Transformational Grammar - Deep Structure and Surface Structure

Deep Structure and Surface Structure

Linguistics
Theoretical linguistics
  • Cognitive linguistics
  • Generative linguistics
  • Functional theories of grammar
  • Quantitative linguistics
  • Phonology
  • Morphology
  • Morphophonology
  • Syntax
  • Lexis
  • Semantics
  • Pragmatics
  • Graphemics
  • Orthography
  • Semiotics
Descriptive linguistics
  • Anthropological linguistics
  • Comparative linguistics
  • Historical linguistics
  • Etymology
  • Graphetics
  • Phonetics
  • Sociolinguistics
Applied and
experimental linguistics
  • Computational linguistics
  • Evolutionary linguistics
  • Forensic linguistics
  • Internet linguistics
  • Language acquisition
  • Language assessment
  • Language development
  • Language education
  • Linguistic anthropology
  • Neurolinguistics
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Second-language acquisition
Related articles
  • History of linguistics
  • Linguistic prescription
  • List of linguists
  • List of unsolved problems in linguistics
Portal

In 1957, Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures, in which he developed the idea that each sentence in a language has two levels of representation — a deep structure and a surface structure. The deep structure represented the core semantic relations of a sentence, and was mapped on to the surface structure (which followed the phonological form of the sentence very closely) via transformations. Chomsky believed there are considerable similarities between languages' deep structures, and that these structures reveal properties, common to all languages that surface structures conceal. However, this may not have been the central motivation for introducing deep structure. Transformations had been proposed prior to the development of deep structure as a means of increasing the mathematical and descriptive power of context-free grammars. Similarly, deep structure was devised largely for technical reasons relating to early semantic theory. Chomsky emphasizes the importance of modern formal mathematical devices in the development of grammatical theory:

But the fundamental reason for inadequacy of traditional grammars is a more technical one. Although it was well understood that linguistic processes are in some sense "creative," the technical devices for expressing a system of recursive processes were simply not available until much more recently. In fact, a real understanding of how a language can (in Humboldt's words) "make infinite use of finite means" has developed only within the last thirty years, in the course of studies in the foundations of mathematics. —Aspects of the Theory of Syntax

Read more about this topic:  Transformational Grammar

Famous quotes containing the words deep, structure and/or surface:

    “I remember the scenes of battle in which we stood together. I remember especially that broad and deep grave at the foot of the Resaca hill where we left those gallant comrades who fell in that desperate charge. I remember, through it all, the gallantry, devotion and steadfastness, the high-set patriotism you always exhibited.”
    —Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    “The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
    —Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    “And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.”
    —Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)