Analytic_SyntacticStructures_1957.txt

Syntactic Structures

W
G
DE

Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin • New York

Syntactic Structures
by
Noam Chomsky
Second Edition
With an Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin • New York 2002

Mouton dc Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is | Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
First edition published in 1957. Various reprints.

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Printing & Binding: Werner Hildcbrand, Berlin.
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Printed in Germany.

Introduction*

Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures was the snowball which began
the avalanche of the modern "cognitive revolution." The cognitive perspective originated in the seventeenth century and now construes modern linguistics as part of psychology and human biology. Depending
on their initial conditions, children grow into adults with various language systems, some variety of Japanese if raised in Tokyo and Cornish English if raised in the village of Polperro. Linguists seek to describe the mental systems that Japanese or Cornish people have, their
language "organs." These systems are represented somehow in human
mind/brains, are acquired on exposure to certain kinds of experiences,
and are used in certain ways during speech comprehension or production and for a variety of purposes: communication, play, affects,
group identity, etc. Linguists also specify the genetic information, common to the species, which permits the growth of mature language organs in Cornish. Japanese. Dutch, Kinande and Navaho children.
The snowball has gained bulk and speed along these naturalistic
lines over the last fifty years. The variety of languages, the developmental patterns manifested by young children, the ways in which mature systems arc underdetermined by childhood experience, have provided a wealth of discoveries and of empirical demands for theories to
meet, opening the prospect for more empirical demands as we begin
to understand the brain mechanisms that might be involved in understanding and producing speech. This kind of work on the growth of
an individual's language capacity has influenced people studying other
aspects of human cognition, where the empirical demands on theories
are partially different and where it is harder to tease apart the contributions of nature and nurture. Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists and even immunologists (see Jerne 1967 and his 1985 Nobel
Prize address) have engaged with this work. That is the avalanche and
it has affected many parts of the cognitive mountainside; Anderson
and Lightfoot (2002) provides a recent survey of some of the work set
in motion and Chomsky (2000) gives his current views
It is interesting to look back from here on the snowball. Snowballs
always begin small and few people write books of just 118 short pages.
However, what is striking about this little book is that it contains

VI

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

nothing on cognitive representations, nothing on grammars as mental
systems triggered by childhood exposure to initial linguistic experiences. Chomsky arrived at some conclusions and developed some lines
of thought which naturally provoked a radical rc-thinking of the status
of grammatical descriptions, but. to judge from the earliest texts, it
appears that he did this without any particular concern for cognitive
representations.
The best discussion of these early years is the introduction to the
version of the dissertation which was published in 1975 (77ie logical
structure of linguistic theory, henceforth LSLT). There Chomsky, writing in 1973, said that there would have been little notice of Syntactic
Structures in the profession if Robert Lees had not written an extensive
review, published in Language more or less simultaneously with the
appearance of the book. But that review touched only briefly on the
matter of mental representations. Furthermore, Chomsky's judgement
may be too modest; the book was well-received in a number of reviews, and the work had a major impact quickly, notably through
Chomsky's presentation at the Third Texas Conference in 1958 (published as Chomsky 1962), although not everything went smoothly: the
dissertation was rejected for publication by the Technology Press of
MIT and an article was rejected by the journal Word.
Syntactic Structures itself consisted of lecture notes for undergraduate classes at MIT, which C. H. van Schooneveld offered to publish
with Mouton. "a sketchy and informal outline of some of the material
in LSLT" (Chomsky 1975: 3). So these arc the three central texts from
this period: LSLT, Syntactic Structures, and Lees' review. It is also
useful to look at the earliest analytical work of the new paradigm:
Klima (1964), Lees (I960) and (Lees and Klima 1963), for example.
However, one should keep in mind in addition that Chomsky was
working on his review of Skinner's acclaimed Verbal behavior (Chomsky 1959); the review was submitted in 1957 and sketched a way of
looking at psychological behavior quite dirtcrcnt from the prevailing
orthodoxies.
The book was "part of an attempt to construct a formalized general
theory of linguistic structure ... by pushing a precise but inadequate
formulation to an unacceptable conclusion, we can often expose the
exact source of this inadequacy and, consequently, gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic data" (p.5). This was a foretaste of a
strategy that Chomsky has pursued throughout his career, always will-

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

VII

ing to formulate proposals in accurate detail in order to sec where
the weaknesses lie, then reformulating, sometimes in radical fashion,
moving much snow on the mountainside; one thinks of the filters of
Chomsky and Lasnik (1977), the indexing conventions in the appendix
of Chomsky (1980), and the features of Chomsky (1995: ch.4), which
sought precision over elegance and biological plausibility and then
gave rise to major reformulations of linguistic theory. The immediate
goal of the new work was to formulate precise, explicit, "generative"
accounts, free of intuition-bound notions.
The fundamental aim in the linguistic analysis of a language L is to separate the grammatical sequences which are the sentences of L from the ungrammatical sequences which are not sentences of L. The grammar of L.
will thus be a device that generates all of the grammatical sequences of L
and none of the ungrammatical ones. (p. 13)'
Lees and others were impressed with the outline of what they took to
be a truly scientific perspective, and these were days of much concern
about the nature of science. Lccs viewed the book as
one of the first serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within
the tradition of theory-construction a comprehensive theory of language
which may be understood in the same sense that a chemical, biological
theory is ordinarily understood by experts in those fields. It is not a mere
reorganization of the data into a new kind of library catalog, nor another
speculative philosophy about the nature of Man and Language, but rather
arigorousexplication of our intuitions about language in terms of an overt
axiom system, the theorems derivable from it. explicit results which may
be compared with new data and other intuitions, all based plainly on an
overt theory of the internal structure of languages. (I.ees 1957: 377-8)
Chomsky begins Syntactic Structures, then, by aiming to construct
a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the
sentences of the language under analysis. More generally, linguists must be
concerned with the problem of determining the fundamental underlying
properties of successful grammars. The ultimate outcome of these investigations should be a theory of linguistic structure in which the descriptive
devices utilized in particular grammars are presented and studied abstractly, with no specific reference to particular languages. One function of
this theory is to provide a general method for selecting a grammar for each
language, given a corpus of sentences of this language, (p. II)

Vlll

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

The issue of selecting a grammar in this formulation was one for analysts comparing theories, not for children. The celebrated discussion in
chapter 6 about the goals of linguistic theory, the distinction between
discovery, decision and evaluation procedures, is often cited as a discussion about what a child might be expected to do in the process of
acquiring his/her grammar. However, the text concerns the goals of an
analyst and combats the structuralist goal of seeking a discovery
method for grammars, whereby an analyst would follow the prescriptions of a manual, "mechanical procedures for the discovery of grammars" (p.55, n.6), and arrive at the correct description of some language. Chomsky argued, in contrast, that it was too ambitious to expect such a methodology and that the most realistic goal was to find
a way of comparing hypotheses for generating a particular corpus of
data. No talk of children but an effort to thwart the positivist notion
that one could discover a predefined path to scientific truth (cf. Popper
1959). "One may arrive at a grammar by intuition, guess-work, all
sorts of partial methodological hints, reliance on past experience, etc
... Our ultimate aim is to provide an objective, non-intuitive way to
evaluate a grammar once presented" (p.56).
In particular, there was no reason to expect a discovery method
whereby a successful phonetic analysis would permit a successful phonemic analysis, which would allow a good morphological analysis and
then a good syntactic analysis.
Once wc have disclaimed any intention of finding a practical discovery
procedure for grammars, certain problems that have been the subject of
intense methodological controversy simply do not arise. Consider the
problem of interdependence of levels, (p.56)
If units are defined by laxonomic procedures, then they need to be
constructed on lower levels before higher-level units are constructed
out of those lower-level units. However, once the goals are restricted
to achieve an evaluation procedure, one may have independent levels
of representation without circularity of definitions. Indeed, Chomsky
argued that analysis at higher levels (of syntax) might influence lower
(e. g. morphological) levels of analysis, and therefore that work on
syntax could proceed even though there may be unresolved problems
of phonemic or morphological analysis (p.59), perhaps to the advantage of the phonemic analysis.

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

IX

This was the major METHODOLOGICAL innovation and the claim to a
genuinely scientific approach was based on the rigor of the formal,
explicit, generative accounts and on the move away from seeking a
discovery procedure in favor of an evaluation procedure for rating
theories.
Any scientific theory is based on a finite number of observations, and it
seeks to relate the observed phenomena and to predict new phenomena by
constructing general laws in terms of hypothetical constructs such as (in
physics, for example) "mass" and "electron." Similarly, a grammar of English is based on a finite corpus of utterances (observations), and it will
contain certain grammatical rules (laws) stated in terms of the particular
phonemes, phrases, etc., of Fnglish (hypothetical constructs), (p.49)
The TECHNICAL innovation was to motivate different levels of analysis
and representation, which were related to each other formally by the
device of a "transformational rule." That involved various claims
about the nature of grammars, that their primitives were independently defined, not a product of more basic semantic, functional or
notional concepts (chapter 2), that they could not be formulated
through finite-state Markov processes (chapter 3), and that restricting
rule schemas to those of phrase structure grammars yielded clumsiness
and missed insights and elegance which would be facilitated by operations relating one level of analysis to another, the so-called transformations (chapters 4, 5 and 7).
Chapter 5 offered three arguments for extending the expressive
power of grammars beyond that of unadorned phrase structure grammars, one relating to conjunction reduction, another relating to activepassive relations. The showcase analysis, however, the part of Syntactic Structures that excited the author (LSLT, 30-31) and had the
greatest effect on readers, was the new treatment of English auxiliary
verbs (section 5.3). Chomsky proposed a simple Auxiliary Transformation, later dubbed "affix hopping," whereby an affix like -ing, -en or
an abstract tense marker could be moved to the immediate right of
an adjacent verb (29.ii). This ingenious transformation, mapping one
abstract level of representation into another (not sentences into other
sentences), avoided hopelessly complex phrase structure rules and
yielded an elegant account for the distribution of the "periphrastic
Jo," which could be characterized now as occurring with "stranded"
affixes, which had no adjacent verb to hop over (p.62). He observed

