Malmstrom-The Workshop on Generative Gramma

8/13/2019 Malmstrom-The Workshop on Generative Gramma

1/6

The Workshop on Generative GrammarAuthor(s): Jean MalmstromSource: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 13, No. 3, Annual Meeting, Chicago,1962 (Oct., 1962), pp. 26-30Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/354759.

Accessed: 14/11/2013 10:59

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

National Council of Teachers of Englishis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

College Composition and Communication.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.130.124.78 on Thu, 14 Nov 2013 10:59:07 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=nctehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/354759?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/354759?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ncte


2/6

COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATIONOMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATIONMowrer,O. Hobart. Learning Theory and the Symbolic Processes. New York: Wiley,1960.Skinner,B. F. Verbal Behavior.New York:Appleton-Century-Crofts,1957.Verplanck, William S. The Control of the Content of Conversation: Reinforcementof Statements of Opinion, Journalof Abnormaland Social Psychology, 51 (1955),668-676.Watson,JohnB. Psychologyfrom the Standpoint of a Behaviorist.Philadelphia: Lippin-cott, 1919.Weiss, A. Paul. A Theoretical Basis of Human Behavior. Columbus:Adams, 1929.

Tbe Workshopn enerative rammarJEAN MALMSTROM

Mowrer,O. Hobart. Learning Theory and the Symbolic Processes. New York: Wiley,1960.Skinner,B. F. Verbal Behavior.New York:Appleton-Century-Crofts,1957.Verplanck, William S. The Control of the Content of Conversation: Reinforcementof Statements of Opinion, Journalof Abnormaland Social Psychology, 51 (1955),668-676.Watson,JohnB. Psychologyfrom the Standpoint of a Behaviorist.Philadelphia: Lippin-cott, 1919.Weiss, A. Paul. A Theoretical Basis of Human Behavior. Columbus:Adams, 1929.

Tbe Workshopn enerative rammarJEAN MALMSTROMNoam Chomsky, professor of ModernLanguages at Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, spoke on the position ofgenerative grammar in the tradition ofEnglish studies. He began by consider-ing how linguistic creativity, or innova-tion, has been handled in the Englishgrammatical tradition. In the nineteenthand early twentieth centuries, Hum-boldt, Paul, and de Saussure recognizedlanguage behavior as a creative act,but confused rule-governed behaviorwith rule-changing behavior, or analogicchange. Today, new insights from math-ematics and logic reinforce the notionthat linguistic creativity is not simpleverbal recall but instead involves newapplications of old rules and the dis-covery of rules of infinite applicability.These rules are the linguistic regularitiesby which all and only the grammaticalsentences of the language can be speci-fied. The problem of generative gram-mar is to make the general rules ex-plicit.

Mrs. Malmstrom,who served as recorderof the workshopon generative grammaratthe April meeting of CCCC in Chicago, isan associateprofessorof Englishat WesternMichigan University.

Noam Chomsky, professor of ModernLanguages at Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, spoke on the position ofgenerative grammar in the tradition ofEnglish studies. He began by consider-ing how linguistic creativity, or innova-tion, has been handled in the Englishgrammatical tradition. In the nineteenthand early twentieth centuries, Hum-boldt, Paul, and de Saussure recognizedlanguage behavior as a creative act,but confused rule-governed behaviorwith rule-changing behavior, or analogicchange. Today, new insights from math-ematics and logic reinforce the notionthat linguistic creativity is not simpleverbal recall but instead involves newapplications of old rules and the dis-covery of rules of infinite applicability.These rules are the linguistic regularitiesby which all and only the grammaticalsentences of the language can be speci-fied. The problem of generative gram-mar is to make the general rules ex-plicit.

Mrs. Malmstrom,who served as recorderof the workshopon generative grammaratthe April meeting of CCCC in Chicago, isan associateprofessorof Englishat WesternMichigan University.

