Talk:Transformational grammar

OK, I've added a brief description of what a transformational grammar is, and a history of the development of these grammars from a Chomskyan point of view. It probably concentrates too much on Chomsky and DS/SS/LF/PF, but this just happens to be what I know something about. This really needs to be merged with the Transformational-generative grammar page. -- Cadr

I've merged the article. The TGG page was really just a bunch of transformations, so I tagged it on to the end of this one. Dduck 17:52, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks :) -- Cadr

I'm thinking about what to do with the "transformations" section. It's pretty good as it is, but it's rather out of synch with current thinking. On the other hand it should give simple examples, and it might be hard to bring in line with more current ideas in syntax without complicating it, so I dunno...My main problem with it is that it talks about particular rules (e.g. question forming rules) in the kind of way Chomsky would have talked about them 30-40 years ago. Now there are no construction-specific rules, so it's a little misleading. Anyone have any ideas? -- Cadr

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The article says Chomsky argued that the intuition of a native speaker is enough to define the grammaticalness of a sentence; that is, if a native English speaker finds it difficult or impossible to understand a particular string of English words, it can be said that the string of words is ungrammatical [1]. ... [1] This is not entirely true; it is possible for a sentence to be both grammatical and meaningless, as in Chomsky's famous example "colourless green ideas sleep furiously". Such sentences are nonsensical in a very different way to (non-)sentences like "man the bit dog the"

Not only is the footnote right that the text in the body is not entirely true, the text in the body is actually wrong. Sensicality and grammaticality are nearly completely seperate. The footnote gives examples of both a nonsenical but grammatical sentence and a (more or less) sensical but ungrammatical sentence. Both types of example are incredibly easy to come up with in scores, because these attributes are not related.

It is the intuition of a native speaker which defines grammaticality, but their intuition of grammaticality, not meaning.

But I was reluctant to edit the body of the text because, someone else had already been reluctant to correct it, thus the footnote, plus I've been out of the Wikipedia loop for a while.

So if someone would like to a) refute my claim that the aritcle is wrong, b) fix the article themselves, or c) suggest whether I should correct the body of the article or just expand the footnote, I would appreciate it.

Aidan Elliott-McCrea 17:03, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

In fact I wrote the text and the footnote -- I agree that the text is misleading, but I was trying to simplify (hence the correcting footnote). But I take your point; please edit it as you see fit :) -- Cadr

Done. :Aidan

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[This article concentrates heavily on Chomsky and Chomsky-related aspects of this topic. This is justifiable to some degree considering his importance in the field, but it would be nice to have a more balanced view.]

I removed the above from the text, because it's an editorial note, and even if true, belongs on the talk page. DanKeshet 23:43, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

Transformational Grammar

According to what I've read above, some maintainers of this page think what I'm about to suggest would complicate the issue, but the article says "the mechanisms described in the example above have been out of date since the late 1960s", and I would really like to know what the current theory is to explain the transformation from "He went there" to "Where did he go?" Maybe this query belongs here.

The link at the end of the page gives a good introduction to (fairly) modern transformational theory. As can be seen by the length of it, it's not really feasible to go into the detail of the theory in an encyclopaedia article. Cadr

I would like to give a detailed answer to this eventually, but for the moment I don't have a lot of time. I refer you to the article Lexical Functional Grammar, one of the "current" theories. The essential thing here is that current syntactical theory rejects that "deep structure" is a tree-structured sentence. For instance, while chomskyan syntax maps "Where did he go" to "He did go where?", LFG maps "Where did he go" to an attribute-value matrix. arj 20:42, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

LFG is nontransformational (as you explain), so it isn't really an example of current transformational theory. But I do like LFG — just being pedantic ;) The current(ish) transformational analysis of questions isn't actually all that different from the one given in the article. You start with:

[CP [Spec 0] [C 0] [IP John [I did] [VP hit [DP who]]]] (partial structure only)

Then move I to C (subject auxilluary inversion):

[CP [Spec 0] [C did] [IP John t [VP hit [DP who]]]]

Then move "who" to the front of the sentence (Spec-CP):

[CP [Spec [DP who] [C did] [IP John t [VP hit t]]]

(I've used '0' to represent an empty node in the tree.) Subject-auxilluary inversion is justified by saying that C has a +Q (question) feature which needs to be checked by the dummy auxilliary "did" (after all, you wouldn't have that auxilliary in a non-question sentence, so it must be doing something). Movement of "who" is harder to explain. Basically, it gives you a representation with a quantifier and a variable, like in logic:

for which X, John hit X

Cadr

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Hi All,

I wasn't really happy at all with the section on transformations, although the earlier version was fairly straightforward, it contained some pretty big inaccuracies. For example it listed headedness parameters as examples of transformations. These aren't transformations at all. Transformations as Chomsky designed them were structure changing and structure building operations, not settings of parameters. Also the example of wh-movement was never proposed in that particular formulation. I'm afraid I've made the section a little harder to read and a little more technical, but much more accurate. Further examples would probably make it clearer.

AndrewCarnie

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Hi all, I am not sure that the last discussion on this page (Revision as of 18:33, 24 Jun 2004 137.194.204.100: a discussion of Vygotsky's work in the middle of the section on minimalism) belongs where it has been put. Does anybody else agree with reverting to the previous version? I think this may have been a confusion on the part of the contributer (I've never heard such a direct link between ("Chomskyan") minimalism and Vygotsky before and don't think that this link should be present on this section on minimalism. AnandaLima 04:35, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hi, For clarity at the beginning of this article (and in keeping with the general uses of Wikipedia), I think a more simple, straightforward definition is required. This sentence from a lower section of the article would do, with minor alterations: "One of the most important of Chomsky's ideas is that most of this knowledge is innate, with the result that a baby can have a large body of prior knowledge about the structure of language in general, and need only actually learn the idiosyncratic features of the language(s) it is exposed to."

Additionally, there are short and straightforward definitions/discussion to be found in textbooks, such as How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction.

In general, making this discussion even more exhaustive defeats the purpose of Wikipedia as a beginning source or gateway to other research. I realize it is an ill-defined genre still, but its uses should be kept in mind as the genre continues to define itself. Therefore, the kind of language appropriate to textbooks is also appropriate to Wikipedia, i.e., introductory language aimed at novices, particularly in the earliest section of the articles.

(Non)Context-freeness of natural language

I strongly disagree with this sentence:

It is now generally accepted that it is impossible to describe the structure of natural languages using context free grammars (at least if these descriptions are to be judged on vaguely Chomskyan criteria).

Can anyone point me to sources for this extraordinary claim? Thanks, Burschik 11:55, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's certainly not extraordinary, it's just an element of Chomskyan orthodoxy which has gone relatively unchallenged. Even advocates of GPSG only (?) succeeded in using CFGs to describe natural languages by using metagrammars, complex feature systems and sophisticated semamtic rules, i.e. extensions to basic context free grammar. The empirical argument supporting the claim is very simple. Natural languages allow unbounded dependencies (e.g. in the sentence "Which man whose brother John used to go to school with likes muffins?", where the verb "likes" must agree in number with the phrase "which man") and CFGs (quite uncontroversialy) cannot by themselves deal with unbounded dependencies.