X

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

that "the grammar is materially simplified when we add a transformational level, since it is now necessary to provide phrase structure directly only for kernel sentences" (p.47).
Chapter 7, entitled Some transformations in English, extended transformational analysis to negative, interrogative and other sentencetypes, yielding further simplifications over pure phrase structure grammars. The transformations themselves provided evidence for certain
constituents (p.83) and the same units recurred in a number of operations, suggesting that genuine generalizations were being captured.
The fundamental aspects of the analysis of auxiliaries have survived
extensive discussion of almost 50 years. In current formulations a
central parameter of grammatical variation lies in how verbs may be
connected to their tense markers, either as a result of a syntactic operation raising a verb to a higher functional category containing the tense
marker (as in French, cf. Emonds 1978) or what is now seen as a
morphological operation lowering the tense marker on to an adjacent
verb (as in modern English, cf. Lightfoot 1993, Baker 2002), Chomsky's (1957) Auxiliary Transformation - Lasnik (2000) offers detailed
discussion of this distinction and its relation to the proposals of Syntactic Structures,
Always concerned to formulate as precisely as possible, Chomsky
pointed out that the analysis entailed an ordering in the application
of transformational rules (p.44) and a distinction between optional
and obligatory rules (p.45). That yields precision but also problems, if
one views grammars as acquired by children exposed only to primary
data. If two rules must be ordered or if a rule needs to be classified as
obligatory, then somebody viewing grammars as aspects of mature
cognition would wonder how that could be triggered in a child. If the
two rules are misordered or if an obligatory rule applies optionally,
the grammar would generate non-occurring sentences or structures.
Those non-occurring sentences constitute the linguist's evidence for the
ordering or the obligatory character of rules, but that evidence is not
available to young children. If the sentences don't occur, they can't be
part of the primary data, not part of what a child experiences, and
we have a grammar which cannot be triggered and is "unlearnable".
However, this was not an issue in 1957, when precision was the overriding goal and matters of learnability had not yet been raised explicitly.
The last substantive chapter of Syntactic Structures deals with syn
tax and semantics, a relationship which has been widely misunder-

Introduction by David W. Lighlfool

xi

stood. Chomsky argued that grammars are autonomous and independent of meaning in the sense that their primitives are not defined in
semantic terms (p. 17). That "should not, however, blind us to the fact
that there are striking correspondences between the structures and elements that arc discovered in formal, grammatical analysis and specific
semantic functions" (p.101). So the units of syntactic analysis, syntactic constituents, are almost identical to the units of semantic analysis:
the ambiguity of / saw the man with a telescope is reflected in two
syntactic structures, one where a man with a telescope is a constituent
and one where it is not. The work assumes a use-theory of meaning, that
grammars arc embedded in a broader scmiotic theory which USES the
grammar to determine the meaning and reference of expressions. There
are striking correspondences between syntactic and semantic properties and the study of "the structure of language as an instrument may
be expected to provide insight into the actual use of language" (p. 103);
to argue that syntactic primitives are not defined scmantically is not
to deny connections between form and meaning (for discussion, see
LSLT. 18-23 and Lees 1957: 393-5).
Syntactic Structures, of course, reflected the ambient intellectual culture of the mid-1950s in some ways. Chomsky offered operational definitions of well-formed sentences of a kind that a behaviorist psychologist could understand: they did not need to be "meaningful" or "significant" in any semantic sense (p. 15), not statistically frequent; they
could be read with normal intonation contours, recalled readily, and
learned quickly. He carried over the notion of KERNEL sentences from
his teacher Zellig Harris (1951), reformulating the notion as referring
to sentences which had undergone no optional, only obligatory transformations (p.45); LSLT(4\ -45) oilers detailed discussion of the relation between Harris' transformations and Chomsky's early work. Indeed, one might argue that Syntactic Structures reflected existing practice in its silence on matters of cognition: there is reason to believe that
structuralists were concerned with matters of cognition and wanted
analyses which were psychologically plausible, but the concern was
implicit.
The methodological innovations have endured, and likewise many
of the technical proposals. Chomsky (1995) has revived the distinction
between singulary and generalized transformations, the former affecting single structures and the latter embedding clauses within other
structures. That distinction was abandoned after Syntactic Structures.

Ml

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

replaced in Chomsky (1965) by the principle of the cyclic application
of rules, affecting most deeply embedded domains first, and then
working up through less deeply embedded domains sequentially.
One can identify three phases in work on generative grammar. The
first phase, initiated by Syntactic Structures and continuing through
Aspects of the theory of syntax (Chomsky 1965). elaborated the expressive power of grammars to include different levels of representation
(Syntactic Structures) and a lexicon (the major technical innovation of
Chomsky 1965). The second phase, beginning in the 1960s and culminating in Government and Binding models, sought to constrain the
expressive power of derivations, so that operations became very general, along the lines of "Move something,'' and general principles of the
theory of grammar ("Universal Grammar" by the 1960s) constrained
such operations to apply appropriately. The third phase has sought
substantive economy principles beyond the methodological clippings
of Ockham's razor, under the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995).
The technical advances have been considerable (far too considerable
to outline in a brief introduction) and we have learned vast amounts
about the properties of individual languages, about the developmental
stages that children go through, about the kind of variation that grammatical parameters permit (Baker 2001 insightfully analogizes the
parametric approach to work on the periodic table of elements which
underly all chemical substances).
These developments have taken place as linguists have taken seriously the cognitive perspective, viewing grammars as mental systems
which grow in children on exposure to primary data, subject to the
prescriptions of a genetically specified theory of grammars which permits only certain structures and options. And they have taken place
as linguists have taken their mathematical models seriously. A clear
example of this was an ad hoc principle which was required with the
introduction of a distinct Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981). The ungrammatically of 'They expected that each other would leave was ascribed to Principle A of the new Binding Theory, leaving no account
for the non-occurrence of 'They were expected would leave, featuring a
displaced they; this had formerly been attributed to the same indexing
conventions which had excluded the sentence with the reciprocal each
other. The response was a handful of snow to block the gap, precisely
shaped and called the RES-NIC, the residue of the earlier Nominative
Island Constraint, which accounted for the mismoving they. This irreg-

Introduction by David W. Lightfool

XIII

ular snowball gave rise, in turn, to its own avalanche, the Empty Category Principle, a condition on the positions from which elements
might be displaced. That principle yielded many new discoveries about
a host of languages over the course of the 1980s (see, for example,
Rizzi 1990). It is not clear whether single ideas can be extrapolated
from general systems and be awarded a prize for being the most productive, but the ECP would be a candidate and, in any case, illustrates
the productiveness of taking the models seriously as predictive mechanisms.
What is remarkable about Syntactic Structures is how easily its
claims were translatable into claims about human cognition, as
Chomsky was to make explicit in his review of Skinner and then, famously, in the first chapter of Chomsky (1965). There he redefined the
field in more fundamental fashion and linked it to work on human
psychology; from then on, matters of acquisition became central to
linguistic theorizing. The easy translation is the reason that the little
book, having no discussion of matters of cognition, is nonetheless
plausibly seen as the snowball which started it all. The discussion
about the goals of linguistic theory, for example, were straightforwardly translated point-for-point into criteria for a theory of language
acquisition by children: the theory provides an evaluation metric by
which children rate the success of candidate grammars for the
purposes of understanding some finite corpus of data embodied in
their initial linguistic experiences, converging ultimately on the most
successful grammar.
Before he wrote the introduction to LSLT, Chomsky had come to
view grammars as representations of fundamental aspects of the
knowledge possessed by a speaker-hearer, i.e. as claims about psychology (LSLT, 5). Furthermore, there was a precise analog between the
methodological claims of Syntactic Structures and LSLT dnd psychological claims about human cognition.
The construction of a grammar of a language by a linguist is in some
respects analogous to the acquisition of language by a child. The linguist
has a corpus of data; the child is presented with unanalyzed data of language use. {LSLT, II)
The language learner (analogously, the linguist) approaches the problem
of language acquisition (grammar construction) with a schematism that
determines in advance the general properties of human language and the
general properties of the grammars that may be constructed to account for
linguistic phenomena. (LSLT, 12)

XIV

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

We thus have two variants of the fundamental problem of linguistics, as
it was conceived in this work: under the methodological interpretation, the
problem is taken to be the justification of grammars: under (he psychological interpretation, the problem is to account for language acquisition
Under the methodogical interpretation, the selected grammar is the linguist's grammar, justified by the theory. Under the psychological interpretation, it is the speaker-hearer's grammar, chosen by the evaluation procedure from among the potential grammars permitted by the theory and
compatible with the data as represented in terms of the preliminary analysis. (LSLT, 36)
The "psychological analog" to the methodological problem of constructing linguistic theory was not discussed in LSLT, but Chomsky
wrote that it lay in the immediate background of his own thinking:
"To raise this issue seemed to me, at the time, too audacious" (LSLT,
35). So, the "realist" position was taken for granted but not discussed.
because too audacious. Hence the ease of taking the general theory as
a psychological theory that attempts to characterize the innate human
"language faculty." 2
There is plenty of internal evidence that Chomsky was interacting
at this time with Eric Lenneberg, who was to pursue the biological
perspective on language earliest and furthest (Lenneberg 1967). However, the only explicit discussion of the cognitive/biological perspective
in our central texts was the final section of the review, where Lees
raised these issues in a kind of mystified optimism.
Perhaps Ihc most baffling and certainly in the long run by far the n o d
interesting of Chomsky's theories will be found in their cohesions with the
field of human psychology. Being totally incompetent in this area. 1 shall
allude to only one possible consideration, but one which 1 find extremely
intriguing. If this theory of grammar which we have been discussing can
be validated without fundamental changes, then the mechanism which we
must attribute to human beings to account for their speech behavior has
all the characteristics of a sophisticated scientific theory. (Lees 1957: 406)
... If we are to account adequately for the indubitable fact that a child by
the age of five or six has somehow reconstructed for himself the theory of
his language, it would seem that our notions of human learning are due
for some considerable sophistication. (Lees 1957: 408)
And considerable sophistication there has been. Most subsequent work
on language learning has followed Syntactic Structures in seeking theories which evaluate grammars relative to a corpus of utterances. That

