with the data of experience will
the innate linguistics component be galvanized into action.
3.Some
Difficulties
As yet have mentioned no criticism that
might be levelled against Chomsky;s theory of language acquisition. Nor, in
fact, do intend of any substantial criticism of my own. However, it would be
misleading not to consider some of the objections which have been madefor the
whole question is a hotly debated one. There are at least four directions from
which Chomsky has been attacked:
1) Some
have challenged the accuracy of some the empiricl evidence adduced to support
the innateness hypothesis.
2) Some
have challenge not he empirical data, but the implication drawn from these to
the effect that language acquisition
depends upon a rich innate component.
3) Some
linguists have challenged chomsky’s linguistics,including all important claim
that any eduquate grammar must contain a large number of T-rules.
4) Philosophers
have raised various conceptual objections against the claim that there can be
innate knowledge of the short describe by chomsky.
For
example, it has been suggested that the existance of linguistic universals can
be explained without refrence to innate components, but in terms of the fact
that all language may have emerged for acommon root. Again, it has been said
that the speed of child’s acquisition of language is iess starling one we reflect
on the fact that he has already mastered a pre-verbal, gestural, silent
language.
Crticism
of the last sort are those of most interest to philosopher, and concern the
very intelligibility of chomsky’s thesis, suppose we compress Chomsky’s theory
into the following form: linguistic competence or knowledge of rules partly
owes to innate acquaintance with certain categories and form, and so cannot be
explained in terms of inductivist techniques alone.
There
are critic argues that, ever since Locke’s attack on innate ideas in the
seventeeth century, the claim that there are innate ideas has been seen to
unintelligible or patently false. If the claim is that there are ideas of use
in which we are conscious prior to any sense experience., it is patently false:
otherwise it is unintelligible, consequently, if Chomsky”s theory commits him
to postulating the existance of innate knowledge, then that theory is either
false or absurd. What we must do here is distinguish sharply between two
different question:
1. Is
Chomsky wise, and is he historically justified, in using the term ’innate’ to
apply to some of our linguistic knowledge?
2. Is
he right to claim that our knowledge is of the sort he says it is knowledge to
which, as a matter of fact, he has given the label ‘innate’?
The point is that even
Chomsky is unwise to employ the term ‘innate’ it is no way follows that he is
incorrect in the subtance of his account of language acquisition. Some critics,
i fear, confuse Chomsky’s thesis with earlier innateness theories with wich
they have been unimpressed.
Let us, finally, turn the term
‘knowledge’. Before we can say that some of our linguistic knowledge is innate,
it mustt be established that it is knowledge of a sort that it wold make sense
to discribe as innate.
Some philosopher have argued that
Chomsky has failed to understand the sense of ‘knowledge’ in which we can be
spoken of a shaving knowledge of language. Had he properly understood this
sense, he would be realized that it could not in principle be regarded as
unconcious, tacit or innate.
For Chomsky there are two
interesting areas to linguistic knowledge:
1) Unconscious, tacit knowledgeof the rules of our
language which we have internalized.
2) Unconscious,
tacit and also innate knowledge of those categories and forms which help explain our internalization of the rule of language.
Chomsky’s critics argue
that this view is vitiated by the failure to distinguish between two different
kinds of knowledge_knowledge that something is the case,and knowing how to do
something.
