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:

    “The child knows only that he engages in play because it is enjoyable. He isn’t aware of his need to play—a need which has its source in the pressure of unsolved problems. Nor does he know that his pleasure in playing comes from a deep sense of well-being that is the direct result of feeling in control of things, in contrast to the rest of his life, which is managed by his parents or other adults.”
    —Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)

    “Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.”
    —Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)

    “We say justly that the weak person is flat, for, like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is, on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He slides all the way through life.... But the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side and is equally strong every way.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)