Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
50 Years Later Reflections on Chomsky's Aspects
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Gallego, Ángel J. Ott, Dennis |
| Copyright Year | 2015 |
| Abstract | conditions that a generative grammar must meet have produced a variety of proposals concerning formal universals, in this sense. For example, consider the proposal that the syntactic component of a grammar must contain transformational rules (these being operations of a highly special kind) mapping semantically interpreted deep structures into phonetically interpreted surface structures, or the proposal that the phonological component of a grammar consists of a sequence of rules, a subset of which may apply cyclically to successively more dominant constituents of the surface structure (a transformational cycle, in the sense of much recent work on phonology). [.] The existence of deep-seated formal universals, in the sense suggested by such examples as these, implies that all languages are cut to the same pattern, but does not imply that there is any point by point correspondence between particular languages. whereas substantive universals have been the traditional concern of general linguistic theory, investigations of the abstract conditions that must be satisfied by any generative grammar have been undertaken only quite recently. They seem to offer extremely rich and varied possibilities for study in all aspects of grammar. On this view, linguistic universals are, fundamentally, innate properties of the mind; more specifically, they are properties of the mind's language acquisition device and also of the mature grammar of a speaker/hearer. They include constraints on the form and application of grammatical rules and processes. Like almost every other proposal in the first chapter of Aspects, the conception of formal linguistic universals laid out there is still completely applicable today. Indeed, formal universals have largely eclipsed substantive universals as the standard examples of linguistic universals that generative syntacticians are inclined to cite today. On the other hand, the actual examples of Mentalism and Universals in Aspects 253 formal universals that linguists today are most likely to cite are far more intricate than the examples that Chomsky cited in Aspects. The formal universals that contemporary syntacticians are likely to cite include islands and locality constraints on movement, binding conditions on anaphora, licit and illicit patterns of agreement, principles governing the interface between syntax and logical form, and highly articulated principles of phrase structure of the sort proposed within so-called cartographic theories of functional categories. These changes reflect the natural development and further articulation of syntactic theory over the past half century. It is striking that Chomsky was able to foresee the general character of these subsequent developments in his discussion of the issue in 1965, given that the available evidence for formal universals was comparatively scanty at that time. Very few languages other than English had so far been analyzed in depth within the framework of generative grammar; thus, the conjecture that the grammars of all languages contain fundamentally the same kinds of rules and constraints as are found in the grammar of English was largely an article of faith. The two central rule systems of the Aspects framework were the set of context-free phrase structure rules of the base (discussed in Chapter 2) and the set of transformational rules mapping deep structures to surface structures (discussed in Chapter 3). Both rule types were largely unconstrained by current standards, thus leading to considerable uncertainty about the nature of actual grammars—the theory allowed for a lot of competing analyses of individual constructions. Moreover, it wasn't even clear that all languages had rules of the type posited for English. Traditional analyses of syntactic cross-linguistic variation had bequeathed to the field a widespread assumption that many languages have “free word order,” leading many linguists to suspect that phrase structure rules might be unmotivated and unnecessary for such languages; a common view was that the grammatical functions served by syntactic phrase structure in languages with fixed word order like English were handled by rules of morphology and agreement in certain other languages. Even if the grammars of all languages that had been analyzed at that point were assumed to have transformational rules, there was still considerable variation in the actual rules involved, many of which were construction-specific. Constraints on rules were generally stated on a rule-by-rule basis. Thus, the prospects of finding much in the way of formal universals in these rule systems must have struck many people as being rather unlikely. Thus, in proposing the theory of formal universals in Apects, Chomsky relied more on the force of the logic of his account of grammar as a mental construct and his proposed solution to the associated problem of accounting for language acquisition. Not for the first or last time in his career, Chomsky had identified a problem that few other linguists acknowledged as a problem, and proposed a completely original solution to it, bringing with it numerous implications inside and outside of the field of syntax. There wasn't a lot of substantive evidence supporting this view, but he had faith that such evidence would some day be found, and he was proved right. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://filcat.uab.cat/clt/publicacions/Aspects-50-years-later/Aspects/50YearsLater_web.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