In point of fact, a CFG can handle an arbitrary number of dependencies of that sort. It's dependencies of the sort R1 S1 R2 S2 that a CFG can't handle, and in natural language, all similar examples dealing with semantic references that I'm familiar with are ambiguous. However, operator movement might alter this principle. Dhasenan 19:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

It depends what you mean. A CFG can't handle long-distance dependencies and agreement at the same time in a linguistically well-motivated way (because you have to have separate rules establishing verb/subject agreement for sentences with and without wh-movment). In order to get rid of this sort of redundancy, you need to use metarules (a la GPSG), but then you no longer have a CFG, just something with the same weak generative capacity. (You can expand the metarules out and get a CFG, of course, but the resulting CFG won't be linguistically plausible for the reason just given.)

Anyway, it's now completely uncontroversial that CFGs aren't adequate, because people have found natural language constructions which can't even be weakly generated by CFGs. (I will add a reference to this effect shortly). Cadr 01:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The non-context-freeness of NL is now quite uncontroversial, although I'm not convinced that a recursively-enumerable grammar is required (which TG is). Despite some small disagreements by Manaster Ramer (1988), the Swiss German arguments of non-context-freeness of NL by R. Huybregts (1984) and Shieber (1985) have largely gone uncontested. Further papers by Culy (1985) regarding Bambara and Phillip Miller (1991) regarding Norwegian and Swedish have also given creedence to the argument. In spite of these few non-context-free examples (which nevertheless are very important), I like the quote by Gazdar and Pullum (1985) on the matter: "the overwhelming majority of the structures of any NL can be elegantly and efficiently parsed using context-free parsing technologies." The whole topic of the relation between formal languages and natural languages is fascinating and I think deserves much more treatment by linguists than is currently given. --jonsafari 05:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Although traditional TG is, indeed, re (as pointed out above), it's pretty universally accepted now that those features natural language which are non-context-free (i.e. cross-serial dependencies) only require something which is a bit weaker than a re grammar, namely a "mildly context sensitive" grammar. Interestingly, it turns out that nearly all contemporary linguistic formalisms (Minimalism (formalized à la Ed Stabler), Categorial Grammar, Tree-Adjoining Grammar, the various PSGs) are mildly context sensitive. Diakronik (talk) 01:56, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Having said this, the efforts of GPSG and related theories probably mean that we should weaken the statement a little, perhaps to "widely agreed"? Cadr 18:22, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You could go back to Syntactic Structures or Aspects of a Theory of Syntax. I don't really understand how this can be controversial. Here is a simple example (which Chomsky used in a class he taught last fall at University of Arizona): "Mary looked at the man with the telescope" This has two alternative possible ways to parse the sentence: Mary used a telescope to look at the man or Mary looked at the man who had a telescope. Clearly you can't distinguish which parse is correct simply from the sentence. You need the context of the discourse in which the sentence occurred. So for example: "Mary just got a new telescope. Mary looked at the man with the telescope" or "Mary thought that the guy with the telescope was weird. Mary looked at the man with the telescope." --MadScientistX11 (talk) 22:46, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikibook about transformational grammar

Hello, I am a Spanish wikipedian who has begun a stub in Wikibooks about the rules governing the language according to the Transformational grammar. All of you are welcome to participate on it. Thank you :) --Javier Carro 11:18, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Citing sources

I've moved this tag from the article: {{unreferenced}} The article could do with more citations, but I think tags like this belong on the talk page rather than article space unless there is a good reason, and I don't think there's a good enough reason here. Enchanter 23:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any references cited for the article. Unless you intend to start providing references very soon, I intend to move the tag back to the article page. Placing the tag on the talk page is, in my opinion, hiding it away so no one will notice it. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 23:30, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are there for the benefit of readers; the talk page is there for contributors to discuss what should be in the article. That's why Wikipedia generally avoids putting comment, discussion and tags in articles unless necessary. I can't see any benefit to the reader of the article of this tag; for them, it is a statement of the obvious (it's clear to anyone reading what is and isn't cited). We shouldn't be writing "adverts" in the articles to get more contributors - that's just not appropriate in an encyclopedia article. If we applied tags to every article that could do with some kind of improvement, most of our articles would be covered with them. Also, just using a tag doesn't really help contributors much either; for example, it's not clear what specific aspects of the article you would like to see cited. That's why this kind of material belongs on the talk page unless there is a good reason why the comment in the article would benefit readers. Enchanter 23:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

We place all kinds of tags on article pages: {{Unreferencedsect}} (specifically intended to go in a section on an article page), {{afd}}, {{ActiveDiscuss}}, {{Contradict}}, {{Contradict-other}}, {{Controversial}}, {{Disputed}}, {{Not verified}}, {{dubious}}, {{Hoax}}, {{POV}}, {{copyvio}}, {{expert}}, and many others, all of which serve as warnings to readers that they cannot necessarily rely on the article as a source of information. I think that {{unreferenced}} is quite mild compared to some of those. We need to be upfront about the deficiencies of articles. And putting those notices on the article pages is a goad to improve them. As for what needs to be sourced, everything in an article should have a source cited at some level. Wikipedia:Verifiability is quite clear that everything that goes into an article must be verifiable, so editors should cite credible sources so that their edits can be verified by readers and other editors. If the article does not cite credible sources, then the article lacks credibility. If the articles are not credible, then Wikipedia is not credible. I'm reluctant to do this myself. I have a very long list of things I want to do in Wikipeia, and it has been 30 years since I've studied transformational grammar. If someone whose acquaintance with TG is more recent than mine wants to work on supplying references, I'll try to help. I do have a number of references in the house, but, as I said, I haven't opened them in 30 years or more. (Gah, I've just talked myself into another commitment!) -- Dalbury^(Talk) 00:33, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The other option would be to move the uncited material to the talk page. - FrancisTyers 00:39, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

That would be the whole article, right now. I just want to see some references cited. -- Dalbury^(Talk) 02:09, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Does this qualify as an example of a speaker with a transformational grammar ?