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

x\

is true of Chomsky (1965). Chomsky and Halle (l%8), and of more
modern work. Robin Clark's Fitness Metric measures precisely the fitness of grammars with respect to a set of sentences (I).
1. Fitness Metric (Clark 1992)

( 2 J . , *j + * 2 " . ,*, + <• S"_, e,J - (v, + bSi + Ofj)

t"-l>(?. 1 * + '?'-.*> + <2j-,«)
where
i the number of violations signaled by the parser associated with a given
parameter setting:
s, = the number of superset settings in the counter; ft is a constant superset
penalty > I;
tt = the measure of elegance (= number of nodes) of counter i; r < 1 is a
scaling factor
The central idea here is that certain grammars provide a means to
understand certain sentences and not others; that is, they generate certain sentences but not others. The Fitness Metric quantifies the failure
of grammars to parse sentences, the "violations", v. The sum term,
sigma, totals all the violations of all grammars under consideration,
perhaps five grammars with a total of 50 failures or violations. We
then subtract the violations of any single grammar and divide by the
total \iolations (multiplied by n - 1). This provides a number which
grades candidate grammars. For example, if one candidate has 10 violations, its score is 50-10, divided by some number; if another candidate has 20 violations, its score is 5 0 - 2 0 , divided by that number, a
lower score. (There are two other factors involved in the equation, a
superset penalty s and a measure of elegance e, but they are subject to
a scaling condition and play a lesser role, which I ignore here.) I have
sketched Clark's Fitness Metric because it is the most sophisticated
and precisely worked out evaluation measure that I know. What it and
other such evaluation measures do is rate grammars against a set of
data, as outlined in 1957.
Although most work on learnability has followed the goals laid out
for linguistic theories in Syntactic Structures, future work may permit
a different approach to acquisition, providing a kind of discovery pro-

xvi

Introduction by David W. Lightfoot

ccdure: children may seek certain elements of grammatical structure,
cues. These cues would be prescribed at the level of UG in a kind of
menu from which children select. Some cues represent parameters of
variation (i.e. occurring in some grammars but not others) and all
cues would be found in the mental representations which result from
parsing phrases and sentences that children are exposed to (Dresher
1999. Fodor 1998, Lightfoot 1999). Some of those phrases and sentences would "express" cues, requiring the cued structure for understanding. Under this view, children acquire a mature grammar by accumulating cued structures and children (and linguists) have a kind of discovery procedure.
Nearly fifty years ago Chomsky argued for explicit rigor, for various
levels of representation provided by a theory of grammar, and for
seeking a precise evaluation metric to compare grammars. After almost fifty years of enrichment, we can revisit this matter and many
others in the light of subsequent work developing theories of grammar
and spelling out the details of Universal Grammar, seen now as defining the language faculty. The ongoing investigation of this part of
human cognition has been immensely productive; we have witnessed
the "considerable sophistication" that Lees predicted. We have learned
a vast amount about many languages and we have learned different
kinds of things: generativists adopting the biological, cognitive perspective have focused on where generalizations break down, because
that reveals poverty-of-stimulus problems which illustrate information
conveyed by the linguistic genotype, UG (see The Linguistic Review
19.1, 2002, for extensive discussion of the role of poverty-of-stimulus
arguments). The avalanche has also given rise to new kinds of studies
of language acquisition by young children, new experimental techniques, explorations of language use in various domains, new computer models, new approaches to language history, all shaped by the
core notion of a language organ. It has also spawned new approaches
to old philosophical questions, notions of meaning and reference, and
Chomsky has taken the lead in this area (for example, Chomsky 2000).
The cognitive analysis of language was re-energized by this remarkable
snowball and it will continue for much longer, because much remains
to be done now that the perspective has been widened.
Georgetown, July 2002

DAVID W. LIGHTFOOT

Introduction by David W. Lightfool

xvii

Notes
' 1 am graieful to colleagues who have commented on an earlier draft of this introduction Noam Chomsky, Morris Halle. Norbcrt Hornstein. and Neil Smith They are all
old enough to remember 1957, appearances to the contrary.
1 Bear in mind that these were notes for undergraduate classes. Students were not familiar with Markov processes and needed to be introduced to string generating mechanisms. This material docs not feature in LSLT, presumably because it was remote
from empirical issues The idea was to show (hat much richer systems were inadequate
for natural language and that the goal should be the strong generation of structures,
there being no grammatical-ungrammalkaJ distinction, as elaborated in l~S/.7"(Chapter 51
2 Linguists who restrict themselves to mathematical descriptions might be said, generously, to be following the example of Syntactic structures, hoping that their analyses
will be as automatically translatable into psychological claims as the ideas of 19S7.
However, they deprive themselves of the wealth of empirical demands and guidance
which come specifically from the psychological dimension, matters of Icamahility, etc.
It is worth noting in the shade of a footnote that linguists pursuing the cognitive
perspective postulate genetic information needed to solve acquisition problems. By
discovering more and more about the genetic information required, we hope one day
to learn something about the appropriate form of that information, a different and
more ambitious matter. Hypotheses abound but nobody is under any illusion that
current ideas come anywhere near what will be needed to unify our hypotheses with
what is known about genetic structure (if that is ever possible). It may meanwhile be
correct to say that certain information is required, but that just means that at this
stage of understanding we arc doing Mendelian genetics.

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Dresher, B. E
1999
Charting the learning path: Cues to parameter setting. Linguistic Inquiry
30.1:27-67.
Emonds. J.
1978
The verbal complex V V in French. Linguistic Inquiry 9: 151-75.
Fodor. J. D.
1998
Unambiguous triggers, Linguistic Inquiry 29.1: I-36.
Harris. Z S.
Methods in structural linguistics Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1951
Jen*. N. K.
1967
Antibodies and learning' Selection versus instruction In O, C. Quarton,
T Melncchuk and F. O Schmitt, cds.. The neurosciences: A stutu
gram. New York: Rockefeller University Press.
1985
The generative grammar of the immune system. Science 229: 10571059.
Klima. E. S.
1964
Negation in English. In J. Fodor and J. Kalz. cds.. The structure of
language. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice Hall
Lasnik. H
2000
Syntactic Structures revisited Contemporary lectures on classic transformational theory Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lees, R.
1957
Review of Syntactic Structures. Language 33 3: 375-408.
1960
The grammar of English nominalizalions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lees. R. and E. S. Klima
1963
Rules for English pronominalization. Language 39: 17-28.
Lenneberg, E. H.
1967
The biological foundations of language. New York. John Wiley.
Lightfoot, D W
1993
Why UG needs a learning theory: triggering verb movement. In C.
Jones, cd„ Historical linguistics: Problems and perspectives. London:
Longman [reprinted in I Roberts and A. Battye. eds., Clause structure
and language change. Oxford: Oxford University Press].
I M9
The development of language: Acquisition, change and evolution. Oxford:
Blackwell
Popper, K. R
1959
TV logic of scientific discovery. London: Hutchinson.
Ri/zi, L.
1990
Relativized minimality. Cambridge, MA MIT Press.

PREFACE

This study deals with syntactic structure both in the broad sense
(as opposed to semantics) and the narrow sense (as opposed to
phonemics and morphology). It forms part of an attempt to construct a formalized general theory of linguistic structure and to
explore the foundations of such a theory. The search for rigorous
formulation in linguistics has a much more serious motivation than
mere concern for logical niceties or the desire to purify well-established methods of linguistic analysis. Precisely constructed models
for linguistic structure can play an important role, both negative
and positive, in the process of discovery itself. By pushing a precise
but inadequate formulation to an unacceptable conclusion, we can
often expose the exact source of this inadequacy and, consequently,
gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic data. More positively,
a formalized theory may automatically provide solutions for many
problems other than those for which it was explicitly designed.
Obscure and intuition-bound notions can neither lead to absurd
conclusions nor provide new and correct ones, and hence they fail
to be useful in two important respects. I think that some of those
linguists who have questioned the value of precise and technical
development of linguistic theory may have failed to recognize the
productive potential in the method of rigorously stating a proposed
theory and applying it strictly to linguistic material with no attempt
to avoid unacceptable conclusions by ad hoc adjustments or loose
formulation. The results reported below were obtained by a
conscious attempt to follow this course systematically. Since this
fact may be obscured by the informality of the presentation, it is
important to emphasize it here.

6

PREFACE

Specifically, wc shall investigate three models for linguistic
structure and seek to determine their limitations. We shall find that
a certain very simple communication theoretic model of language
and a more powerful model that incorporates a large part of what
is now generally known as "immediate constituent analysis" cannot
properly serve the purposes of grammatical description. The investigation and application of these models brings to light certain
facts about linguistic structure and exposes several gaps in linguistic
theory; in particular, a failure to account for such relations between
sentences as the active-passive relation. We develop a third,
transformational model for linguistic structure which is more powerful than the immediate constituent model in certain important
respects and which does account for such relations in a natural way.
When we formulate the theory of transformations carefully and
apply it freely to English, we find that it provides a good deal of
insight into a wide range of phenomena beyond those for which it
was specifically designed. In short, we find that formalization can,
in fact, perform both the negative and the positive service commented on above.
During the entire period of this research 1 have had the benefit of
very frequent and lengthy discussions with Zellig S. Harris. So
many of his ideas and suggestions are incorporated in the text
below and in the research on which it is based that I will make no
attempt to indicate them by special reference. Harris' work on
transformational structure, which proceeds from a somewhat
different point of view from that taken below, is developed in
items 15, 16, and 19 of the bibliography (p. 115). In less obvious
ways, perhaps, the course of this research has been influenced
strongly by the work of Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quinc. I have
discussed most of this material at length with Morris Halle, and
have benefited very greatly from his comments and suggestions.
Eric Lcnneberg, Israel Scheffler, and Yehoshua Bar-Hillel have read
earlier versions of this manuscript and have made many valuable
criticisms and suggestions on presentation and content.
The work on the theory' of transformations and the transformational structure of English which, though only briefly sketched

PREFACE

7

below, serves as the basis for much of the discussion, was largely
carried out in 1951 - 55 while I was a Junior Fellow of the Society of
Fellows, Harvard University. I would like to express my gratitude
to the Society of Fellows for having provided me with the freedom
to carry on this research.
This work was supported in part by the U.S.A. Army (Signal
Corps), the Air Force (Office of Scientific Research, Air Research
and Development Command), and the Navy (Office of Naval
Research); and in part by the National Science Foundation and
the Eastman Kodak Corporation.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Department of Modern Languages and
Research Laboratory of Electronics,
Cambridge, Mass.
August 1, 1956.

