Course:
Systemic Functional Linguistics
Topic:
Critique and Comparison with Chomsky’s TGG
Presented to:
Dr. Muhammad Asif
Presented by: Group II
Abdul Ghafoor
Samrina Fatima
Mahreen Sakhawat
Noor Zahra
Aneela Bilal
Misbah Inayat
Composed by: Aneela Bilal
M.Phil Linguistics (2021-2023)
Ghazi University Dera Ghazi Khan
Transformational Generative Grammar
Noam
Chomsky believed that grammar has recursive rules
allowing one to generate grammatically correct sentences over and
over.
According to Chomsky, his grammar is generative since it can
generate infinite number of sentences it can change or transform a
basic or simple sentence is called Transformation. Thus grammar
that can generate and transform sentences is called Transformational
Generative Grammar or TGG for short.
Surface Structure Vs. Deep Structure
Chomsky
(1965) argues that the surface structure of a sentence
does not reveal everything we should know about a sentence. It is through
the underlying structure or the “deep structure” of a sentence that we get
its full meaning. Transformational grammar is known as psychological
grammar because it tries to find out what goes on in the mind of the native
speaker.
The
deep structure represented the core semantic relations of a sentence
and was mapped on the surface structure through transformations.
According
to Chomsky (1965:16) the deep structure is abstract and deals
with meaning and the surface structure deals with the actual sounds
(utterances) in the language. The deep and surface structures are linked by
linguistic transformations capable of adding, detecting, changing,
attaching, etc. one at a time, until the surface structure is reached.
In an attempt to critique Chomsky’s idea of Transformational generative
grammar, his theory of ‘Universal grammar’ will be examined for flaws
and weaknesses as well as its contributory insight to the overall study of
grammar. Juxtapositions will be made with reference to other schools of
thought whose views make up for the weaknesses of Chomsky’s
Universal grammar. The behaviourists, the structuralist and the
Functionalists views will be explored in a bid to critique Chomsky’s
grammar.
CHOMSKY’S UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Noam Chomsky’s
idea of ‘Universal grammar’ that is a set of language
rules that are innate to the human child.
He
however tags this ‘innate grammatical knowledge’ as Universal
grammar that is applicable to all human children. He posits that the basic
grammatical rules of the native speaker’s language are imbued from
birth, as a result it is upon this knowledge that he builds upon as he
gradually achieves competence in the language.
Competence and Performance
One
of the contributions of Transformational Generative Grammar in
language description is making a distinction between competence and
performance. Chomsky (1965:4) sees competence as the
speaker’s/hearer’s knowledge of his language while performance is the
actual use of language in concrete situations. He states that although the
rules of the language are in the brain of the native speaker, he may at
times make mistakes in speech or writing due to extra-linguistic factors.
Competence deals with the innate, intrinsic knowledge of the language
which is expected of every native speaker, it is the speaker or hearer’s
knowledge of the language situations.
Performance on the other hand has to do with the ‘functionality of the
language’; it deals with ‘actual utterances’ and the possible reactions and
counter-reactions that can be elicited from these utterances.
since native speaker competence includes not only the ability to make
the judgment that certain types of sentences are grammatical, but also the
ability to judge that others are not grammatical. Therefore, his grammar is
not as interested in speech or writing (performance) of the native speaker.
Chomsky
gave a distinction between competence and performance. A
simple way of seeing the distinction between competence and
performance is in our capacity to understand the meaning of words we
have never encountered before.
For example, the expression ‘multi-national’ is a compound statement;
it is an expression that people may have never seen. Conversely, if the
hearer knows the meaning of the prefix ‘multi’ and the basic word
formation rule in English, then, it is easier to understand that multinational refers to an entity belonging to ‘several’ nations or
representatives of ‘several’ nations. This process of interpretation will not
be possible unless there is an underlying competence which can operate
separately from the performance feature of the language.
BEHAVIOURISM VERSUS CHOMSKIAN
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
major principle of the Behaviourist’s approach to grammar is based
on the fact that human and animal learning is based on ‘Habit formation’.