Some researchers have found a Parrot with 950 word vocabulary, who can generate new words. --Ancheta Wis 03:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Not enough data in that article to say. Claims such at this tend to become very thin and trivial when examined closely. -- Donald Albury 20:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Split infinitive

The article on the split infinitive has a stub section claiming that there is a transformational grammar approach to understanding this construction. Could someone who has worked on this aspect of linguistics please go there and write a paragraph explaining this? Thanks, --Doric Loon 11:51, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

The central question

What is transformational grammar? The answer to this central question does not lie in the details of its properties (although fine that you include them to provide a more detailed understanding). What problem does it attempt to solve, or issue does it attempt to address? What is it for? What good is it in practice? What is transformational grammar? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rogerfgay (talk • contribs) 15:34, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Tranformational grammar is a context free grammar plus rules that allow you to take one parse tree and form another according to well defined "pivoting rules". These rules preserve the meaning of the sentence, but change the form. According to Chomsky, natural language should be defined by both its grammar and transformations.Likebox (talk) 04:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Grammatical Obtuseness Needing Transformation

This is the lead sentence in the article: "In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in a Chomskyan tradition." The immediate question which arises is, what is the antecedent of the pronoun that? The sentence should be transformed so as to be clear. Is this what was meant:

"grammar (especially of a natural language) that has been developed in a Chomskyan tradition"? Is the antecedent of 'that' the word grammar (not language)? (EnochBethany (talk) 21:43, 12 December 2010 (UTC))

The introductory paragraph contains this sentence: "Additionally, transformational grammar is the tradition that gives rise to specific transformational grammars." That seems awkward. What does that mean? Gerntrash (talk) 16:25, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

English is most definitely Context Free

Did Chomsky really say that context free grammars are inadequate for English? That's total nonsense. I looked up the paper, and what he actually says is that certain constructions are not captured unambiguously by just looking at what type of nodes occur on the tree, so that you need to consider what they would transform into if you do a generative transformation. That's reasonable, but is not more than context free. More than context free would be an overlapping construction like this:

John MARY went to the LOOKED OUT store THE WINDOW.

Which is not allowed in nearly any language designed by humans, natural or artificial.Likebox (talk) 04:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

@likebox, you'll want to look at the work on Swiss German and Dutch that claims that both languages have crossing dependencies, and are, in fact, context sensitive. A good place to start is: S.M. Shieber. Evidence against the context-freeness of natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy, 8:333-343, 1985. Comhreir (talk) 06:35, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

If by "context sensitive" you mean that some sentences require looking at some non-local relationships on the whole parse tree to determine subject-verb agreement or the relation between a verb and an object, then this is clearly true. But that's a pretty miserable kind of context sensitivity. "English is context free" means that the basic sentence structure consists of non-overlapping clauses, so that you can always find a parse tree for a sentence and the clauses do not overlap.

To appreciate that this is a very special situation, you have consider a true non context free language. Since no examples occur naturally, I will make one up, just to show you how artificial it is. Consider the following construction:

John walked to the store is green is my favorite color.

Meaning "John walked to the store", "the store is green", and "green is my favorite color". Such a monstrosity puts together an overlapping clause structure, which cannot be parenthesized into clauses:

(John walked to [the store) is (green] is my favorite color)

where to prevent confusion, I put two kinds of parentheses to indicate the ovelapping constructions. This sort of thing is logically possible in non-context free artificial languages, but it is not allowed in context free grammars, and it is also not allowed in natural language. There is no exception to this rule that I know of. That means that basic English grammar is context free, except that not all agreement rules or verb-object relationships are determined by the context-free grammar alone.

If you know an exception to this rule, I would be happy to hear it. Reading linguistics texts, I find that they are often too close to natural language to appreciate that overlapping clauses are logically possible. Some papers do emphasize the the basic rules of English grammar are described by BNF.Likebox (talk) 17:02, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Again, read Shreiber's paper. It has examples exactly like the one you are talking about.Comhreir (talk) 17:15, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't have any such examples, because these examples don't exist. I call your bluff. Show me one example. Lift it out of Schreiber if you want.Likebox (talk) 03:27, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok--- I read Schreiber. His examples are in Swiss-German, which allows for verbs to come at the end of a sentence. Then he gives this sentence:

I John(1) the house(2) helped(1) paint(2)

Which attached a list of objects (John house), to a list of verbs (help paint) in forward order, not in revere order. This is not context free, as can be easily proved by extending it to arbitrary strings of objects:

I Alice(1) Bob(2) Carol(3) Dana(4) Ernest(5) John(6) the house(7) told(1) told(2) told(3) told(4) told(5) help(6) paint(7).

It is obvious that as the number of characters extends, the object of the first "told" is arbitrarily deep down in the stack when it is encountered. So this is in fact not context free. But it is unique to German.

It is possible to add a non-context free attachment rule like this, while preserving most of the non-overlapping structure of the clauses. You could do this by making up the single non-context free rule that verbs coming one after the other produce compound verbs whose arguments are the union of the arguments of the verbs in order. With this rule, the non-context freeness of Swiss German would be isolated in one construction.

The question still remaains of whether verbs can bind to distant objects in English. I thought of a few poetic sounding sentences:

By the sea is where Jack said to Clara to say to Fred to say to Amy that they should meet.

Which could be legitimately interpreted that Jack was thinking that the meeting place should be by the sea, rather than that Jack was by the sea when he said it. This type of thing can be nested:

Amy asked Jack if by the Caspian Sea is where he said they should meet.

So perhaps there are some distant object-verb attachments which can happen. But the basic non-overlapping clause rule is still correct, and that is still much of the essence of context-freeness. Perhaps the absolutely correct statement is "strictly nested clauses", which might be a little weaker condition than context-free, which also includes the condition that attachements have to be local.Likebox (talk) 05:11, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

But honestly--- I can't think of a natural (not overly poetic) English example which is not context free.Likebox (talk) 05:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

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Comments

This article doesn't mention that this theory has basically been disproved by studies since it's been written and is basically only useful for academics studying Chomsky specifically. Neuroelectronic (talk) 04:16, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

You can add that yourself, citing reliable sources that say that. Without reliable sources that say that the theory has been disproven, we can't say that. - Donald Albury 17:25, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

It has not been conclusively disproven. However, TG appears to ignore relexification (i.e., similarities in syntax between various creole languages are seen as reflecting a "universal grammar"). It is much more likely that Haitian Creole, for example, is basically the Fon language relexified with words derived from French. There is a linguistic joke that goes, "According to generativism, every language is underlyingly English". Furthermore, while it may be true that all languages have both nouns and verbs, many polysynthetic languages like Navajo have a great preponderance of verbs but relatively few nouns. Even the most sacred tenet of TG/universal grammar, namely the claim that all languages are learned by their native speakers at more or less the same age, can be disproven quite easily. It is well-known that even native speakers make regular errors when speaking Tsez, for example, and children who are native speakers of the Totonacan languages usually master figure/ground relations approximately at 10 years of age. --2A02:AB04:2AB:700:88FA:3DEC:E375:DA12 (talk) 16:12, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Hjelmslev

The article states that "Transformational algebra was first introduced to general linguistics by the structural linguist Louis Hjelmslev", with Pieter Seuren's Western linguistics: An historical introduction identified as the source (no page number).

Seuren makes no mention of Hjelmslev's "transformational algebra" that I can find. He does say this: "What makes glossematics relevant and interesting is its projected way of specifying the possible combinations of primitive formal units into larger structures, i.e., its notion of algorithmic production of strings of symbols, and the empirical and formal constraints it imposes on any such specification in the light of an evaluation with respect to alternative specifications. Here Hjelmslev's ideas clearly prefigure the theory of generative grammar that sprang up in America a few years later. (p 164)" Seuren goes on to take a closer look at his aspect, including the concept of an "infinite number of sentences from finite elements", but nowhere does he actually mention transformations. The editor who added the reference to Hjelmslev appears to be confusing "generative" with "transformational".