NOAM CHOMSKY

TABLE O F C O N T E N T S

Introduction to Second Edition by David W. Lightfoot . . .
Preface
1. Introduction
2. The Independence of Grammar
3. An Elementary Linguistic Theory
4. Phrase Structure
5. Limitations of Phrase Structure Description
6. On the Goals of Linguistic Theory
7. Some Transformations in English
8. The Explanatory Power of Linguistic Theory'
9. Syntax and Semantics
10. Summary
11. Appendix 1: Notations and Terminology
12. Appendix II: Examples of English Phrase Structure and
Transformational Rules

v
5
11
13
18
26
34
49
61
85
92
106
109

Bibliography

115

Ill

1

INTRODUCTION

Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation
of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar
that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the
sentences of the language under analysis. More generally, linguists
must be concerned with the problem of determining the fundamental underlying properties of successful grammars. The ultimate
outcome of these investigations should be a theory of linguistic
structure in which the descriptive devices utilized in particular
grammars are presented and studied abstractly, with no specific
reference to particular languages. One function of this theory is to
provide a general method for selecting a grammar for each language,
given a corpus of sentences of this language.
The central notion in linguistic theory is that of "linguistic level."
A linguistic level, such as phonemics, morphology, phrase structure,
is essentially a set of descriptive devices that are made available for
the construction of grammars; it constitutes a certain method for
representing utterances. We can determine the adequacy of a
linguistic theory by developing rigorously and precisely the form of
grammar corresponding to the set of levels contained within this
theory, and then investigating the possibility of constructing simple
and revealing grammars of this form for natural languages We
shall study several different conceptions of linguistic structure in
this manner, considering a succession of linguistic levels of increasing complexity which correspond to more and more powerful
modes of grammatical description; and we shall attempt to show
that linguistic theory must contain at least these levels if it is to

12

INTRODUCTION

provide, in particular, a satisfactory grammar of English. Finally,
we shall suggest that this purely formal investigation of the structure
of language has certain interesting implications for semantic
studies '

1
The motivation for the particular orientation of the research reported here
is discussed below in § 6.

2

T H K I N D E P E N D E N C E OF G R A M M A R

2.1 From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or
infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a
finite set of elements. All natural languages in their spoken or written
form are languages in this sense, since each natural language has a
finite number of phonemes (or letters in its alphabet) and each
sentence is rcprcsentable as a finite sequence of these phonemes (or
letters), though there are infinitely many sentences. Similarly, the
set of'sentences' of some formalized system of mathematics can be
considered a language. The fundamental aim in the linguisticanalysis of a language L is to separate the grammatical sequences
which arc the sentences of L from the ungrammatkal sequences
which are not sentences of L and to study the structure of the
grammatical sequences. The grammar of L will thus be a device
that generates all of the grammatical sequences of L and none of the
ungrammatical ones. One way to test the adequacy of a grammar
proposed for L is to determine whether or not the sequences that it
generates are actually grammatical, i.e., acceptable to a native
speaker, etc. We can take certain steps towards providing a behavioral criterion for grammaticalness so that this test of adequacy can
be carried out. For the purposes of this discussion, however,
suppose that we assume intuitive knowledge of the grammatical
sentences of English and ask what sort of grammar will be able to
do the job of producing these in some effective and illuminating
way. We thus face a familiar task of explication of some intuitive
concept — in this case, the concept "grammatical in English," and
more generally, the concept "grammatical."
Notice that in order to set the aims of grammar significantly it is
sufficient to assume a partial knowledge of sentences and non-

14

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

sentences. That is, we may assume for this discussion that certain
sequences of phonemes arc definitely sentences, and that certain
other sequences are definitely non-sentences. In many intermediate
cases we shall be prepared to let the grammar itself decide, when the
grammar is set up in the simplest way so that it includes the clear
sentences and excludes the clear non-sentences. This is a familiar
feature of explication.1 A certain number of clear cases, then, will
provide us with a criterion of adequacy for any particular grammar.
For a single language, taken in isolation, this provides only a weak
test of adequacy, since many different grammars may handle the
clear cases properly. This can be generalized to a very strong condition, however, if we insist that the clear cases be handled properly
for each language by grammars all of which are constructed by the
same method. That is, each grammar is related to the corpus of
sentences in the language it describes in a way fixed in advance for
all grammars by a given linguistic theory. We then have a very
strong test of adequacy for a linguistic theory that attemps to give a
general explanation for the notion "grammatical sentence" in terms
of "observed sentence." and for the set of grammars constructed in
accordance with such a theory. It is furthermore a reasonable
requirement, since we are interested not only in particular languages,
but also in the general nature of Language. There is a great deal
more that can be said about this crucial topic, but this would take
us too far afield. Of. § 6.
2.2 On what basis do wc actually go about separating grammatical
sequences from ungrammatical sequences? 1 shall not attempt to
1
Cf., for example, N. Goodman, The structure of appearance (Cambridge,
1951), pp. 5 6. Notice that to meet the aims of grammar, given a linguistic
theory, it is sufficient to have a partial knowledge of the sentences (i.e., a
corpus) of the language, since a linguistic theory will state the relation
between the set of observed sentences and the set of grammatical sentences,
i.e., it will define "grammatical sentence" in terms of "observed sentence,"
certain properties of the observed sentences, and certain properties of grammars.
To use Quine's formulation, a linguistic theory will give a general explanation
for what 'could' be in language on the basis of "what is plus simplicity of the
laws whereby wc describe and extrapolate what is". (W. V. Quinc, From a
logical point of view [Cambridge, 1953], p. 54). Cf. § 6.1.

THE INDEPENDENCE OF GRAMMAR

19

give a complete answer to this question here (cf. §§ 6.7), but I would
like to point out that several answers that immediately suggest
themselves could not be correct. First, it is obvious that the set of
grammatical sentences cannot be identified with any particular
corpus o( utterances obtained by the linguist in his field work. Any
grammar of a language will project the finite and somewhat accidental corpus of observed utterances to a set (presumably infinite)
of grammatical utterances. In this respect, a grammar mirrors the
behavior of the speaker who. on the basis of a finite and accidental
experience with language, can produce or understand an indefinite
number of new sentences. Indeed, any explication of the notion
"grammatical in L" (i.e., any characterization of "grammatical in
L" in terms of "observed utterance of L") can be thought of as offering an explanation for this fundamental aspect of linguistic behavior.
2.3 Second, the notion "grammatical" cannot be identified with
"meaningful" or "significant" in any semantic sense. Sentences (1)
and (2) arc equally nonsensical, but any speaker of English will
recognize that only the former is grammatical.
(1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
(2) Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.
Similarly, there is no semantic reason to prefer (3) to (5) or (4)
to (6). but only (3) and (4) are grammatical sentences of English.
(3) have you a book on modern music?
(4) the book seems interesting.
(5) read you a book on modern music?
(6) the child seems sleeping.
Such examples suggest that any search for a scmantically based
definition of "grammaticalness" will be futile. We shall sec, in fact,
in § 7. that there are deep structural reasons for distinguishing (3)
and (4) from (5) and (6); but before we are able to find an explanation for such facts as these wc shall have to carry the theory of
syntactic structure a good deal beyond its familiar limits.
2.4

Third, the notion "grammatical in English" cannot be identi-

16

SYNTACTIC STRUCTIRI S

fied in any way with the notion "high order of statistical approximation to English." It is fair to assume that neither sentence (I) nor
(2) (nor indeed any part of these sentences) has ever occurred in an
English discourse. Hence, in any statistical model for grammaticalness. these sentences will be ruled out on identical grounds as
equally •remote' from English. Yet (I), though nonsensical, is
grammatical, while (2) is not. Presented with these sentences, a
speaker of English will read (I) with a normal sentence intonation,
but he will read (2) with a falling intonation on each word; in fact,
with just the intonation pattern given to any sequence of unrelated
words. He treats each word in (2) as a separate phrase. Similarly,
he will be able to recall (1) much more easily than (2), to learn it
much more quickly, etc. Yet he may never have heard or seen any
pair of words from these sentences joined in actual discourse. To
choose another example, in the context "I saw a fragile—," the
words "whale" and "of" may have equal (i.e.. zero) frequency in the
past linguistic experience of a speaker who will immediately recognize that one of these substitutions, but not the other, gives a grammatical sentence. We cannot, of course, appeal to the fact that sentences such as (I) "might' be uttered in some sufficiently far-fetched
context, while(2) would never be, since the basis for this differentiation
between (1) and (2) is precisely what we are interested in determining.
Evidently, one's ability to produce and recognize grammatical
utterances is not based on notions of statistical approximation and
the like. The custom of calling grammatical sentences those that
"can occur", or those that are "possible", has been responsible for
some confusion here. It is natural to understand "possible" as
meaning "highly probable" and to assume that the linguist's sharp
distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical2 is motivated
by a feeling that since the 'reality' of language is too complex to be
described completely, he must content himself with a schematized
1
Below » c shall suggest thai this sharp distinction may be modified in favor
of a notion of levels of grammaticalness. But this has no bearing on the point
at issue here. Thus (11 and (2) will be at dilTcrcnt levels of grammaticalness even
if i l l is assigned a lower degree of grammaticalness than, say. (3) and (4i; but
they will be at the same level of statistical remoteness from English. The same is
true of an indefinite number of similar pairs.

