Topic > The comparison of grammars in Noam Chomsky's theory of syntactic structures

IndexThe definition of syntaxSyntactic grammarsReferencesThe definition of syntaxAccording to Chomsky “syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages”. Syntactic theory aims to describe how people create sentences by combining words, being concerned with the speaker's knowledge of how to form sentences and how he obtains that knowledge. In both spoken and signed languages, speakers use words and morphemes to create an infinite set of sentences, which allows speakers to express and understand sentences that may never have been spoken before. The construction of grammar functions as a device for producing sentences in analysis. Fromkin later proposed that “the rules of syntax combine words into sentences and sentences into sentences,” meaning that syntax seeks to define the relationship between particular words and their arrangement. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Syntactic Grammars Syntactic theory is often known as generative grammar since speakers of a language should be able to generate all grammatically correct sentences of a given language. Generative linguists argue that the number of sentences produced in a language can potentially be infinite. Based on a finite set of rules and words, an infinite number of sentences can be spoken. A native speaker has the ability to produce grammatically well-formed sentences without knowing any rules. Research on language acquisition has shown that children know much of the grammar of their language before they are old enough to understand explicit instructions about grammar, this theory is called universal grammar. According to this theory, some grammatical rules are already in the human brain, regardless of the language. Transformational grammar is a device for generating sentences in a language. generates only well-formed or grammatically correct sentences of a language since it is intended to create the rules and principles that are in the mind of a native speaker. Chomsky believed that grammar had recursive rules that allowed grammatically correct sentences to be generated over and over again. The process of transforming syntactic structures according to Chomsky's Transformational Grammar can be summarized by adding, deleting, moving and replacing words. These changes occur through specific rules, called transformational rules. Chomsky argued that general principles involving such commonsense notions do not even begin to provide inferences of the kind required. He suggested that this inferential gap indicates the existence of a set of genetically determined mental predispositions that play a critical role in determining the mature insights that result from a given set of early experiences. He used the term universal grammar to refer to the field of inquiry whose object is to discover the nature of these innate predispositions. Despite the central place that this concern with language acquisition occupies among the goals of Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, the literature in Generative Grammar and the related literature in psycholinguistics show surprisingly little indication of a concrete understanding of the problem of projection in itself or of the precise way in which a theory constructed in accordance with the Aspects program could resolve it. One major negative consequence for linguistic theory has been that a rich source of empirical evidence has not been applied to resolving controversial issues..