The storyline at the article, that suggests that Harris followed Hjelmslev but removed semantics from the picture, is completely distorted. Harris was a Bloomfieldian and ignored semantics in his structural analyses because of this. Harris suggested transformations (no debt to Hjelmslev), which were adopted by his student Chomsky. Moreover, Harris did not follow generative principles (Hjelmslevian or otherwise); that was Chomsky's step. Chomsky's generativism was "prefigured" by Hjelmslev, but Seuren does not state that Chomsky took his generativism from Hjelmslev. Since the edit is not only a misrepresentation of the source cited, but also of the actual facts, I am modifying this section.

Bathrobe (talk) 21:22, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I was looking at the introduction section, too, and was thinking why not merge generative grammar and transformational grammar? In the current versions, it seems that they are the same except that generative grammar considers the generative/transformational system to be innate. Sechehaye wrote about transformations, and the way I understand it, if you read a tree bottom-up, a noun is transformed into N, the N and things around it are transformed into NP, and the NP and the things around it are eventually transformed into S. The generative principle, on the other hand, means that you can turn the process around and generate full sentences top-down. Husserl's model is similar and so is Carnap's. What we gather so far is that generative and transformational grammar look the same. Femke 01 (talk) 08:46, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Agree with your appraisal but not sure if I agree with the conclusion. There is a real distinction between "transformational" and "generative" grammar. "Transformational grammar" is a generative grammar that involves transformations, which was Chomsky's earliest formulation. In my humble opinion, the TG article should be cut right back to just the TG phase, i.e., pre-P&P (before transformations were replaced by movement). (I haven't had the opportunity to read Sechehaye.)

BTW, any article on Generative grammar should extend beyond Chomskyan generative grammar since other grammatical theories, mostly branching off from Chomsky, can also be regarded as generative. If you want to include only Chomskyan grammars (TG and later versions) in one single article, there should be an article on "Chomskyan grammar"! (Everything is complicated by the fact that Chomsky changed his mind every decade or so).

Transformational grammar is generated top-down but later versions of Chomskyan grammar are bottom-up, so I don't think that is a good basis for defining generative grammar.

BTW, I'm not disagreeing with you so much as puzzling over how this mess could be cleaned up.

Bathrobe (talk) 03:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

That is the problem. Different authors have different uses for the terms, and I agree, the generative grammar article is too focused on Chomsky. Does Chomsky not say transformations come from Port-Royal Grammar? Husserl discussed transformations in the context of Port-Royal I think in 1920. What it means is that there is a meaningful deep structure, which is transformed to a surface structure although these terms probably come from Chomsky. It seems that there are many different versions of generative and transformational grammar but I am still not sure whether the two are genuinely different. What might be confusing is that one of Chomsky's inventions is called transformational grammar (but it might not be the only version of TG). Femke 01 (talk) 07:52, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

No, Chomsky claimed Port Royal as his forebears -- that the Port Royal grammarians were dealing in 'deep structure' and 'universal grammar', just like he was. But he never claimed he got it from them. The title of the paper Chomsky in search of a pedigree explains it all.

There is a lot of criticism out there about the wrongness of Chomsky's claims about Port Royal. Port Royal were not, in fact, the first to believe in universal grammar, Port Royal's so-called deep structure has its roots in a totally different background from what Chomsky claims it to be (it goes back to ancient Greek and Roman grammarians), etc. You have to read those sources to realise that Chomsky was spinning it for his own purposes. What is worse, Chomsky was still claiming Port Royal as his forerunners as late as 2013, decades after he had dropped transformations.

As I said, transformational grammar is one variety of generative grammar, involving deep structure and transformations. Eventually Chomsky dropped both of them, which makes it wrong to call Chomsky's later grammars 'transformational grammar', even though they are still generative.

Bathrobe (talk) 10:00, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

BTW, where can I find Husserl's reference to transformations? I would also like to get hold of Sechehaye to confirm that he was transformationalist in the Chomskyan sense.

In reading the article on Transformational Grammar and that on Syntactic Structures, I find a tendency to speak in very broadbrush terms about what might be called historical trends, without looking at the historical details. This was most conspicuous at this article on Transformational Grammar, which suggested the following historical process: Hjelmslev (generative with transformations) > Harris (generative with transformations without semantics) > Chomsky (generative with transformations). While it might be a useful way of looking at trends over time, firstly it is erroneous (no mention of transformations in Hjelmslev) and secondly I don't think that's how it actually happened. It was more like 1. Hjelmslev (generative?). 2. American structuralists (distributional, no semantics) > Harris (distributional with transformations, no semantics; interested in mathematical algorithms) > Chomsky (generative with transformations, mathematical algorithms). This is a totally different flow, and the article misrepresents what actually happened.

I think my point is that Husserl maybe dealt in transformations (I'd like to confirm that), Hjelmslev was maybe generative in nature but no transformations, but neither of these necessarily formed any kind of input to Harris's and Chomsky's work. Naturally proving or disproving influences is difficult (which is why people write papers on whether Bloomfield was indebted to Saussure), but to suggest that Harris followed Hjelmslev but threw out the semantics is far too bold a step.

Chomsky's interpretation of Port Royal was highly distorted. One reason he seized on "Invisible God created the visible universe" is because Transformational Grammar at the time of his book was toying with the idea of deriving adjectives from relative clauses by means of transformations (God who is invisible > invisible God). This has since gone by the wayside and was ridiculed by Montague at the time.

At any rate, if you read Lakoff's critique of Cartesian Linguistics you will find that Port Royal was actually heavily influenced by Sanctius. And if you read up on Sanctius, you'll find he was influenced by Byzantine grammarians like Priscian, who were dealing with rhetorical devices. Chomsky actually denied to Lakoff that Sanctius was relevant, because unlike Port Royal, who were dealing in "psychological grammar", Sanctius was just doing literary analysis. Chomsky always skews things his way.

Bathrobe (talk) 23:22, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

That's true. Chomsky has often been criticized for distorting dead philosophers' ideas. Well, the question regarding Port-Royal is complicated and is discussed in much detail at the beginning and end of its 1975 English edition. The translators are critical of Robin Lakoff's claims, and Norman Kretzmann is critical of Chomsky's, discussing the same passage of the book as Husserl. Nonetheless, Husserl's view seems to be the same as Chomsky's. He writes about it in his Logical Investigations, Vol. II, Ch. 6 describing operations as "transformations." They come in the form 'God is invisible' > 'invisible God'. Femke 01 (talk) 08:24, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't have access to the books you mention. However, I wonder about claims that Husserl's view is "the same as Chomsky's". Active and passive voice have been known for centuries. Chomsky didn't invent them. In fact, he got the idea of a passive transformation from Harris, his mentor, who treated the passive as a "transform" of the active within his distributionalist theory of grammar. The question is not whether active and passive sentences are somehow related to each other (we all know they are) but how they are treated in grammatical theory. I am curious how Husserl treated his "transformations". Did he set up phrase structure rules? Did he generate sentences mathematically? What exactly did he propose?