THE INDEPENDENCE OF GRAMMAR

1?

version replacing "zero probability, and all extremely low probabilities, by impossible, and all higher probabilities by possible."3 We
see, however, that this idea is quite incorrect, and that a structural
analysis cannot be understood as a schematic summary developed
by sharpening the blurred edges in the lull statistical picture. If we
rank the sequences of a given length in order of statistical approximation to English, we will find both grammatical and ungrammatical sequences scattered throughout the list; there appears to be no
particular relation between order of approximation and grammaticalness. Despite the undeniable interest and importance of semantic
and statistical studies of language, they appear to have no direct
relevance to the problem of determining or characterizing the set of
grammatical utterances. I think that we are forced to conclude that
grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning, and that
probabilistic models give no particular insight into some of the
basic problems of syntactic structure.'
• C. F. Hockett, A manual of phonology (Baltimore. 1955), p. 10.
We return to the question of the relation between semantics and syntax in
§§ 8, 9, where we argue that this relation can only be studied after the syntactic
structure has been determined on independent grounds. I think that much the
same thing is true of the relation between syntactic and statistical studies of
language. Given the grammar of a language, one can study the use of the
language statistically in various ways; and the development of probabilistic
models for the use of language (as distinct from the syntactic structure of
language) can be quite rewarding. Cf. B. Mandelbrot, "Structure formcllc des
textes et communication: deux etudes," Word 10.1-27 (1954); H. A. Simon,
"On a class of skew distribution functions," Biomeirika 42.425-40 (1955).
One might seek to develop a more elaborate relation between statistical and
syntactic structure than the simple order of approximation model we have
rejected. I would certainly not care to argue that any such relation is unthinkable, but I know of no suggestion to this effect that does not have obvious flaws.
Notice, in particular, that for any n, we can find a string whose first n words may
occur as the beginning of a grammatical sentence St and whose last n words may
occur as the ending of some grammatical sentence 5 } , but where S, must be
distinct from S». For example, consider the sequences of the form "the man
who ... are here," where ... may be a verb phrase of arbitrary length. Notice
also that we can have new but perfectly grammatical sequences of word classes,
e.g., a sequence of adjectives longer than any ever before produced in the
context "I saw a — house." Various attempts to explain the grammaticalungrammatical distinction, as in the case of (I), (2), on the basis of frequency of
sentence type, order of approximation of word class sequences, etc., will run
afoul of numerous facts like these.
4

3

AN E L E M E N T A R Y LINGUISTIC THEORY

3.1 Assuming the set of grammatical sentences of English to be
given, we now ask what sort of device can produce this set (equivalently, what sort of theory gives an adequate account of the
structure of this set of utterances). We can think of each sentence
of this set as a sequence of phonemes of finite length. A language is
an enormously involved system, and it is quite obvious that any
attempt to present directly the set of grammatical phoneme sequences would lead to a grammar so complex that it would be practically
useless. For this reason (among others), linguistic description
proceeds in terms of a system of "levels of representations."
Instead of stating the phonemic structure of sentences directly, the
linguist sets up such 'higher level' elements as morphemes, and
states separately the morphemic structure of sentences and the
phonemic structure of morphemes. It can easily be seen that the
joint description of these two levels will be much simpler than a
direct description of the phonemic structure of sentences.
Let us now consider various ways of describing the morphemic
structure of sentences. We ask what sort of grammar is necessary to
generate all the sequences of morphemes (or words) that constitute
grammatical English sentences, and only these.
One requirement that a grammar must certainly meet is that it be
finite. Hence the grammar cannot simply be a list of all morpheme
(or word) sequences, since there are infinitely many of these. A
familiar communication theoretic model for language suggests a
way out of this difficulty. Suppose that we have a machine that can
be in any one of a finite number of different internal states, and
suppose that this machine switches from one state to another by

AN ELEMLNTARY LINGUISTIC THEORY

19

producing a certain symbol (let us say, an English word). One of
these states is an initial state; another is a final state. Suppose that
the machine begins in the initial state, runs through a sequence of
states (producing a word with each transition), and ends in the final
state. Then we call the sequence of words that has been produced a
"sentence". Each such machine thus defines a certain language;
namely, the set of sentences that can be produced in this way. Any
language that can be produced by a machine of this sort we call a
finite state language; and we can call the machine itself a finite state
grammar. A finite state grammar can be represented graphically in
the form of a "state diagram".' For example, the grammar that
produces just the two sentences "the man comes" and "the men
come" can be represented by the following state diagram:

We can extend this grammar to produce an infinite number of sentences by adding closed loops. Thus the finite grammar of the
subpart of English containing the above sentences in addition to
"the old man comes", "the old old man comes", .... "the old men
come", "the old old men come", ..., can be represented by the
following state diagram:

1
C. E. Shannon and W. Weaver, The mathematical theory of communication
lUrbana. 1949), pp. 15f.

20

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

Given a state diagram, we produce a sentence by tracing a path from
the initial point on the left to the final point on the right, always
proceeding in the direction of the arrows. Having reached a certain
point in the diagram, we can proceed along any path leading from
this point, whether or not this path has been traversed before in
constructing the sentence in question. Each node in such a diagram
thus corresponds to a state of the machine. We can allow transition
from one state to another in several ways, and we can have any
number of closed loops of any length. The machines that produce
languages in this manner are known mathematically as "finite state
Markov processes." To complete this elementary communication
theoretic model for language, we assign a probability to each
transition from state to state. We can then calculate the "uncertainty" associated with each state and we can define the "information
content" of the language as the average uncertainty, weighted by
the probability of being in the associated states. Since we are
studying grammatical, not statistical structure of language here, this
generalization does not concern us.
This conception of language is an extremely powerful and general
one. If we can adopt it, we can view the speaker as being essentially
a machine of the type considered. In producing a sentence, the
speaker begins in the initial state, produces the first word of the
sentence, thereby switching into a second state which limits the
choice of the second word, etc. Each state through which he passes
represents the grammatical restrictions that limit the choice of the
next word at this point in the utterance.8
In view of the generality of this conception of language, and its
utility in such related disciplines as communication theory, it is
important to inquire into the consequences of adopting this point of
view in the syntactic study of some language such as English or a
formalized system of mathematics. Any attempt to construct a
finite state grammar for English runs into serious difficulties and
complications at the very outset, as the reader can easily convince
himself. However, it is unnecessary to attempt to show this by
* This is essentially the model of language that Hockett develops in A manual
of phonology (Baltimore, 1955), 02.

AN LLfcMtNTARY LINGUISTIC THEORY

2!

example, in view of the followingmore general remark about English:
(9)

English is not a finite state language.

That is, it is impossible, not just difficult, to construct a device OJ the
type described above (a diagram such as (7) or (8)) which will
produce all and only the grammatical sentences of English. To
demonstrate (9) it is necessary to define the syntactic properties of
English more precisely. We shall proceed to describe certain
syntactic properties of English which indicate that, under any
reasonable delimitation of the set of sentences of the language,
(9) can be regarded as a theorem concerning English. To go back to
the question asked in the second paragraph of § 3, (9) asserts that it
is not possible to state the morphemic structure of sentences
directly by means of some such device as a state diagram, and that
the Markov process conception of language outlined above cannot
be accepted, at least for the purposes of grammar.
3.2 A language is defined by giving its 'alphabet* (i.e., the finite set
of symbols out of which its sentences are constructed) and its
grammatical sentences. Before investigating English directly, let us
consider several languages whose alphabets contain just the letters
a, b, and whose sentences are as defined in (lOi-iii):
(10) (i) ab, aabb. aaabbb, ..., and in general, all sentences consisting of n occurrences of a followed by n occurrences of
b and only these;
(ii) aa, bb, abba, baab, aaaa, bbhb, aabbaa, abbbba, ..., and
in general, all sentences consisting of a string X followed
by the 'mirror image' of X (i.e., X in reverse), and only
these;
(iii) aa, bb, abab, baba, aaaa, bhbb, aabaab, abbabb, .... and in
general, all sentences consisting of a string .V of a's and b\
followed by the identical string X, and only these.
We can easily show that each of these three languages is not a finite
state language. Similarly, languages such as (10) where the a's and
b's in question arc not consecutive, but are embedded in other

22

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURLS

strings, will fail to be finite state languages under quite general
conditions. 1
But it is clear that there are subparts of English with the basic
form of(10i)and (lOii). Let S",, S2. 5 3 , ... be declarative sentences
in Fnglish. Then we can have such English sentences as:
(ll)(i) l f S „ t b e n S i .
(ii) Either St, or St.
(Hi) The man who said that S 5 , is arriving today.
In (Hi), wc cannot have "or" in place of "then"; in (11 ii), we
cannot have "then" in place of "or"; in (lliii). we cannot have
"are" instead of "is". In each of these cases there is a dependency
between words on opposite sides of the comma (i.e., "if"-"then",
"eithcr"-"or", "man"-"is"). But between the interdependent
words, in each case, we can insert a declarative sentence .S,, S 3 , 5 5 ,
and this declarative sentence may in fact be one of (11 i-iii). Thus if
in (Hi) we take 5, as (11 ii) and S 3 as (lliii), we will have the
sentence:
(12)

if, either (I I iii), or St> then S2,

and Sj in (11 iii) may again be one of the sentences of (11). It is clear,
then, that in Fnglish wc can find a sequence a + St + h, where there
is a dependency between a and />, and we can select as S, another
sequencecontainingf + S 2 + J, where there is a dependency between
c and d. then select as St another sequence of this form, etc. A set
of sentences that is constructed in this way (and we see from (11)
that there arc several possibilities available for such construction—
(11) comes nowhere near exhausting these possibilities) will have all
of the mirror image properties of( 10 ii) which exclude (lOii) from the
set of finite state languages. Thus we can find various kinds of non' Sec my "Three models for the description of language," l.R.E. Transactions
on Infornuuiun Theory, vol. IT-2, Proceedings of the symposium on information
theory, Sept., 1956, for a statement of such conditions and a proof of (9).
Notice in particular that the set of well-formed formulas of any formalized
system of mathematics or logic will fail to constitute a finite state language,
because of paired parentheses or equivalent restrictions.

