The Chomskyan Revolution - Prof. Fredreck J. Newmeyer

Class 1:
The Chomskyan Revolution
1
FREDERICK J . NEWMEYER
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, UNIVERSITY
OF BRITISH COLUMBIA,
AND SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

MY GOAL IN THESE CLASSES
2
 To present the progression of ideas in
linguistic theory as they have developed.
 To take one topic in each class and chart its
development over the decades.

MY GOAL IN THESE CLASSES
3
LECTURE 1: THE CHOMSKYAN REVOLUTION
LECTURE 2: CONSTRAINING THE THEORY
LECTURE 3: THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN SYNTAX AND
SEMANTICS
LECTURE 4: THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN COMPETENCE AND
PERFORMANCE
LECTURE 5: THE TREATMENT OF GRAMMATICAL
COMPLEXITY (at Peking University)

SAUSSURE IS A GOOD STARTING POINT
4
FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
1857-1913
Cours de linguistique
générale,
published in 1916

5
 All of the important strands of modern linguistics
can be found in Saussure’s Cours.
 Saussure himself was primarily an Indo-
Europeanist.
 He accepted the Neogrammarian idea of the
regularity of sound change.

6
 But Saussure’s greatest contribution went beyond
the assumption of mere regularity.
 Saussure posited a series of sounds for PIE that had
no reflexes in any known IE language.
 He was led to this hypothesis by thinking of PIE as a
STRUCTURAL SYSTEM.

7
 A few years later a linguist suggested that these ‘mystery
sounds’ might be laryngeals.
 Decades later the first extensive texts in Hittite — an
ancient IE language — were discovered and decoded.
 Hittite turned out to have sounds (probably laryngeals)
in precisely the positions posited by Saussure for PIE!
 Saussure’s ‘structuralist thinking’ had been confirmed.

8
 The basic idea of the Cours is a ‘structuralist’ one,
though Saussure did not use the term.
 The idea is that language as a whole can be divided
into langue (language/competence/I-language) and
parole (speech/performance) and that langue can be
studied as a formal system.
 Between the two world wars, this idea was being
worked out in different ways in different countries.

STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
9
 The Prague School, with its focus on language
universals.
NIKOLAÏ TRUBETZKOÏ ROMAN JAKOBSON
1890-1938 1896-1982

10
 The Prague School in many ways is the
intellectual ancestor of generative grammar:
 Universals
 Markedness
 Relating facts about grammar to language
acquisition, language pathology, etc.
 But this was all in phonology. Their view of
syntax was a very ‘functionalist’ one.

11
 The Copenhagen School (Glossematics), with its
focus on formal relations among elements.
LOUIS HJELMSLEV
1899-1965

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 The London School, now best known for its work on
suprasegmental phenomena.
J. R. FIRTH, 1890-1960

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 The London School linguists can be considered
the founders of the field of applied linguistics.
 They believed that if a theory is correct it should
be applicable to practical concerns, such as
language teaching.
M. A. K. HALLIDAY

14
LUO CHANGPEI
1899-1958
WANG LI
1899-1958
LÜ SHUXIANG
1904-1998

15
CHAO YUEN REN (ZHAO YUANREN)
1892-1982
The greatest Chinese structuralist
President of the Linguistic
Society of America in 1945

AMERICAN STRUCTURALISM
16
 American structuralism, famous for its attention to
methodology and numerous studies of Amerindian
languages.
EDWARD SAPIR, 1884-1939 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD, 1887-1949

17
 American structuralism was the most direct ancestor
of generative grammar. Zellig Harris, one of the most
prominent American structuralists, was the teacher of
Noam Chomsky.
ZELLIG HARRIS, 1909-1992 NOAM CHOMSKY

18
 American structuralism was famous for its
commitment to empiricism.
 Only observables and generalizations about
observables were admissible.
 This followed from the positivist philosophy of
science that was dominant in English-speaking
countries from the 1920s to the 1960s.

19
 The idea was to start with the lowest, most
observable, levels, and to build a grammar from that
point:
 1. phonetics
 2. phonemics
 3. morphology
 4. syntactic categories
 5. relations governing the distribution of syntactic
categories.