"Transformational" is not a synonym for "generative". Nor is a traditional grammatical approach that (for instance) recognises negative sentences as regularly derived from affirmative sentences, or questions from statements, a "transformational grammar". These are just stating what most people who have any acquaintance with grammar already know, that you can "turn an affirmative sentence into a negative", or "an active sentence into a passive". A school grammar exercise that set students the task of converting affirmatives to negatives or actives to passives wouldn't necessarily be a "transformational grammar".

Even the Arabs had the notion of underlying levels (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233659143_The_Notion_of_Underlying_Levels'_in_the_Arabic_Grammatical_Tradition") which they apparently got from the Greeks. Does this make them "transformationalist"? Wouldn't this make "transformationalist" into little more than an adherent of a vague formulation that certain sentences are structurally related to others? What made Chomsky's Transformational grammar unique was the entire package: the positing of a deep structure generated by rewrite rules, and the positing of strictly defined transformations that converted these deep structures into surface structures. So the question is, were Husserl's transformations the same as Chomsky's? Or were they just based on similar traditional notions?

Bathrobe (talk) 15:21, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

A dictionary definition of transformational grammar is "a type of grammar which describes a language in terms of transformations applied to an underlying logical deep structure in order to generate the surface structure of sentences which can actually occur." To me it seems like a perfect description of Husserl's grammar.

This paper writes: "Husserl’s notion of Modifikation differs from Carnap’s transformation rules, as it does not concern the relation of consequence, while it is consistent with the Chomskian notion of transformation, as it accounts for how the syntactic form displayed by the surface structure of sentences can result from grammatical transformations applied to more elementary syntactic structures – what Husserl calls syntactic stuffs (Edie 1977, pp. 156.159). This reading has been contested on the basis that transformations do not play a fundamental role in Husserl’s pure grammar, as they are not ubiquitous and operate at a “higher level” with respect to the laws affecting the combination of the underlying semantic categories (Cibotaru 2016). Edie’s main point still holds, however, as long as the relevant operations are taken to transform the deep structure into their surface structure [...] (see Drummond 2007, p. 64)." Femke 01 (talk) 08:43, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that paper. To be honest, it's very hard going because of the highly abstract language used, unlike Chomsky's work, which puts up specific analyses and tries to justify them.

One point that needs to be taken into account is that Chomsky's deep structure, at least in the initial stages, did not refer to an underlying logical deep structure (pace the dictionary definition you cite). It was purely syntactic and made syntactic arguments for its justification. AFAIK, "Logical Form" came later with Principles and Parameters (although it might have come earlier, in Aspects for instance).

You note that "The translators are critical of Robin Lakoff's claims, and Norman Kretzmann is critical of Chomsky's". The problem, of course, is WHY Lakoff's claims and Chomsky's claims are criticised. Lakoff made a number of points. The most interesting one for me was the claim that Sanctius' work was very much in evidence in Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre la langue latine, but far less so in the Port Royal Grammar itself. Lakoff felt that the differences were so great that the two were possibly meant to be read in tandem. Is that the point that the translators disagreed with, or was it something else? Without specifics, criticism of Lakoff could mean anything. And that is the nub: vague general statements mean nothing without detail.

At any rate, it is difficult for me to comment without having read your sources. But "somebody criticised somebody" and "someone thinks something" are too vague to constitute a proof or disproof.

I do suggest you should read about Sanctius. It is an eye-opener. Try Deep and surface structure concepts in Renaissance and Mediaeval syntactic theory by Keith Percival. Concrete and specific.

Bathrobe (talk) 10:13, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the paper, it could be quite useful for the article. Based on Percival, classical grammar was humanistic and transformational. Husserl's version does include rewrite rules even though he did not use arrows but instead says that two Sp's transform into one Sp (Subject-predicate). Chomsky is also different because he considers transformations as biological. Saussure, again is different from Chomsky and Husserl: his concept is non-biological but he argues against transformations. He advises that sentences be analyzed purely on the basis of their surface form without giving any consideration to ellipsis. Femke 01 (talk) 19:05, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

"Chomsky is also different because he considers transformations as biological."

I'm not sure how useful it is to essentialise theories of grammar as 'humanistic', 'philosophical', or 'biological'.

I assume you mean Chomsky considered his generative grammar to be innate. The Language Acquisition Device is certainly central to Chomsky's thinking but I think his mathematical approach can be considered on its own without necessarily accepting its claimed biological underpinnings. (In fact, this is probably one of the problems that people have with Chomsky. Not only does he invoke abstract algorithms to describe language; he maintains that these algorithms are somehow inherent to human biology.) What I got from Percival was the fact that 'transformations' originated not as a means of describing a universal grammar but as a means of explaining and understanding Latin texts. The terminology that Sanctius used (e.g. 'figured sentences'), which betrays its literary origins, was taken over with little or no change by Port Royal. Bathrobe (talk) 20:16, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Without the biological context, why are we writing about Chomsky in the first place? Mathematical linguistics was established by people before him, and the only notable difference is that Chomsky claims that the logical axioms pertaining to language are structured and calculated by the Language Acquisition Device. This would be analogous to saying that Dr X did not invent the calculator but he invented the idea that the human brain comes hard-wired with a physical calculator, which limits people's thinking of mathematical equations. Femke 01 (talk) 07:58, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Fine. But 1) please produce a source that specifically states that Chomsky "considers transformations as biological". In those words. Not "innate"; "biological". Otherwise you are creating your own vocabulary, which is "original research" and not allowed on Wikipedia. And 2), please produce a source that states that "the only notable difference [between Transformational Grammar and earlier mathematical approaches] is that Chomsky claims that the logical axioms pertaining to language are structured and calculated by the Language Acquisition Device." (Note that this must refer to Transformational grammar in particular, not Generative grammar in general.) If you can't produce one, you can't put that in the article.