AN riFMENTARY LINGUISTIC T1IIORY

23

finite state models within English. This is a rough indication ol the
lines along which a rigorous proof of (9) can be given, on the
assumption that such sentences as ( I I) and (12) belong to English,
while sentences that contradict the cited dependencies of (11) (e.g.,
"either .*> |, then .S"2,"etc.)do not belong to English. Note that many
of the sentences of the form (12). etc.. will be quite strange and
unusual (they can often be made less strange by replacing " i f " by
"whenever", "on the assumption thai", " i f it is the case that", etc.,
without changing the substance of our remarks). But they are all
grammatical sentences, formed by processes of sentence construction so simple and elementary that even the most rudimentary
English grammar would contain them. They can be understood,
and we can even state quite simply the conditions under which they
can be true. It is diflicull to conceive of any possible motivation for
excluding them from the set of grammatical English sentences.
Hence it seems quite clear that no theory of linguistic structure based
exclusively on Markov process models and the like, will be able to
explain or account for the ability of a speaker of English to produce
and understand new utterances, while he rejects other new sequences
as not belonging to the language.
3.3 We might arbitrarily decree that such processes of sentence
formation in English as those wc are discussing cannot be carried
out more than n times, for some fixed n. This would of course makeEnglish a finite state language, as, for example, would a limitation
of English sentences to length of less than a million words. Such
arbitrary limitations serve no useful purpose, however. The point
is that there are processes of sentence formation that finite state
grammars are intrinsically not equipped to handle. If these processes have no finite limit, we can prove the literal inapplicability of
this elementary theory. If the processes have a limit, then the
construction of a finite state grammar will not be literally out of the
question, since it will be possible to list the sentences, and a list is
essentially a trivial finite state grammar. But this grammar will beso complex that it will be of little use or interest. In general, the
assumption that languages are infinite is made in order to simplify

24

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

the description of these languages. If a grammar does not have
recursive devices (closed loops, as in (8), in the finite state grammar)
it will be prohibitively complex. If it docs have recursive devices of
some sort, it will produce infinitely many sentences.
In short, the approach to the analysis of grammaticalness suggested here in terms of a finite state Markov process that produces
sentences from left to right, appears to lead to a dead end just as
surely as the proposals rejected in § 2. If a grammar of this type
produces all English sentences, it will produce many non-sentences
as well. If it produces only English sentences, we can be sure that
there will be an infinite number of true sentences, false sentences.
reasonable questions, etc., which it simply will not produce.
The conception of grammar which has just been rejected represents in a way the minimal linguistic theory that merits serious
consideration. A finite state grammar is the simplest type of
grammar which, with a finite amount of apparatus, can generate an
infinite number of sentences. We have seen that such a limited
linguistic theory is not adequate; we are forced to search for some
more powerful type of grammar and some more "abstract" form of
linguistic theory. The notion of "linguistic level of representation"
put forth at the outset of this section must be modified and elaborated. At least one linguistic level cannot ha\e this simple structure.
That is, on some level, it will not be the case that each sentence is
represented simply as a finite sequence of elements of some sort,
generated from left to right by some simple device. Alternatively.
we must give up the hope of finding n finite set of levels, ordered
from high to low, so constructed that we can generate all utterances
by stating the permitted sequences of highest level elements, the
constituency of each highest level element in terms of elements of
the second level, etc., finally stating the phonemic constituency of
elements of the ncxt-to-lowcst level.4 At the outset of § 3. we
* A third alternative would be to retain the notion of a linguistic level as a
simple linear method of representation, but to generate at least one such level
from left to right by a device with more capacity than a finite state Markov
process. There are so many difficulties with the notion of linguistic level based
on left to right generation, both in terms of complexity of description and lack

AN ELEMENTARY LINGUISTIC Till ORY

25

proposed that levels be established in this way in order to simplify
the description of the set of grammatical phoneme sequences. If a
language can be described in an elementary, left-to-right manner in
terms of a single level (i.e., if it is a finite state language) then this
description may indeed be simplified by construction of such higher
levels; but to generate non-finite state languages such as English we
need fundamentally different methods, and a more general concept
of "linguistic level".

of explanatory power (cf. § 8), that it seems pointless to pursue (his approach
any further. The grammars that we discuss below that do not generate from
left to right also correspond to processes less elementary than finite state Markov
processes. But they are perhaps less powerful than the kind of device that
would be required for direct left-to-right generation of English. Cf. my "Three
models for the description of language" for some futher discussion.

4

PHRASE STRUCTURE

4.1 Customarily, linguistic description on the syntactic level is
formulated in terms of constituent analysis (parsing). We now ask
what form of grammar is presupposed by description of this sort.
We find that the new form of grammar is essentially more powerful
than the finite state model rejected above, and that the associated
concept of "linguistic level" is different in fundamental respects.
As a simple example of the new form for grammars associated
with constituent analysis, consider the following:
(13) (i) Sentence -»NP + VP
(ii) NP^T+N
(iii) VP-+Verb + NP
(iv)
T-uhe
(v) N-*ntan, ball, etc.
(vi) Verb-*hit, took. etc.
Suppose that we interpret each rule X-* Kof (13) as the instruction
"rewrite X as >'". We shall call (14) a derivation of the sentence
"the man hit the ball." where the numbers at the right of each line
of the derivation refer to the rule of the "grammar" (13) used in
constructing that line from the preceding line.1
1
The numbered rules of English grammar to which reference will constantly
be made in the following pages are collected and properly ordered in § 12,
Appendix 11. The notational conventions thai we shall use throughout the
discussion of English structure are stated in § 11, Appendix I.
In his "Axiomatic syntax: the construction and evaluation of a syntactic
calculus," Language 31.409-14 (1955), Harwood describes a system of word
class analysis similar in form to the system developed below for phrase structure.
The system he describes would be concerned only with the relation between
T • S • Verb + 7" T N and Mr ->- man ^ hit + the 1-baII in the example discussed

27

PHRASE STRUCTURE

(14)

Sentence
NP + VP
T + N +
T + N +
the + N +
the + man
the + man
the + man
the + man
the + man

(i)
VP
Verb + NP
Verb + NP
+ Verb + NP
+ hit + NP
+ hit + T + N
+ hit + the + N
+ hit + the + ball

(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

(v)
(vi)
(ii)
(iv)

(v)

Thus the second line of (14) is formed from the first line by rewriting
Sentence as NP + VP in accordance with rule (i) of (13); the third
line is formed from the second by rewriting NP as T+ N in accordance with rule (ii) of (13); etc. We can represent the derivation (14)
in an obvious way by means of the following diagram:
(15)

Sentence
I

I
NP
T

I
VP
N

II
the man

Verb

NP

IrS
hit T

N

I

I

the

ball

The diagram (15) conveys less information than the derivation (14),
since it does not tell us in what order the rules were applied in (14).
in (13) (I5l, i.e., the grammar would contain the "initial string" / V Verb t
I \ and such rules as (13iv-vi). It would thus be a weaker system than the
elementary theory discussed in § 3, since it could not generate an infinite language with a finite grammar. While Harwood's formal account (pp. 409-11)
deals only with word class analysis, the linguistic application (p. 4121 is a case of
immediate constituent analysis, with the classes Q.. m presumably taken to be
classes of word sequences. This extended application is not quite compatible
with the formal account, however. For example, none of the proposed measures
of goodness of fit can stand without revision under this reinterpretation of the
formalism.

28

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

Given (14), we can construct (15) uniquely, but not vice versa, since
it is possible to construct a derivation that reduces to (15) with a
different order of application of the rules. The diagram (15) retains
just what is essential in (14) for the determination of the phrase
structure (constituent analysis) of the derived sentence "the man
hit the ball." A sequence of words of this sentence is a constituent
of type Z if we can trace this sequence back to a single point of
origin in (15), and this point of origin is labelled Z. Thus "hit the
ball" can be traced back to VP in (15); hence "hit the ball" is a VP
in the derived sentence. But "man hit" cannot be traced back to
any single point of origin in (15); hence "man hit" is not a constituent at all.
We say that two derivations arc equivalent if they reduce to the
same diagram of the form (15). Occasionally, a grammar may
permit us to construct nonequivalent derivations for a given sentence. Under these circumstances, we say that we have a case of
"constructional homonymity",- and if our grammar is correct, this
sentence of the language should be ambiguous. We return to the
important notion of constructional homonymity below.
One generalization of (13) is clearly necessary. We must be able
to limit application of a rule to a certain context. Thus T can be
rewritten a if the following noun is singular, but not if it is plural;
similarly. Verb can be rewritten "hits" if the preceding noun is man,
but not if it is men. In general, if we wish to limit the rewriting of
-V as Y to the context Z - W, we can state in the grammar the rule

(16) Z + X+ W-*Z+ Y+ W.
For example, in the case of singular and plural verbs, instead of
having Verb-»hits as an additional rule of (13), we should have
(17)

HPilHV+Verb-*

NPsin,

+hits

indicating that Verb is rewritten hits only in the context NPslng-.
' Sec § 8.1 for some examples of constructional homonymity. See my The
logical structure of linguistic theory (mimeographed); "Three models for the
description of language" (above, p. 22, fn. 3); C. F. Hockcti, T w o models of
grammatical description," Linguistics Today. H'ord 10.210-33 (1954); R. S.
Wells, "Immediate constituents," Language 23.81-117 (1947) for more detailed
discussion.