B.F Skinner, a major proponent of the behaviorist point of view in his
work ‘Verbal behaviour’
He postulated that human behaviour with respect to language acquisition
and learning is guided by the three principles of Stimulus, Response and
Reinforcement.
this theory is reminiscent of Ivan Pavlov’s experiment which summated
that stimulus and response works together; According to him the human
baby obtain native language habits through ‘imitation’, the baby tries to
imitate the oral speech that is communicated to him by adults in his
immediate environment.
This imitation process is reflected in his attempt at reproducing his
perceived oral speech in the similitude of babblings and incoherent
speeches. Since for his efforts at reproducing the words communicated to
him he is rewarded by virtue of commendation, this reward elicits
(stimulus) further attempts at articulating these sounds and words.
The
For
example, his pre-conceived idea of generalization in the form of
adding the affix ‘-ed’ to words to form the past tense has all the tendency
to influence his mistaking the word ‘go’ to have the past participle of
‘goed’ instead of ‘went’, the past tense of ‘do’ to be ‘doed’ or the plural
format of the word ‘sheep’ to be ‘sheeps’ etc.
All said and done, the behaviourist based their philosophy on ‘habit
formation’ from experience. The implication is that language acquisition
as well as competence in the native language can only be gained from
experience arising from environmental interactions over a period of time.
This is however a contradistinction to Chomskyan beliefs which is
informed by the mentalist philosophy of ‘innateness’ of the basic
grammatical rules of phonology, syntax, and morphology in the human
brain, according to mentalists and nativists, humans are biologically wired
to learn language at a particular time in a particular way, Chomsky
however referred to this special innate mechanism as Language
Acquisition Device (LAD), a language-learning mechanism embodying
knowledge about the general nature of grammars.
FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR VERSUS
CHOMSKIAN
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Grammar
is semantically-oriented because it concerns how language is
used to perform different functions in the native speaker’s environment.
This is the juncture where Performance has an upper hand over
Competence in a language use.
Functional linguistics considers the semantic and pragmatic content of
sentences and not just whether the sentence is grammatically correct or
incorrect.
For instance, a sentence like ‘My Father is stupid’ is grammatically
correct by all standards, but semantically unacceptable and incorrect in
certain contexts like the African context, or to a more narrowed view, the
Nigerian context. The sentence will be adjudged as unacceptable because
cultural factors come to play in such situation, in the Nigerian context, a
high premium is placed on respect for the elderly; Socio-linguistic factors
have a huge bearing on language performance in this sense. Other factors
such as Psychological factors, Physiological factors, Cultural factors and
many more also applies.
to Hawkins (2001), “Chomsky’s submission was done in
error. Chomsky’s repeated assertions that he is dealing with an ‘ideal’
speaker-listener do not carry conviction in view of his neglect of the
importance of a listener’s reaction to the interpretation of what he or she
hears”. This point is stressed by chomskyan grammar’s inability to
account for ambiguity in semantic meaning of a sentence such as: Bank
dances till day-break, Jesus is the husband of the church etc. to a native
speaker of a language operating on innate grammatical rules that informs
him that ‘a bank’ and ‘a church’ are places of financial transaction and
that of worship respectively; ambiguity sets in at this point; as he
wonders how a building of sorts can ‘dance’ or a man ‘married’ to a
building; it takes a native speaker operating at the level of linguistic
performance to decipher this expression.
According
CONCLUSION
Drawing upon the views of the functionalists and the behaviourists in
their approach to language acquisition and structure the shortcomings of
chomskyan grammar is observed. But chomskyan grammar is not
without its advantages to language study. Chomsky’s grammar has
exposed us to the recursive nature of grammar; hereby empowering us to
become creative incommunicative discourses we engage ourselves; it laid
the foundation on which we can build onto attain performance in
language use. Although it is prescriptive in nature, yet it invented
grammatical rules that remain as blueprints till today; ‘S = NP + VP’ is a
sentence structure that is applicable to grammar till today; however, it is
not applicable to the grammar of all languages of the world as some
language experience alterations in sentence structure such as the verbal
element (VP) coming before the Noun phrase (NP), such scenarios can
however be classified as exceptions to the rule that Chomsky himself
should have considered before generalizing the rules as applicable to all
languages.