Otherwise your proposal is akin to the problem that started this thread: a user who decided off his own bat to rewrite Seuren's "algorithmic production of strings of symbols" as "transformational algebra", because, in his own peculiar interpretation, he thought that's what it meant. Bathrobe (talk) 09:02, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

What I meant was not to make any bold statements. I agree that there are ways to keep the two articles (Generative grammar and Transformational grammar) separate. I just pointed out that the term transformation is ambiguous, and you can see it, for example, in the quotation from Bianchin (above). Additionally, Seuren claims Sechehaye was the first to use the term in the modern sense, but I would need to check what he means by that. There is a fine line between doing original research and improving an article. You see, if we decide to exclude the authors who used the term in a broader way, that is, not like Percival, that will be a decision made by some Wikipedia editors, so you might call it original research. That is problematic if the task is to remove Hjelmslev because I suppose we would find sources describing his operations as transformations, too. Femke 01 (talk) 10:09, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear that "Transformational Grammar" has been patented by Chomsky. You could refer to precursors, immediate predecessors, or theories that used similar concepts, but none of them could be called "Transformational Grammar". I've never seen anyone call Husserl's work "Transformational Grammar", even if people have shown that some parts of his grammar are very similar to Chomsky's. Since I've never actually read Hjelmslev, I don't know if anyone would call it "transformational". But Seuren doesn't call it that, although I'm pretty sure he would have applied that term if he could have. Bathrobe (talk) 14:02, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

All I see is that the article needs a history section, and the paper by Percival seems like a good source. Did you notice that the disambiguation page transformation links any grammatical transformations to this page? To me it now appears to focus fully on Chomsky's transformational grammar, so what is your vision? Should we (1) remove other names and limit transformations to Chomsky (or versions deriving directly from it)? and (2) remove any theoretical discussion and present the Chomskyan concept as purely descriptive? Femke 01 (talk) 15:21, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

As I said, I think that precursors and predecessors should be mentioned. Zellig Harris is crucial. Some mention might be made of Sanctius, Port Royal, and Husserl. It would be nice if we could find out whether Hjelmslev actually used "transformations".

In covering Chomsky, his beliefs (universal grammar and innateness, which appeared early, but not his theories on a genetic mutation, which came much later) would need to be mentioned. Perhaps contrary to what I suggested earlier, Biolinguistics could be mentioned. Anything after Principles and Parameters should be pared down because the Minimalist theory is NOT transformational. But this would be controversial.

There is an article on Sanctius (Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas) which talks in very general terms about his methods and historical role but fails to mention his "transformations". Bathrobe (talk) 00:41, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Sounds great! I also don't know if Hjelmslev is important. There is a retrospective article by Partee, who was an insider in transformational grammar but then went for formal semantics. It seems to me that Chomsky, Fodor, Katz, and others were looking for what Jakobson would call unmarked forms to reconstruct Universal Grammar (a similar project is now carried out in Optimality Theory). A basic word-order sentence (without ellipses) would reflect the innate form. I assume that the ability to make transformations is native and so restricted by the Language Acquisition Device. Many types of transformation are now subsumed in the movement operation. Femke 01 (talk) 08:08, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I notice you updated the article back in early August.

Your new introduction and history are highly interesting but I'm surprised no one has challenged them. First, there is quite a bit of "original research" in what you've written. Rather than quoting different sources in support of statements, you've synthesised a larger view on the basis of those sources --- which is what someone doing their own research would do.

In the process, you've made some very broad-brush statements that should be challenged. I'll just mention a couple:

"Transformations are a part of the classical Western grammatical tradition based on the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and on the grammar of Apollonius Dyscolus." Well, maybe, but were they called "transformations"? If not, this is anachronistic. "Transformations" is Chomsky's terminology. The wording should perhaps be more circumspect.

"These were joined to establish linguistics as a natural science in the Middle Ages." I don't believe that "linguistics" was a recognised science in the Middle Ages. Your usage is again anachronistic.

"closer inspection of the deep structures of different types of sentences led to many further insights, such as the concept of agent and patient in active and passive sentences." "Deep structure" is a Chomskyan term. This is again anachronistic. Another question is, did those grammarians "discover" the concept of agent and patient in active and passive sentences? You need a source for this. Otherwise you are just making up history in a way that you feels makes sense to you.

"Sanctius, among others, argued that surface structures pertaining to the choice of grammatical case in certain Latin expressions could not be understood without the restoration of the deep structure."

But Sanctius didn't use the terms "deep structure" and "surface structure".

"Transformational grammar fell out of favor with the rise of historical-comparative linguistics"

There was no such thing as "transformational grammar" at this time.

"Husserl's concept influenced Roman Jakobson, who advocated it in the Prague linguistic circle, which was likewise influenced by Saussure. Based on opposition theory, Jakobson developed his theory of markedness and, having moved to the United States, influenced Noam Chomsky, especially through Morris Halle."

So you're saying Husserl was transformationalist, and his transformationalism influenced Jakobsen, who passed on his transformationalist ideas to Chomsky... But wait a minute, you're not talking about transformations, you're talking about markedness... and generative phonology?.... So apart from dropping names one after another, what was the connection between Husserl and Chomskyan transformational grammar? This section telescopes too many things into one (supposedly) seamless narrative.

This paragraph has a similar problem:

"The 1960s version of transformational grammar differs from the classical context in its relation to the theory of language. While the humanistic grammarians considered language manmade, Chomsky and his colleagues exploited markedness and transformation theory in their attempt to uncover innate grammar. It would be later clarified that such grammar arises from a brain structure caused by a mutation in humans. In particular, generative linguists tried to reconstruct the underlying innate structure based on deep structure and unmarked forms. Thus, a modern notion of Universal Grammar, in contrast to the humanistic classics, suggested that the basic word order of biological grammar is unmarked and unmodified in transformational terms."

Things that happened before, things that happened after, all in one paragraph. I think you need to be much more careful with your formulation. The "1960s version of transformational grammar" WAS "transformational grammar". You can't call mediaeval theories "transformational grammar"; that is anachronistic. "the basic word order of biological grammar is unmarked". I'd like you to provide some citations from Chomsky at the Transformational Grammar stage that show him talking about the "basic word order of biological grammar". (There may indeed be such citations, but you haven't produced them.)

I won't go into any more examples since I simply don't have time at the moment. But the narrative that you've produced could be described as "original research", much of it is poorly supported by actual sources, and much of the terminology is anachronistic, meaning that you are imposing terms on people who never used such terminology. From your narrative it appears that mediaeval "linguists" dealt in "transformational grammar", which is projecting modern thinking back onto the past.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:10, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Femke's edits to "Transformational Grammar"

I have already made some comments on this at the very end of the previous section entitled "Hjelmslev". I referred to the anachronism of the terminology (people who are listed as practising "Transformational Grammar" centuries ago would never have used that term of themselves), as well as the strong trend to original research by presenting the editor's own interpretation of history.

I would like to add here a major issue with the edits, which is already touched on in my earlier comments.

The edits appear to imply that there was some kind of continuous historical "Transformational Grammar" from Plato and Aristotle, through Sanctius and others, to Chomsky. This is the point of the first two sentences: "Transformations are a part of the classical Western grammatical tradition based on the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and on the grammar of Apollonius Dyscolus. These were joined to establish linguistics as a natural science in the Middle Ages." This is a rather breathtaking assertion. I've already pointed out the anachronism of using terms like "transformations" for ancient or mediaeval times. There were naturally recognised relations between, for instance, "active" and "passive", or "positive" and "negative", but these were not necessarily perceived in terms of a Chomskyan "Transformational Grammar".