20
 Each level was built up by procedures of
segmentation and classification from the next lower
level:
 [pʰɑrkʰɨŋ] phonetic representation
 /parkiŋ/ phonemic representation
 {park+iŋ} morphemic representation
 [V [Npark] [PARTiŋ]] syntactic representation

21
 Because (in theory) you couldn’t discover the
syntactic categories of a language until after you had
done the phonemics, no phonemic statement could
refer to a syntactic category.
 A big problem:
 Verbs often have final stress in English: perMIT,
transPORT, conCEIVE, reFUND
 Nouns often have initial stress: PERmit,
TRANSport, CONcept, REfund

22
 Meaning (semantics) was also a big problem for
American structuralists.
 Meanings are essentially unobservable.
 There was no way to arrive at them by procedures of
segmentation and classification
 So many American structuralists did not talk about
meaning at all.

23
 By the late 1940s, Zellig Harris was working out
procedures for relating sentence types to each other.
 He called the result of these procedures
‘transformations’.
 N1 V N2 <-> N2 is V-ed by N1 (passive transformation)
 N1 V N2 <-> it is N2 that N1 V (cleft transformation)
 But these transformations were stated directly on the
surface.

24
 What all of the approaches to structural
linguistics had in common was the idea that
a grammar is an inventory of elements in a
structural relationship to each other.
 At the same time, these models posited very
little ‘below the surface’.

EARLY GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
25
The field of
linguistics underwent
a major change of
direction as a result
of the work of Noam
Chomsky in the early
and mid 1950s.
NOAM CHOMSKY

Chomsky’s
book
Syntactic
Structures,
published in
1957
26

27
 Generative grammar was different from all previous
approaches in that it was syntax-centred.
 Saussure for the most part thought that syntax was part
of parole.
 Saussure felt that because speakers have a ‘choice’ of
what syntactic construction to use, syntax was part of
language use.
 But Chomsky saw rule-governed creativity as central to
competence/langue.

28
What made Syntactic Structures
important?
1. Looking at a grammar as a ‘theory of a language’
2. Stressing the irrelevance of methodology
3. Providing evidence for the autonomy of syntax
4. The abstractness of particular grammatical analyses

29
 1. Looking at a grammar as a ‘theory of a
language’
 That is, the twin tasks of:
 Characterizing the notion ‘possible human
language’
 For any particular human language, providing
the best (that is, most psychologically realistic)
analysis of that language.

30
 2. Stressing the irrelevance of methodology
 Scientists don’t care how somebody arrived at their
theory (Kekulé on the structure of benzene)
 The only important thing is whether the theory
adequately models reality.
 So all of the structuralists’ procedures get thrown out
the window.

31
• 3. Providing evidence for the autonomy of syntax.
• Chomsky argued that syntax had a patterning of its
own, independent of meaning, function, and
discourse.
• The American structuralists believed that too, but
for them it was a consequence of their methodology.
• Chomsky provided empirical evidence for autonomy
(the next class).

32
 4. The abstractness of particular grammatical analyses
Mary must have be en be ing se en
perfect progressive passive
The elements of the English auxiliary are both overlapping and discontinuous.
There was no way for structuralist methodology to come up with an adequate
analysis.

33
 Chomsky’s solution:
 Posit 2 classes of elements: verbal (v) and affixal (af)
 Posit an abstract phrase structure rule:
AUX  Tense (Modal) (have + en) (be + ing) (be + en)
af v v af v af v af
• Posit an abstract transformational rule:
af + v  v + af

34
 Mary must have + en be + ing be + en see 
 Mary must have been being seen
 This analysis extends to capture the placement of
supportive do in sentences like Did Mary see the
play? and Mary did not see the play.

35
 Syntactic Structures also emphasized and re-emphasized
the need for ‘simplicity’ and ‘economy’
in grammatical description.
 This would become a major theme in later
minimalist theorizing.

The idea of ‘elegant’ grammatical descriptions did not —
of course — start with Chomsky:
“Grammarians rejoice
more over the saving of
half a mora than over
the birth of a son.” (the
ancient Indian
grammatical tradition) INDIAN STAMP HONOURING
PANINI
36

 “Saussure’s dearest concern
was to cast the theory of
language into the mould of a
mathematical treatise.”
(Robert Godel)
FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
1857-1913
37

 The American structuralists —
Chomsky’s teachers — were the
most adamant of all that
linguistic descriptions need to
be formal, simple and elegant.
ZELLIG HARRIS, 1909-1992
38

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 The striving for elegance is the one factor that unites
all mainstream versions of generative grammar
throughout its history — including early
transformational grammar, Generative Semantics,
and the Minimalist Program.
 And it is a factor largely rejected by most
functionalists and cognitive linguists.

GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY
40
At the same time in the early 1950s, Morris Halle
(along with Chomsky and others) was developing a
generative approach to phonology.
MORRIS HALLE

GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY
41
MORPHOPHONEMIC LEVEL
morphophonemics
phonological
rules
allophonic rules
PHONEMIC LEVEL
PHONETIC LEVEL

THE EARLY DAYS OF GENERATIVE SYNTAX
42
 There were many changes to the theory between
1957 and 1965, the publication date of Chomsky’s
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.
 Most of these are still assumed to be correct.
 Given the tiny number of generative grammarians at
the time, most were made by Chomsky and his
colleagues and students at MIT.

43
1. A separate lexicon.
Syntactic Structures:
VP  V (NP) (PP)
NP  (DET) N
PP  P NP
V  run, eat, think, persuade, …
DET  the, a, this, …
N  book, boy, John, Mary, …
P  in, of, over, …

44
 By the early 1960s, each word was listed in a separate
lexicon, with its own idiosyncratic properties:
boy N, +human, +animate, /bɔi/
hit V, +physical action, +___NP, /hit/
elapse V, +time, +____#, /ilæps/
on, P, +space, /ɔn/
 The separate lexicon simplified the phrase structure rules
and allowed for the statement of purely lexical
generalizations.

45
 The lexicon also solved the problem of
subcategorization.
 Here are some generalizations:
The noun boy is human and common
The noun book is nonhuman and common
The noun Charlie is human and proper
The noun Egypt is nonhuman and proper
• Before a separate lexicon the would be two very
cumbersome ways of stating this generalization:

46
N -> N human
N nonhuman
N human -> N human and common
N human and proper
N nonhuman -> N nonhuman and common
N nonhuman and proper
N human and common -> boy,...
N human and proper -> Charlie,...
N nonhuman and common -> book,...
N nonhuman and proper -> Egypt,...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
N -> N common
N proper
N common -> N common and human
N common and nonhuman
N proper -> N proper and human
N proper and nonhuman
N common and human -> boy,...
N common and nonhuman -> book,...
N proper and human -> Charlie,...
N proper and nonhuman -> Egypt,...

47
 Here’s how to do it with a separate lexicon with
features:
+HUMAN -HUMAN
+COMMON boy book
-COMMON
(PROPER)
Charlie Egypt

48
 The early 1960s also saw a solution to the ‘traffic rule’
problem: how rules interact with each other.
 It seemed clear that some rules were optional and some
were obligatory:
PARTICLE MOVEMENT (optional): I looked the
answer up and I looked up the answer (both are
grammatical).
AFFIX HOPPING (obligatory): You can’t leave the
auxiliary like *Mary must have + en be + ing be +
en see

49
 It seemed clear that rules had to be ordered with respect
to each other:
 The subject of a passive gets nominative case, even
though it started out as an object:
He saw her.
She was seen by him.
*Her was seen by he.
 So Case Marking has to apply after Passive.

50
 The next traffic problem to solve was the order in
which transformations apply when there are several
clauses in one single sentence.
 I think that Mary knows that Bill wants to leave.
I think S Mary knows S Bill wants Bill leave
 The question was ‘What gets embedded first, second, etc.?’

51
 1964: Grammatical rules apply on the most deeply embedded clause first,
then the next most deeply embedded clause, that is starting from the bottom
and moving to the top.
CHARLES FILLMORE, 1929-2014

52
Mary knows
Bill wants
Bill leave
I think

53
 It was quickly realized that, if that is true, we don’t
need embedding transformations at all!
 The phrase-structure rules can generate one object,
now called DEEP STRUCTURE.
 Transformational rules CYCLE from the bottom to
the top.

54
Mary knows
Bill wants
Bill leave
I think

 1964: The Katz-Postal Hypothesis: Transformations
do not change meaning (= everything for
interpretation is in the Deep Structure)
PAUL POSTAL
55
JERROLD KATZ, 1932-2002

THE 1965 ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF
SYNTAX MODEL, THE ‘STANDARD THEORY’
56

MAJOR INFLUENCES ON GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
57
 I. Structural linguistics
 II. Developments in mathematics and formal logic
 A. The axiomatic-deductive method: starting with a small
number of axioms and procedures, one derives (generates) a
set of propositions (Harwood)
 B. Recursive function theory (Gödel, Church, Turing, Kleene,
Post)
 C. Constructional system theory: reformulating philosophical
propositions in a mathematical language (Carnap)
 D. Simplicity measurements of formal systems (Goodman)

58
 III. Developments in the philosophy of science
 Before the 1950s, empiricism was dominant in
Anglo-American philosophy.
 The idea of empiricism: All knowledge comes from
experience.
 The old idea was that scientists observe, measure,
and generalize, but not much more.

