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Concept
Transformational grammar
Summary
In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages. It 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. The method is commonly associated with American linguist Noam Chomsky.
Generative algebra was first introduced to general linguistics by the structural linguist Louis Hjelmslev although the method was described before him by Albert Sechehaye in 1908. Chomsky adopted the concept of transformations from his teacher Zellig Harris, who followed the American descriptivist separation of semantics from syntax. Hjelmslev's structuralist conception including semantics and pragmatics is incorporated into functional grammar.
Transformational analysis is 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. Transformational analysis was later developed by humanistic grammarians such as Thomas Linacre (1524), Julius Caesar Scaliger (1540), and Sanctius (Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas, 1587). The core observation is that grammatical rules alone do not constitute elegance, so learning to use a language correctly requires certain additional effects such as ellipsis. It is more desirable, for example, to say "Maggie and Alex went to the market" than to express the full underlying idea "Maggie went to the market and Alex went to the market". Such phenomena were described in terms of understood elements. In modern terminology, the first expression is the surface structure of the second, and the second expression is the deep structure of the first.
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