A second major objection is the implication that Chomskyan Transformational Grammar was the heir to and culmination of a previous tradition. I do not believe this to be the case. I believe that Chomsky was originally inspired by structuralism and mathematical approaches to language, but found the "distributionalism" of structuralist approaches untenable. Under his (quasi-)mathematical approach Chomsky believed that he could better capture regularities like "active" vs "passive" by using "transformations" to mediate between Harrisian "kernel sentences" (which he later identified as "deep structure") and what he later identified as "surface structure". It was only later again that Chomsky attempted to tether his theories to earlier grammatical studies, as captured rather uncharitably in the article title "Chomsky in Search of a Pedigree". The entire story of Chomsky as heir to an ancient tradition was made up by Chomsky himself, and I do not believe that it represents what actually happened. (The reference in the rewritten TG article to transformational grammar falling out of favour with "historical-comparative linguistics in the 19th century" is straight out of Chomsky's own narrative). I could, of course, be wrong, but the article as rewritten does not give any credible sources for the interpretation given in the article.

I'm afraid the entire narrative is too glib and simplified to do justice to the historical circumstances, and I believe it needs a major rewrite.

Bathrobe (talk) 03:24, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

It's been a long time (c. 50 years), but as I remember discussions in courses I took, it did look like Chomsky was trying to construct a history of "transformationalism" that had not been previously noticed. There have been alternations in the history of the study of language as to which aspects are emphasized (I envisioned it as a helix), such as whether nouns or verbs are regarded as primary. Chomsky found previous students of language who described the structure of language in terms that were more or less parallel to transformational grammar, and then built a case for calling them forerunners of tranformationalism. Using Chomsky as a source, one could build a case for a long history of transfomationalism, but that would be one-sided. I doubt there is much to counter Chomsky's version in the books I have kept from my studies (and I have been away from the field for almost 50 years), so I can't point to any sources to use. Donald Albury 14:58, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh, there are plenty of sources alright, some easily accessible, others less so. The problem is that Femke has misinterpreted and distorted them in order to write his own "grand history" of transformational grammar. For sources and discussion, see the preceding thread on Hjelmslev. I consistently warned Femke against the broadbrush connections and reasoning that has emerged fullblown in his rewrite.

The original distortion started with Chomsky himself with his book on "Cartesian Linguistics", which purported to show that Chomsky himself was somehow the legitimate heir to the "universal grammar" of Port Royal, which was (supposedly) influenced by Descartes. This was heavily criticised and effectively debunked by a number of experts (see sources cited at the Wikipedia article on "Cartesian linguistics") who showed that Descartes had little to do with it, and demonstrated that ideas of "universal grammar" go back to Bacon and others in late mediaeval linguistics. Some (especially Robin Lakoff) pointed out that the so-called "transformational approach" of Port Royal was indebted to scholars like Sanctius, who was using it to explain Latin in a literary context -- how clumsy, fully spelt out sentences were transformed into graceful literary forms by processes like "ellipsis", which again goes back to late Roman/Byzantine times. (Incidentally, Chomsky dismissed this idea. The Port Royal grammarians were his true forebears dealing in universal grammar; Sanctius was just doing "literary analysis".)

What Femke has done is stand this whole narrative on its head. Rather than trace influences on Chomsky back to earlier "traditional grammar", he has decided that all earlier approaches are actually "transformational grammar". Having taken this breathtaking step, he has rewritten history to show the development of "transformational grammar" from the earliest times until Chomsky.

In fact, Chomsky's teacher Zellig Harris formulated the concept of transformations (e.g., active-passive) within his behaviourist, distributionalist theory. Where did Harris get them? One would have good reason to suspect that he was simply trying to capture traditional categories (that had come down in traditional grammar) within his rigorous distributionalist framework. Chomsky also decided that such relationships as active vs passive could be captured within a formalist mathematical theory by resorting to "transformations" mediating between "deep structure" and "surface structure".

The idea that passive sentences could be generated from active ones has been around for a very long time. Any grammar teacher who sets his students the task of forming passive sentences out of active sentences is harking back to this very old tradition. Femke has unilaterally decided that any such exercise is actually an exercise in "transformational grammar".

The whole point of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar is its ability to "generate" sentences in a formal mathematical approach, using "transformations" (strictly formalised operations operating on IC structures) to connect "deep structure" to "surface structure". The fact that schoolboys have for centuries been doing exercises to transform active sentences into passives does not make them practitioners of "Transformational Grammar". That is why Femke's narrative is so warped -- the tail is wagging the dog.

In his eagerness to write the history of "Transformational Grammar", he uses anachronistic language that no one else uses (referring to mediaeval grammarians as "linguists" and "transformationalists"), which is a dramatic conclusion that no one else has reached and is, effectively, "original research" without even valid citations to support it. He writes that "closer inspection of the deep structures of different types of sentences (by mediaeval "linguists") led to many further insights, such as the concept of agent and patient in active and passive sentences". He has no citations to support this, and fails to show how it links to Chomskyan Transformational Grammar. He also attempts to link Husserl's "transformational grammar" to Chomsky's via a discussion of Husserl's influence on the Prague School, whose ideas of "markedness" influenced Chomsky. In what way does this prove that Husserl's "transformational grammar" influenced Chomsky's? This is sloppy writing without even the pretence of logical or historical accuracy. Femke is simply interested in connecting dots in a way that he finds satisfying for his own imaginings.

I suggest that all of Femke's rewriting should be reverted and a fresh start made. The rewriting as it stands is a distorted and misguided attempt to inject a synthesis of Femke's own original research.

Bathrobe (talk) 03:54, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, thank you. Bathrobe is accusing me of quite a few things that do not make much sense to me. His core argument is that I have made up the history all by myself because it was made up by Chomsky..? But the section is sourced. I have to remind you again that this is also the Wikipedia page for transformations in general, and the History section is clear on being about the "understood elements", which became later called transformations. The term was unlikely coined by Chomsky. I think the history section now explains it all quite well, and there is not a word about Hjelmslev. If we go back to your version, there will be no essential difference between transformational grammar and generative grammar. So, to me it seems that you are focusing on a common association between Chomsky and transformations and would like to keep it there. Well, that would not be very informative, would it? Femke 01 (talk) 08:35, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

This is the page for Transformational Grammar. It is not the page for "transformations in general". "Transformational Grammar" or "Transformational Generative Grammar" normally refers to the Chomskyan theory. You are the one who has decided to expand the range of "transformational grammar" beyond the normal sense of the term, for which you have given no sources.

Your history section is not adequately sourced. I have pointed out the places that are not sourced at all, which you have not addressed.

"Understood elements" are not "transformations". In Chomsky's terms they are "traces" or "empty elements". They feature prominently in Chomsky's later generative theories.

"If we go back to your version, there will be no essential difference between transformational grammar and generative grammar."

There is no such thing as "my version"; only the version that was there before, which I did not write.

As for the statement that there would be "no essential difference between transformational grammar and generative grammar", this is another misapprehension on your part. Transformational grammar is one type of generative grammar ("a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language"). Chomskyan generative grammar comes in at least two other flavours, "government and binding" and "minimalism", neither of which are called "Transformational Grammar". There are other varieties of generative grammar, such as Head-driven phrase structure grammar, which are non-Chomskyan. These are not called transformational, either.