59
 But empiricism had begun to break down by the 1950s.
 Empiricists tried and tried to characterize what makes a
statement ‘scientific’.
 First idea: a statement is scientific if it can be directly
verified by empirical evidence.
 NO!! That would rule out general laws (and also rule out
historical sciences – evolution, historical linguistics, etc.)

60
 Second idea: a statement is scientific if it can
be falsified by observational evidence.
 NO!! That would rule any statement with an
existential quantifier (‘For every compound
there exists a solvent’; ‘There exists a galaxy
more massive than ours’).

61
 Third idea: a statement is scientific if it can be given
an operational definition, that is, linked to
observation by a set of procedures.
 NO!! Many terms in science cannot be defined
operationally: ‘ideal gas’, ‘perfect vacuum’.
 We could calculate the speed of light before we knew
what light was. Atomic theory before atoms. Genetic
theory before genes.

62
 The dominant current idea: A theory is scientific if it
is:
 A. Formal
 B. Explanatory and predictive
 C. Simple
 D. Empirically testable
 These were the criteria that Chomsky used in
Syntactic Structures and elsewhere.

63
 IV. Developments in psychology
 Empiricist philosophy has a counterpart in psychology:
behaviourism
 Behaviourism says that there are no innate
predispositions: all behaviour is a result of stimulus,
response and reinforcement.
 Behaviourism was also on the retreat by the 195os (the
problem of planning, for example)

THE CHOMSKYAN REVOLUTION: SOME
SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS
64
 Syntactic Structures was published in 1957. By 1965
(if not earlier) there was talk of a ‘Chomskyan
Revolution’ in linguistics.
 How did they theory succeed so quickly (at least in
the United States)?
 Many linguists found the foundations of the theory
plausible and the analyses convincing.

65
 The sheer amount of effort that Chomsky and his
colleagues went into publicizing the theory.
 Between 1957 and 1969 Chomsky published 6 books,
20 articles and reviews in refereed journals, and 25
articles in edited volumes. In addition to English, he
published in Hebrew, French, and Japanese.
 The unusual situation of MIT.

66
 The expansion of the American university
system.
 The 1960s were a period of confrontation.
 Pure good luck: The 9th International
Congress of Linguists, held in Cambridge,
Massachusetts in 1962.

67
 Before the 1970s virtually all generative grammarians
were American men.
 Things are very different today.
 Most would agree that well over 80% of the most
prominent generative grammarians are not in the US.
 Four out of the last five presidents of the Linguistic
Society of America have been women.

68
 It has always been the goal of the MIT department to get
beyond Americans working on English.
 Of the six faculty members in the MIT Linguistics
Department in the late 1960s, four were known primarily
for their work in languages other than English:
 Kenneth Hale for Amerindian and Australian;
 G. Hubert Matthews for Amerindian;
 Paul Kiparsky for general Indo-European;
 Morris Halle for Russian.
 Chomsky wrote a partial generative grammar of Hebrew
before working on English.

69
 Of the 28 doctoral dissertations written in linguistics at MIT in the 1960s, 17 dealt primarily
with languages other than English:
Stephen Anderson (West Scandinavian)
George Bedell (Japanese)
Thomas Bever (Menomini)
James Fidelholtz (Micmac)
James Foley (Spanish)
James Harris (Spanish)
Richard Kayne (French)
Paul Kiparsky (various languages)
Sige-Yuki Kuroda (Japanese)
Theodore Lightner (Russian)
James McCawley (Japanese)
Anthony Naro (Portuguese)
David Perlmutter (various languages)
Sanford Schane (French)
Richard Stanley (Navajo)
Nancy Woo (various languages)
Arnold Zwicky (Sanskrit)

70
 Generative Linguistics in the Old World, founded in
1977.
JAN KOSTER JEAN-ROGER VERGNAUD HENK VAN RIEMSDIJK
1945-2011

71
 Generative linguistics was developed in Taiwan
before the PRC.
 Tang Ting-Chi (Ph. D. University of Texas, 1972)
 Mei Kuang (Ph. D. Harvard University, 1972)
 Both became important figures in Taiwanese
linguistics.

72
 Tang and Mei taught or inspired some of the leading
Taiwanese generative linguists:
C.-T. JAMES HUANG Y.-H. AUDREY LI W.-T. DYLAN TSAI

73
 Generative grammar started making an impact in
mainland China in the 1980s.
NING CHUNYAN XU LIEJIONG

74
 In 1985 and 1987 Ning organized two Harbin
Conferences on Generative Grammar at Heilongjiang
University.
 They were attended by 400 linguists from inside
China and 60 from outside China.

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