The linguistic intuitions of the nativespeaker of English reveal that immed-iate constituent analysis is incomplete,since it can explain only some Englishsentences. Chomsky offered He waseager to please. and He was easy toplease. as examples of grammaticallysimilar sentences which native speak-ers intuitively recognize as different.Since transformations can give power-ful explanations to account for suchdifferences, we may as well accept theseexplanations as good evidence for thenecessity of transformations in our gram-mar.In the discussion which followed histalk, Chomsky further defined gram-matical rules by subdividing them intorewrite rules and transformationalrules. The rewrite rules are an axiom

system; each rule is a theorem withinthe system. The generative grammarianexplains the axiom Sentence by apply-ing a sequence of rules, to a single gram-matical element at a time, in a pre-determined order. His first ruleS -> Nom + VP(to be read as Rewrite the sentenceas nominal and verb phrase. ) analyzesthe sentence into subject and predicate.A later rule analyzes the verb phrase

The linguistic intuitions of the nativespeaker of English reveal that immed-iate constituent analysis is incomplete,since it can explain only some Englishsentences. Chomsky offered He waseager to please. and He was easy toplease. as examples of grammaticallysimilar sentences which native speak-ers intuitively recognize as different.Since transformations can give power-ful explanations to account for suchdifferences, we may as well accept theseexplanations as good evidence for thenecessity of transformations in our gram-mar.In the discussion which followed histalk, Chomsky further defined gram-matical rules by subdividing them intorewrite rules and transformationalrules. The rewrite rules are an axiom

system; each rule is a theorem withinthe system. The generative grammarianexplains the axiom Sentence by apply-ing a sequence of rules, to a single gram-matical element at a time, in a pre-determined order. His first ruleS -> Nom + VP(to be read as Rewrite the sentenceas nominal and verb phrase. ) analyzesthe sentence into subject and predicate.A later rule analyzes the verb phrase

266

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/6

THE WORKSHOPON GENERATIVEGRAMMARinto its parts; a still later rule analyzesthe nominal into its parts. The endresult of the rewrite rules is a labeledbracketing which shows how each partof the sentence is related to each otherpart. [We might say that this procedureis somewhat like the operation whichtraditional grammar calls sentence dia-graming, and which structural lin-guistics calls immediate constituent an-alysis. ] By his rewrite rules, the gen-erative grammarian can analyze andexplain simple, declarative, active sen-tences. However, to analyze and explainother sentences-complex, interrogative,passive sentences, for instance-he needsmore powerful rules. These rules arethe transformational rules.In using transformational rules, thegenerative grammarian, given a certaintype of structure, changes it to anotherstructure related to it in a fixed andstateable way. For instance, given a sen-tence like:

THE BOY THREW THE BALL.the passive transformational rule pro-duces:

THE BALL WAS THROWN BY THE BOY.This transformation places the originalobject in subject position and the origin-al subject at the end of the sentence afterthe preposition by, and inserts a form ofbe preceding the past participle of theverb of the original sentence. Chomskysuggested that, lacking any other satis-fying formulations, the ordering of theserules may well represent psychologicalreality, the order of historical process.These ideas run counter to the anti-mentalism of Bloomfield and his follow-ers, who limit themselves to analyzingobserved data instead of asking the trulyimportant question: What is the set ofrules that generates linguistic compe-tence?In this connection, the generativegrammarian is concerned with intui-tion, a term which needed definition forthe workshop members. Chomsky, equat-

ing it with philosophic intuition, definedit as knowledge that comes to you with-out your knowing where it comes from.He denied that all knowledge comes tous through experience; probably all real-ly important learning requires a flash ofinsight, that peculiarly human phenom-enon which all of us recognize but whichnone of us can define or explain. Thisviewpoint is consistent with those ofboth philosophy and psychology, Chom-sky said.At the second workshop session, Rob-ert B. Lees, of the University of Illinois,spoke on the achievements and non-achievements of generative grammar. Hefocused first on Chomsky's public state-ment that scholarly traditional grammarranks high on the significance of its goalsbut low on explicitness, whereas struc-tural linguistics ranks high on explicit-ness but low on the significance of itsgoals. Generative grammar ranks high onboth desiderata. He then used specificexamples to flesh out Chomsky's abstractpresentation of these basic considera-tions.