The definition given in the lede is that Transformational Grammar "considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of defined operations (called transformations) to produce new sentences from existing ones." It is a kind of generative grammar. It does not refer to "a part of the classical Western grammatical tradition based on the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and on the grammar of Apollonius Dyscolus". This is your own individual interpretation and I suggest you justify it with proper sources.

Bathrobe (talk) 11:57, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Fine, I was sloppy with the terminology above but that problem does not occur in the actual History section. I think the problem is that we define transformational grammar and generative grammar differently. Yours is in contradiction with Britannica, right? Femke 01 (talk) 16:43, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

"Yours is in contradiction with Britannica, right?"

In what way?

Britannica says: "generative grammar, a precisely formulated set of rules whose output is all (and only) the sentences of a language—i.e., of the language that it generates. There are many different kinds of generative grammar, including transformational grammar as developed by Noam Chomsky from the mid-1950s."

The problem here is delimiting different stages in Chomsky's development. Chomsky's Transformational Grammar began in the mid-50s (most notably with "Syntactic Structures") and continued until the early 1980s when he adopted "Principles and parameters" (or "Government and Binding"), "a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific parameters (i.e. markers, switches) that for particular languages are either turned on or off".

See the Britannica article on Noam Chomsky for developments in his thinking. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Noam-Chomsky/Philosophy-of-mind-and-human-nature

As for "transformations":

"Transformations during this transitional period [Principles and Parameters] were reduced to a single operation, “Move α” (“Move alpha”), which amounted to “move any element in a derivation anywhere”—albeit within a system of robust constraints."

(While "Move α" is heir to Chomsky's older "transformations", as far as I know they were no longer referred to as "transformations". Chomsky explicitly pointed out the shortcomings of his classic transformations when he moved to Principles and Parameters -- it might have been in his paper "Lectures on Government and Binding" but I'm not sure.)

In the Minimalist period, "Move α, and thus modification of structure from one derivational step to another, was replaced by “Move” and later by “internal Merge,” a variant of “external Merge,” itself a crucial basic operation that takes two elements (such as words) and makes of them a set."

Or see this summary from the Wikipedia article on "Noam Chomsky":

"Following transformational grammar's heyday through the mid-1970s, a derivative government and binding theory became a dominant research framework through the early 1990s, remaining an influential theory, when linguists turned to a "minimalist" approach to grammar. This research focused on the principles and parameters framework, which explained children's ability to learn any language by filling open parameters (a set of universal grammar principles) that adapt as the child encounters linguistic data. The minimalist program, initiated by Chomsky, asks which minimal principles and parameters theory fits most elegantly, naturally, and simply. In an attempt to simplify language into a system that relates meaning and sound using the minimum possible faculties, Chomsky dispenses with concepts such as "deep structure" and "surface structure" and instead emphasizes the plasticity of the brain's neural circuits, with which come an infinite number of concepts, or "logical forms". When exposed to linguistic data, a hearer-speaker's brain proceeds to associate sound and meaning, and the rules of grammar we observe are in fact only the consequences, or side effects, of the way language works. Thus, while much of Chomsky's prior research focused on the rules of language, he now focuses on the mechanisms the brain uses to generate these rules and regulate speech."

As you can see, transformational grammar's heyday was "through the mid-1970s", after which it was superseded by "a derivative government and binding theory". Yes, the wording is coy ("a derivative government and binding theory became a dominant research framework through the early 1990s") -- not "Chomsky replaced his transformational approach with a derivative government and binding theory that used Move α in place of transformations". That is because pinning down and (especially) naming stages in Chomsky's theories is admittedly difficult. He changed his thinking quite radically on at least two occasions, which meant that earlier labels became inaccurate. But it is far more useful to see "Transformational Grammar" as a particular stage in his theoretical development within generative grammar than it is to either a) use the term "transformational grammar" to refer to everything up to and including Minimalism, making it an exact synonym of "Chomskyan generative grammar" or b) to use it as as a catch-all for any kind of theory, from the time of the ancient Greeks, that somehow looked at grammar as ways of rephrasing sentences.

As I have pointed out, none of the pre-Chomskyan "transformational grammars" you refer to are generative (note that the present article starts "transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages"), and none of them use terms like "transformation". That is the nub. I know of no one except you who would refer to pre-generative works as being "Transformational Grammar".

Bathrobe (talk) 21:06, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Incidentally, I apologise for the aggressive tone of my earlier comments. I was simply gobsmacked by the rewrite and couldn't understand how everything could have got so muddled. Since you've clarified your belief that this earlier tradition was actually "transformational grammar", the logic behind your rewrite has become obvious. I still believe it is totally misguided, but at least it makes sense, which it did not before.

Bathrobe (talk) 22:10, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

So, I take it you are less interested in the question of what transformational grammar is than in the question of what is usually called transformational grammar. However, the history section does not contradict that, it only lays the historical background for TG in that sense. One point to consider is that there is hardly a single element in TG invented by Chomsky, and that should become clear somehow. Apparently, even most work done in TG in the 1960s was not Chomsky's. I suppose this is totally irrelevant to you since what is usually thought of as transformational grammar starts and ends with Chomsky - period. I admit this is the idea given by some Chomsky histories, but Chomsky himself writes differently. Femke 01 (talk) 07:14, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

"I take it you are less interested in the question of what transformational grammar is than in the question of what is usually called transformational grammar."

Of course we are dealing with what is usually called "Transformational Grammar". This is Wikipedia. It is a place for presenting what is known, by citing reputable sources. On Wikipedia "original research" is a no-no. Your history section is your OWN attempt to synthesise a history of previous scholarship that is comparable in some way to Chomsky's theory of TG.

If you want to do original research, then get it published, or put it on a blog or website, or upload it to a place like Academia. It doesn't belong here.

"I suppose this is totally irrelevant to you since what is usually thought of as transformational grammar starts and ends with Chomsky - period."

If the sources (including Chomsky himself) mention the contributions of other people then it's fine to refer to them. But let's face it, TG, P&P, and now Minimalism were all launched by Chomsky (with important input from and in collaboration with other people); after that everyone just followed along. Without Chomsky, these theories or programs would not exist in their present form. That's the reality. It's not a matter of whether it is relevant or irrelevant to me personally.

If you want to argue otherwise, then I'll say it again: publish your own research.

(As an irrelevant aside: I happen to intensely dislike Chomsky and his theories. That doesn't stop me from wanting to ensure that articles about him are accurate and fair. You appear to be quite committed to showing that "there is hardly a single element in TG invented by Chomsky, and that should become clear somehow". This gives the appearance of being your main motivation for writing your "history of transformational grammar" -- to show that there is actually a long, mostly unacknowledged, history of Transformational Grammar that lies outside the conventional view. That is hardly unbiased research. It is, indeed, "original research" with a mission. A section about influences and sources of Chomsky's theories might be better received.)

Bathrobe (talk) 11:30, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

English grammar

Traditional grammar (also know as classical grammar ) is a framework for the description of the structure of a language.