PHRASE STRUCTURE

29

Correspondingly, (I3ii) will have to be restated to include A'P,,,,
and ft'Pp,.3 This is a straightforward generalization of (13). One
feature of (13) must be preserved, however, as it is in (17): only a
single element can be rewritten in any single rule; i.e., in (16), X
must be a single symbol such as 7, Verb, and not a sequence such
as T+ A'. If this condition is not met. we will not be able to recover
properly the phrase structure of derived sentences from the
associated diagrams of the form (15), as wc did above.
We can now describe more generally the form of grammar
associated with the theory of linguistic structure based upon
constituent analysis, liach such grammar is dclincd by a finite set I
of initial strings and a finite set F of "instruction formulas' of the
form X-* Y in.erpreted: "rewrite A"as Y." Though X need not be
a single symbol, only a single symbol of X can be rewritten in
forming Y. In the grammar (13), the only member of the set L of
initial strings was the single symbol Sentence, and F consisted of the
rules (i) - (vi); but we might want to extend I to include, for
example. Declarative Sentence, Interrogative Sentence, as additional
symbols. Given the grammar [£. F], we define a derivation as a
finite sequence of strings, beginning with an initial string of I , and
with each string in the sequence being derived from the preceding
string by application of one of the instruction formulas of F. Thus
(14) is a derivation, and the five-termed sequence of strings consisting of the first five lines of (14) is also a derivation. Certain
derivations are terminated derivations, in the sense that their final
string cannot be rewritten any further by the rules F. Thus (14) is a
terminated derivation, but the sequence consisting of the first five
* Thus in a more complete grammar, (13ii) might be replaced by a set of
rules that includes the following:
W n w -T+ N I 0 ( ) Prepositional Phrase)
NP„ --T+N + S ( + Prepositional Phrase)
where S is the morpheme which is singular for verbs and plural for nouns
("comes," "boys"), and 0 is the morpheme which is singular for nouns and
plural for verbs ("boy," "come"). We shall omit all mention of first and second
person throughout this discussion. Identification of the nominal and verbal
number affix is actually of questionable validity.

30

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURFS

lines of (14) is not. If a string is the last line of a terminated derivation, we say that it is a terminal string. Thus the 4- man + hit + the +
ball is a terminal string from the grammar (13). Some grammars of
the form [X, F] may have no terminal strings, but we are interested
only in grammars that do have terminal strings, i.e., that describe
some language. A set of strings is called a terminal language if it is
the set of terminal strings for some grammar [X, F). Thus each such
grammar defines some terminal language (perhaps the 'empty'
language containing no sentences), and each terminal language is
produced by some grammar of the form (X, F]. Given a terminal
language and its grammar, we can reconstruct the phrase structure
of each sentence of the language (each terminal string of the
grammar) by considering the associated diagrams of the form (15).
as we saw above. We can also define the grammatical relations in
these languages in a formal way in terms of the associated diagrams.
4.2 In § 3 we considered languages, called "finite state languages",
which were generated by finite state Markov processes. Now we
arc considering terminal languages that are generated by systems of
the form [ I , F]. These two types of languages are related in the
following way
Theorem: Every finite state language is a terminal language, but
there are terminal languages which are not finite state languages.*
The import of this theorem is that description in terms of phrase
structure is essentially more powerful than description in terms of
the elementary theory presented above in § 3. As examples of
terminal languages that are not finite state languages we have the
languages (lOi), (lOii) discussed in §3. Thus the language (lOi),
consisting of all and only the strings ab, aabb, aaabbb, ... can be
produced by the [X, F] grammar (18).
(18)

X:

Z

1:

Z-ab
Z-*aZb

* See my ''Three models for the description of language" (above, p. 22, fn. 3)
for proofs of this and related theorems about relative power of grammars.

PHRASE STRUCTURE

31

This grammar has the initial string 7. (as (13) has the initial string
Sentence) and it has two rules. It can easily be seen that each
terminated derivation constructed from (18) ends in a string of the
language (10i). and that all such strings are produced in this way.
Similarly, languages of the form I lOii) can be produced by [I, F]
grammars (lOiii). however, cannot be produced by a grammar of
this type, unless the rules embody contextual restrictions.5
In $ 3 we pointed out that the languages (lOi) and (lOii) correspond to subparts of English, and that therefore the finite state
Markov process model is not adequate for English. We now see
that the phrase structure model does not fail in such cases. We have
not proved the adequacy of the phrase structure model, but we have
show n that large parts of English which literally cannot be described
in terms of the finite-state process model can be described in terms
of phrase structure.
Note that in the case of (18), we can say that in the string aaabbb
of (lOi), for example, ab is a Z. aabb is a Z, and aaabbb itself is a Z.*
Thus this particular string contains three 'phrases,' each of which
is a Z. This is, of course, a very trivial language. It is important to
observe that in describing this language we have introduced a
symbol Z which is not contained in the sentences of this language.
This is the essential fact about phrase structure which gives it its
'abstract' character.
Observe also that in the case of both (13) and (18) (as in every
system of phrase structure), each terminal string has many different
representations. For example, in the case of (13), the terminal
string "the man hit the ball" is represented by the strings Sentence.
NP+VP,T+
N + VP, and all the other lines of (14), as well as by
such strings as NP + Verb + NP, T+ N + hit + NP, which would
occur in other derivations equivalent to (14) in the sense there
defined. On the level of phrase structure, then, each sentence of the
language is represented by a set of strings, not by a single string as it
* See my "On certain formal properties of grammars". Information and
Control 2.133-167 (1959).
• Where "is a" is the relation defined in § 4.1 in terms of such diagrams as
(15).

32

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE

is on the level of phonemes, morphemes, or words. Thus phrase
structure, taken as a linguistic level, has the fundamentally different
and nontrivial character which, as we saw in the last paragraph of
§ 3, is required for some linguistic level. We cannot set up a hierarchy among the various representations of "the man hit the ball";
we cannot subdivide the system of phrase structure into a finite set
of levels, ordered from higher to lower, with one representation for
each sentence on each of these suble\cls. For example, there is no
way of ordering the elements NP and VP relative to one another.
Noun phrases are contained within verb phrases, and verb phrases
within noun phrases, in English. Phrase structure must be considered as a single level, with a set of representations for each
sentence of the language. There is a one-one correspondence
between the properly chosen sets of representations, and diagrams
of the form (15).
4.3 Suppose that by a [I, F] grammar we can generate all of the
grammatical sequences of morphemes of a language. In order to
complete the grammar we must state the phonemic structure of
these morphemes, so that the grammar will produce the grammatical
phoneme sequences of the language. But this statement (which we
would call the morphophonemics of the language) can also be given
by a set of rules of the form "rewrite X as Y", e.g., for English,
(19) (i)

Hfl//t-;WDk/

(ii) take + past-* tuk.
(iii) hit + past -* hit,

(ivi

...D/+/wj/-*/, n • id (where D • /t/or/d/)

(v)

;...C un ,/+/7fljf-./...C (10 ,/ + ;t
voiced consonant)
(vi) past-* id:.
(\ii)
takt-*/teykj

(where C„„ is an un-

etc,
or something similar. Note, incidentally, that order must be defined
among these rules — e.g.. (ii) must precede (v) or (vii), or wc will
derive such forms as /teykt/ for the past tense of take. In these

PHRASE STRUCTURE

33

morphophonemic rules we need no longer require that only a single
symbol be rewritten in each rule.
We can now extend the phras; structure derivations by applying
(19), so that we have a unified process for generating phoneme
sequence from the initial string Sentence. This makes it appear as
though the break between the higher level of phrase structure and
the lower levels is arbitrary. Actually, the distinction is not arbitrary. For one thing, as we have seen, the formal properties of the
rules X-+ Y corresponding to phrase structure are different from
those of the morphophonemic rules, since in the case of the former
we must require that only a single symbol be rewritten. Second, the
elements that figure in the rules (19) can be classified into a finite set
of levels (e.g., phonemes and morphemes; or, perhaps, phonemes,
morphophonemes, and morphemes) each of which is elementary in
the sense that a single string of elements of this level is associated
with each sentence as its representation on this level (except in
cases of homonymity), and each such string represents a single
sentence. But the elements that appear in the rules corresponding
to phrase structure cannot be classified into higher and lower levels
in this way. We shall sec below that there is an even more fundamental reason for marking this subdivison into the higher level
rules of phrase structure and the lower level rules that convert
strings of morphemes into strings of phonemes.
The formal properties of the system of phrase structure make an
interesting study, and it is easy to show that further elaboration of
the form of grammar is both necessary and possible. Thus it can
easily be seen that it would be quite advantageous to order the rules
of the set F so that certain of the rules can apply only after others
have applied. For example, we should certainly want all rules of the
form (17) to apply before any rule which enables us to rewrite ;V/>
as NP 4- Preposition + NP, or the like; otherwise the grammar will
produce such nonsentences as "the men near the truck begins work
at eight." But this elaboration leads to problems that would carry
us beyond the scope of this study.

5

LIMITATIONS O F
PHRASE S T R U C T U R E D E S C R I P T I O N

5.1 We have discussed two models for the structure of language,
a communication theoretic model based on a conception of language
as a Markov process and corresponding, in a sense, to the minimal
linguistic theory, and a phrase structure model based on immediate
constituent analysis. We have seen that the first is surely inadequate
for the purposes of grammar, and that the second is more powerful
than the first, and does not fail in the same way. Of course there
are languages (in our general sense) that cannot be described in
terms of phrase structure, but I do not know whether or not
English is itself literally outside the range of such analysis. However,
I think that there are other grounds for rejecting the theory of phrasestructure as inadequate for the purpose of linguistic description.
The strongest possible proof of the inadequacy of a linguistic
theory is to show that it literally cannot apply to some natural
language. A weaker, but perfectly sufficient demonstration of inadequacy would be to show that the theory can apply only clumsily;
that is, to show that any grammar that can be constructed in terms
of this theory will be extremely complex, ad hoc, and 'unrevealing',
that certain very simple ways of describing grammatical sentences
cannot be accommodated within the associated forms of grammar,
and that certain fundamental formal properties of natural language
cannot be utilized to simplify grammars. We can gather a good deal
of evidence of this sort in favor of the thesis that the form of grammar described above, and the conception of linguistic theory that
underlies it, are fundamentally inadequate.
The only way to test the adequacy of our present apparatus is to
attempt to apply it directly to the description of English sentences.