Lees noted that scholarly traditionalgrammarians characterized well-formedsentences by 1) classifying words intoparts of speech, and 2) listing the per-mitted sequences of these parts ofspeech. Their parts-of-speech classifica-tions were always incomplete, however,because they neglected to specify themany subclassifications. Among verbs,for example, a transitive-intransitive sub-class is necessary, as is an animate-inani-mate subclass. Given enough subclasses,we can define all sentences, but our defi-nitions will lack insightful generality un-less our analysis permits us to note howparts of speech are variously grouped.Thus, we understand the two followingsentences differently even though super-ficially their grammatical structure seemsidentical:They shot the man in the leg. (. . gavehim a leg wound)

27



4/6

COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATIONThey shot the man in the fez. (... [man]who wore a fez)

Bracketing the prepositional phrase inthe first sentence with the verb and thatin the second sentence with the nounexplains why the two sentences are un-derstood differently. Generative gram-mar uses these old familiar bracketingsof labelled word-groups as it also usesthe equally familiar old concept that onesentence is derived from another. Thislater concept seems the natural wayto view sentences, and is obviously dif-ferent from the structural linguistic con-cept of the sentence as a putting-togetherof elements in a sequence. The maincontribution of generative grammar hasbeen to render explicit what it means tosay: One sentence is derived from an-other.

Lees pointed out that no generativegrammar is complete. Research is beingdone on special topics; new findingscause revisions of older rules. ThereforeLees did not try to present a completegrammar, but chose examples to illus-trate various kinds of useful grammaticalrules.

In an interesting disgression, he de-veloped the generative grammarian'simportant concept: degrees of grammati-calness. Speakers of English producecertain utterances like Birds sing.which all other users of English un-hesitatingly agree are impeccably gram-matical sentences of English. Speakersof English also can produce other utter-ances like Red and green frighten oneanother. To these, other users of Eng-lish deny immediate and automatic ac-ceptance, since they feel intuitively thatsuch sentences are not fully grammat-ical. Of course one may imagine aspecial context for any sentence. Aninterior decorator, for instance, mightremark, Red and green frighten oneanother. Indeed, metaphors requirehighly specialized contexts. Further-more, people often use non-grammatical

utterances like He dood it. for affec-tive reasons-to be funny, for instance.Thus, an adequate grammatical theoryis one that can assign degrees of gram-maticalness, rather than one that at-tempts to account for every sentencethat any speaker may produce.

At the third workshop session DavidDeCamp, of the University of Texas,spoke on applications of generativegrammar to teaching literature and com-position. He explained the term gram-matical as a strategic norm to whichwe can refer in a rhetorical discussion.If the grammatical norms are violatedat a high level in the derivation, some-thing like He terrified the wastebasket.may result. The deviances of e. e. cum-mings are on this level. A somewhatlower level deviance might produce Hedrank the wastebasket. Dylan Thomasdeviates at about this level. Lower stillamong the grammatical restraining rulesmight occur He drank the garbage.and He drank the beer. We unpoeticrhetoricians deviate at the level of lexi-cal choice, choosing, for example, be-tween We drank the martini. andWe guzzled the martini. and therebyachieving differing rhetorical effects.Thus the grammatical restraining ruleshave rhetorical relevance to the studyof literature.

Generative grammar can also helpstudents observe certain literary strate-gies of sentence combination. DeCampsuggested, for example, that the twenty-five or thirty kernel sentences under-lying a long Faulknerian sentence canbe recovered and then recombined bygenerative embedding devices to yielda Jamesian sentence. Value judgmentson both the process and the results ofsuch experiments lie outside the gram-mar, which can offer only a terminologyfor discussing the basis of such valuejudgments. Thus the linguistic contribu-tions of generative grammar to literary

28



5/6

THE WORKSHOPON GENERATIVEGRAMMARunderstanding are admittedly trivial todate.

In the teaching of oral and writtencomposition, generative grammar canoffer real help however. Students needknowledge of the complex repertory ofavailable grammatical possibilities andan understanding of which ones arestrategic at certain points. When a childbegins to write, he is unable to carryover his intuitive knowledge of spokensentences to his new technique of writ-ing. He must learn a new activity inwhich his intuitions are not yet formu-lated. Developing generally in the se-quence of the generative grammar rules,he first writes simple kernel sentences.By stimulating and positive instruction,the teacher may guide him to morecomplex structures, without his fallingprey, for instance, to such constructionalhomonymity as: She enjoyed riding,playing tennis, and exciting dates. Ifthe student is discouraged by negative,severe grading, he will revert to sim-plicity.Turning to the problems of writinga pedagogical generative grammar, De-Camp stated that strategic choices mustbe made in order to keep the rules assimple as possible without losing sightof the grammar as a whole. Properlimitations vary according to the audi-ence. In teacher training courses, arather full and detailed grammar can bepresented; from it, later selections canbe made. The problems of the highschool and college student will be large-ly in the area of transformations, where-as those of the elementary child and theforeigner will concern the whole gram-mar.

