As all the people concerned with language and language teaching know, ‘language’ cannot be taught without being constructed upon some underlying concepts of the nature of language and we come across with several   concepts  when we survey throughout the history. Here I would like to speculate upon one of these leading concepts which is led by Noam Chomsky: ‘Transformational Generative Grammar’. Although almost all of us are familiar with the terms used by Chomsky such as ‘unlimited use from limited rules’, ‘creative aspect of language’, ‘surface & deep structure’,...  on which he bases his ideas ,  let’s have a look at it in detail in order to get more information about Chomsky and his theory.

CHOMSKY’s GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

Even the discipline has its roots with the studies of philosphical grammarians in 17^th century – as Wayne Harsh (1975:7) mentioned in his article– we don’t meet  Transformational Generative Grammar until it is presented by Noam Chomsky in 1957 with his ‘Syntactic Stuctures’ and later extended in 1965 his ‘Aspects of the Theory of Syntax’. Before beginning to give information about the underlying concept of his theory, I think we had better to mention why Chomsky rejects the preceeding concepts which are based on structuralism. Eddy Roulet (1975:41) summarizes Chomsky’s major criticisms against structural grammar as follows:

a)      That it limited itself to the inventory and analysis of utterances from a corpus without seeking to charactize the rules which permit all native speakers to produce an infinity of grammatical utterances; i.e. their linguistic competence.

b)      That it did not take account of intuitively recognized linguistic facts, e.g.declarative, interrogative, negative and passive paraphrase relationships of a single utterance.

c)       That in remaining at the surface structure level it missed making a number of deep generalizations.

          To fill the gaps of this structural theory on grammar, Chomsky proposes different ideas with its ‘Transformational Generative Grammar’. Here, we should have a knowledge about the terms constituting the theory , firstly what is ‘generate’? According to Harsh (1975:7) both Chomsky and has proponents, it is a ‘... rule of substitution for all possible instances of sentences with a particular structural pattern...’ ;and ‘transformational’ is interpreted by John Lyons (1968:248) as the ‘two analyses of deep structure & surface structure’. We can explain roughly the surface structure as a layer seen at first while the deep structure is about ‘the connexions of the structures’.Return to Harsh’s ideas (1975:7) which emphasises the Chomsky’s ideas, he claims that native speaker can understand both the surface and the underlying meaning since he has ‘the deep structure in mind as he produces the surface structure’. Here we can infer that Chomsky put his ideas on ‘native speakers’ usage’, because while he is explaining another aspect of the theory on grammar he again utilizes from native speakers’ usage. Harsh (1975:8) explains this as “generative grammar proposes to describe not just existing English sentences but all possible English sentences and to give an explanation of how native speakers form, or ‘generate’ sentences”. Here I remember the words that I frequently encounter ‘limited rules, unlimited usage’ or ‘infinite use of finite means’ and such things. Unlike the structural view, restricted rules do not restrict the language use but language users can create their own sentences with the help of ‘creative aspect of language’ ,again a widely known and met phrase. Chomsky formulates these rules as follows:

                                   S : NP + VP

And this formulae is read as Rewrite S( Sentence) as  NP( Noun Phrase) plus VP( Verb Phrase):

NP                  DetN

         Prop N

                       Pronoun

Verb               have + tense – be + tense – V+ing(FOR “ The water had been dripping.”)

 (Harsh 1975:8)

          Moreover, Harsh(1975:8) claims that generative grammar provides us with a system for explaining the ambiguity in sentences such as ‘visiting relatives can be tiresome’ and allows us to see the underlying structures of such constructions. In other words, if we don’t know the underlying system of the structures of such  sentences which has two or more meanings on it, there can be an ambuigity which prevents us comprehending  the meaning of them. (But unfortunately, Transformational Grammar has a great deficiency in compensating the needs for meaning.)

          In brief , Chomsky shows us that via formulaic rules explaining the deep structure of sentences we can create unlimited number of sentences from simple to complex. However, being a teacher I am more interested in  how Transformational Generative Grammar constributes to language teaching  and by utilizing from Roulet’s (1975: 43 – 53) ideas  I will give the basic points of it –but by summarizing :

v      With its explanation on the system of language it provides better linguistic foundations for language teaching pedagogy. By this system students can understand better how the language and  human mind functions, since it does not only provide a list of forms and structures as did structualist grammar but it also provides rules which are ‘clear and formally explicit’.

v      It provides information for structural exercises of the transformational type which occupy an important place in language teaching pedagogy. Instead of providing pupils with abstract symbols and complex rules governing transformations, it is sufficient to illustrate these rules by examples, such as converting positive sentences into negative ones, actives into passives.

v      It provides rules which allow for the systematic construction of complex sentences ‘to make a big sentence out of little ones’.

v           By means of these rules providing an infinite number of grammatical constructions, it helps Students develop their ‘creative aspect’ in language learning.

v      It makes a distinction between the surface structure and the deep structure of an utterance.  Roulet (1975: 48) gives place R. Jacobson’s ideas on that matter as, ‘This study seems to indicate that fast and adequate learning can only be achieved if deep structures are properly recognized and pedagogical procedures are so geared that the learner can derive from them the rules which he must internalize in order to become proficient in the target language...’.

v      It provides the basis for the necessary transfer from one language to another implicit in the areas of translation and ‘contrastive analysis’ important to language teaching. It proves that‘a deep structure feature common to both languages may be manifested differently in the surface structure of the languages’.

v      It does not prescribe, it allows you to determine whether a particular sentence results from the correct application of a system of rules which one has chosen to teach.

v      It can substantiate notions of deviation and style, it provides a precise instrument for the ‘stylistic analysis of literary tests’. Chomsky contributes in the practice of stylistic analysis, in examining the texts of Faulkner, Hemingway, James and Lawrence; he shows that it is possible to characterize their style in an explicit may according to the number and type of transformations which they use in the construction of their sentences.

v      On phonology, it reveals underlying similarities which up to now have escaped phonologists. A systematic view of the links between the spoken code and its graphic transcription.

        Above all Chomsky introduces us the creativeness and shows that we aren’t obliged to make sentences that are presented by the structuralists with the fear that all our deviations from the pre-determined rules can be wrong; but we can produce unlimited sentences via limited rules.But as it is seen, although it has many contributions  to theory of language and language teaching it has many deficiencies when compared with the recent works which  also give importance to communicative values. Transformational grammar  only gives schematic representation of the sentences and focuses on the linguistic features only although it provides us with some innovations by reacting  the early structuralists who have more strict ideas than Chomsky’s. Needless to say new researches also reacted to his views –as always happens throughout  history-and filled the gaps of Chomsky’s theory.  

 BIBLIOGRAHY

Harsh, W. (1975)                 ‘Three Approaches: Traditional Grammar, Descriptive Linguistics, Generative Grammar’, The Art of Tesol Part One- Selected Articles from the English Teaching Forum

Lyons, J. (1968)                   Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics

                                               Oxford University Press, New York.

Roulet, E. (1975)                  Linguistic Theory- Linguistic Description and Language Teaching

                                               Longman, London.