In reply to a question, DeCamp em-phasized the need for eclectic termin-ology in the grammatical training ofsecondary teachers because of the va-riety of available textbooks. Traditionalterminology will be necessary as longas the College Entrance Examination

Board continues to use it. Certain termsfrom structural linguistics are useful too,especially for a few graphemic problems.The questions presented to the con-sultants in the final workshop sessionelicited two analyses of complement-type sentences, a series of illustrativeadverb-embedding rules, and answers tothree large questions.The first question was: What is thedistinction between generative grammarand transformational grammar? De-Camp declared the two terms inter-changeable as used in the workshop,yet he made the further point thata grammar which generates all andonly the sentences of a language bytransformational rules is not the onlypossible generative grammar. The struc-tural linguist also assumes that his gram-mar is valid beyond the specific textanalyzed. This extended validity is themark of grammatical generation.The second question was: Does gen-erative grammar include phonology andmorphology in addition to syntax? Inanswer, Chomsky stated that MorrisHalle's The Sound Pattern of Russianshows how the phonology is buriedin the morphology of a language toform a single morphophonemic lin-guistic level. The generative gram-marian does not recognize the structurallinguist's phonemic level as a separateentity. Instead, he asserts that, to geta rational transcription, the linguist mustknow both the morphemes and the syn-tactic derivation of the sentence. Soequipped, he can state the sentence'sphonetic transcription complete with itsstresses. Using all this information, hecan evolve generalizations like: Allvowels become i in certain stateablepositions.The third question concerned the re-lation of a theory of meaning to atheory of generative grammar. Deny-ing that meaning is to be identifedwith either informant response or in-

29



6/6

COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATIONtuition, Chomsky stated that meaningis not a singular concept, but covers avariety of subjects. Note the differencesamong:1. The spots on his face mean that he hasmeasles.2. This means [i.e., will result in] war.3. What does this mean to you? ( con-notation ).4. X means [i.e., refersto] Y. ( denota-tion ).When a person produces or understandsa sentence, he focuses upon points ofalternative choice. Grammatical contextdetermines which choice will be madeat each crucial point to achieve a gram-matical sentence. For instance, certainverbs (like believe, eat, hate) gram-matically require an animate subject;certain adjectives (like afraid, ajar) oc-cur only in the predicates of sentences.Such contextual constraints are frag-ments of the study of meaning. Further-more, an item is meaningful preciselybecause it is selected by rules whichhave alternatives. For example, havingselected a copula-type sentence, someform of be must be used, and conse-quently be, as a word in this context,has no meaning because no alternativechoice was possible. We might as wellask the meaning of e in be.The study of meaning can progressno farther than the study of grammarhas progressed. Generally speaking, intraditional grammar and structural lin-guistics, the study of meaning has beenthe study of morphemes, words, andword classes. If grammatical insightsare limited to words, meaning theoryis similarly limited. Generative gram-

mar, however, includes transformations.As a result, it extends semantic horizons.For example, a word analysis is not suffi-cient to account for the ambiguity ofFLYING PLANES CAN BE DANGEROUS.This sentence needs a transformationalanalysis to explain that its ambiguity isa reflection of the constructional homo-nymity of its two possible underlyingsource sentences:

X FLIES PLANES. andPLANES FLY.

In other words, the transformationalrules of the grammar will produce Fly-ing planes can be dangerous. twice byseparate transformational paths. Theambiguity is a corroboration of the ade-quacy of the grammar, proving theexistence of the transformational levelof analysis. This level was ignored inFries's theory of structural meaning,which concerned itself solely with ob-served morphemes, words, and wordclasses.Chomsky explained further that hu-man beings universally impose certainmeaning-categories upon their concept-ual scene. For instance, a person learn-ing a new word prefers to consider itsfunction rather than its physical char-acter. Thus in learning knife, the childsays, It cuts. In addition, contiguityis preferred over separation. Such struc-turing, imposed by the human beingupon his environment, interrelates with

the grammar. All languages, Chomskysaid, have categories which reflect thisfact. Thus there are indeed valid con-nections between a theory of meaningand a theory of generative grammar.

The majorspeeches printed in this issue are being reproducedas aseparate brochureby the National Council of Teachers of English,508 South Sixth Street, Champaign,Illinois.

30


Malmstrom-The Workshop on Generative Gramma

Documents

Transcript of Malmstrom-The Workshop on Generative Gramma