LIMITATIONS OF PHRASE STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION

35

As soon as wc consider any sentences beyond the simplest type, and
in particular, when we attempt to define some order amohg the
rules that produce these sentences, we find that wc run into numerous difficulties and complications. To give substance to this claim
would require a large expenditure of effort and space, and I can
only assert here that this can be shown fairly convincingly.1
Instead of undertaking this rather arduous and ambitious course
here, I shall limit myself to sketching a few simple cases in which
considerable improvement is possible over grammars of the form
[Z, F], In § 8 I shall suggest an independent method of demonstrating the inadequacy of constituent analysis as a means of describing English sentence structure.
5.2 One of the most productive processes for forming new sentences is the process of conjunction. If we have two sentences
Z + X + H ' a n d Z + Y+ W, and if Xand /'arc actually constituents
of these sentences, we can generally form a new sentence Z — X +
and + }' - W. For example, from the sentences (20a-b) we can form
the new sentence (21).
(20) (a) the scene of the movie - was in Chicago
(b) the scene - of the play - was in Chicago
(21) the scene - of the movie and of the play - was in Chicago.
If X and Y are, however, not constituents, we generally cannot do
this.2 For example we cannot form (23) from (22a-b).
' See my The logical structure of linguistic theory for detailed analysis of this
problem.
' (21) and (23) are extreme cases in which there is no question about the
possibility of conjunction. There are many less clear cases. For example, it is
obvious that "John enjoyed the book and liked the play" (a string of the form
NP — VP -+ and -+- VP) is a perfectly good sentence, but many would question the
grammaiicalncss of, e.g., "John enjoyed and my friend liked the play" (a string
of the form NP + Verb + and + Verb - NP). The latter sentence, in which
conjunction crosses over constituent boundaries, is much less natural than the
alternative "John enjoyed the play and my friend liked it", but there is no
preferable alternative to the former. Such sentences with conjunction crossing
constituent boundaries arc also, in general, marked by special phonemic features
such as extra long pauses (in our example, between "liked" and "the"), contrastive stress and intonation, failure to reduce vowels and drop final consonants in

36
(22)
(23)

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

(a) the - liner sailed down the - river
(b) the - tugboat chugged up the - river
the - liner sailed down the and tugboat chugged up the - river.

Similarly, if A'and Fare both constituents, but are constituents of
different kinds (i.e., if in the diagram of the form (15) they each have
a single origin, but this origin is labelled differently), then we cannot
in general form a new sentence by conjunction. For example, wc
cannot form (25) from (24a-b).
(24)
(25)

(a) the scene - of the movie - was in Chicago
(b) the scene - that I wrote - was in Chicago
the scene - of the movie and that I wrote - was in Chicago

In fact, the possibility of conjunction offers one of the best criteria
for the initial determination of phrase structure. We can simplify
the description of conjunction if wc try to set up constituents in
such a way that the following rule will hold:
(26)

If 5 , and S2 are grammatical sentences, and S{ differs from S2
only in that X appears in i", where Y appears in S2 (i.e.,
St =. .X.. and S2 = . .Y..), and -Vand Yare constituents of
the same type in 5 , and S2, respectively, then 5 3 is a sentence,
where S 3 is the result of replacing X by X + and+ Y in 5 ,

(i.e., s , « . . j r + « f + y..).
rapid speech, etc. Such features normally mark the reading of non-grammatical
strings. The most reasonable way to describe this situation would seem to be by
a description of the following kind: to form fully grammatical sentences by
conjunction, it is necessary to conjoin single constituents; if we conjoin pairs of
constituents, and these are major constituents (i.e., 'high up' in the diagram
(15)), the resulting sentences arc semi-grammatical; the more completely we
violate constituent structure by conjunction, the less grammatical is the resulting
sentence. This description requires that we generalize the grammaticalungrammatical dichotomy, developing a notion of degree of grammaticalness.
It is immaterial to our discussion, however, whether wc decide to exclude such
sentences as "John enjoyed and my friend liked the play" as ungrammatical,
whether we include them as semi-grammatical, or whether we include them as
fully grammatical but with special phonemic features. In any event they form
a class of utterances distinct from "John enjoyed the play and liked the book."
etc., where constituent structure is preserved perfectly; and our conclusion that
the rule for conjunction must make explicit reference to constituent structure
therefore stands, since this distinction will have to be pointed out in the grammar.

LIMITATIONS OF PHRASE STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION

37

Even though additional qualification is necessary here, the grammar
is enormously simplified if we set up constituents in such a way that
(26) holds even approximately. That is, it is easier to state the
distribution of "and" by means of qualifications on this rule than
to do so directly without such a rule. But we now face the following
difficulty: we cannot incorporate the rule (26) or anything like it ir
a grammar [1, F] of phrase structure, because of certain fundamental limitations on such grammars. The essential property of rule
(26) is that in order to apply it to sentences St and 5 2 to form the
new sentence 5 3 we must know not only the actual form of S,
and 5j but also their constituent structure — we must know not only
the final shape of these sentences, but also their 'history of derivation.' But each rule X-»Y of the grammar (I, FJ applies or fails
to apply to a given string by virtue of the actual substance of this
string. The question of how this string gradually assumed this form
is irrelevant. If the string contains X as a substring, the rule X-* Y
can apply to it; if not, the rule cannot apply.
We can put this somewhat differently. The grammar [I, F] can
also be regarded as a very elementary process that generates
sentences not from "left to right" but from "top to bottom".
Suppose that we have the following grammar of phrase structure:
(27)

Z: Sentence
F: X, - V ,

Then we can represent this grammar as a machine with a finite
number of internal states, including an initial and a final state. In
its initial state it can produce only the clement Sentence, thereby
moving into a new state. It can then produce any string >', such that
Sentence -»V, is one of the rules of F in (27), again moving into a
new state. Suppose that Y, is the string ... Xj ... Then the machine
can produce the string ... Yj ... by "applying" the rule XJ — YJ.
The machine proceeds in this way from state to state until it finally
produces a terminal string; it is now in the final state. The machine
thus produces derivations, in the sense of §4. The important point

38

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

is that the state of the machine is completely determined by the
string it has just produced (i.e., by the last step of the derivation);
more specifically, the state is determined by the subset of 'left-hand'
elements Xt of F which are contained in this last-produced string.
But rule (26) requires a more powerful machine, which can "look
back" to earlier strings in the derivation in order to determine how
to produce the next step in the derivation.
Rule (26) is also fundamentally new in a different sense. It makes
essential reference to two distinct sentences S, and S2, but in
grammars of the [ I , F] type, there is no way to incorporate such
double reference. The fact that rule (26) cannot be incorporated
into the grammar of phrase structure indicates that even if this
form for grammar is not literally inapplicable to English, it is certainly inadequate in the weaker but sufficient sense considered
above. This rule leads to a considerable simplification of the
grammar; in fact, it provides one of the best criteria for determining
how to set up constituents. We shall sec that there are many other
rules of the same general type as (26) which play the same dual role.
5.3 In the grammar (13) we gave only one way of analyzing the
clement Verb, namely, as hit (cf. (13 vi>). But even with the verbal
root fixed (let us say. as take), there are many other forms that this
element can assume, e.g., takes, has + taken, will + take, has 4- been +
taken, is + being + taken, etc. The study of these "auxiliary verbs"
turns out to be quite crucial in the development of English grammar.
We shall see that their behavior is very regular and simply describable when observed from a point of view that is quite different from
that developed above, though it appears to be quite complex if we
attempt to incorporate these phrases directly into a [I, F] grammar.
Consider first the auxiliaries that appear unstressed; for example,
"has" in "John has read the book" but not "does" in "John does
read books." 3 We can state the occurrence of these auxiliaries in
declarative sentences by adding to the grammar (13) the following
rules:
* We return to the stressed auxiliary "do" below, in § 7.1 (45M47).

LIMITATIONS OF PHRASE STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION

39

(28) (i) Verb-* Aux+V
(ii) V-»hit, take, walk, read, etc.
(iii) Aux-»C(M) (have + en) (be + ing) (be + en)
(iv) M -> will, can, may, shall, must
S in the context NP,lKt(29) (i) C - O in the context SPptpast
(ii) Let Afsldtul for any of the affixes past, S, 0, en, ing. Let
v stand for any A/ or I, or have or be (i.e., for any nonaffix in the phrase Verb). Then:
A/+ v-»v+ Af#,
where # is interpreted as word boundary. 5
(iii) Replace + by # except in the context v - Af. Insert #
initially and finally.
The interpretation of the notations in (28iii) is as follows: we must
choose the element C. and we may choose zero or more of the
parenthesized elements in the given order. In (29 i) we may develop
C into any of three morphemes, observing the contextual restrictions
given. As an example of the application of these rules, we construct
a derivation in the style of (14), omitting the initial steps.
(30) the +
the +
the +
the +

I erb + the + book
from (13 i-v)
Aux + V + the + book
(28 i)
Aux + read + the + book (28 ii)
C + have + en + be + ing + read + the + book
(28iii)- we select the
elements C, have + en
and be + big.
the + man + S + have + en + be + ing + read + the + book
(29 i)

4

man +
man +
man +
man +

We assume here that (I3iil has been extended in the manner of fn. 3,
above, p. 29, or something similar.
4
If we were formulating the theory of grammar more carefully, we would
interpret # as the concatenation operator on the level of words, while + is the
concatcniion operator on the level of phrase structure. (29) would then be part
of the definition of a mapping which carries certain objects on the level of phrase
structure (essentially, diagrams of the form (15)) into strings of words. See my
The logical structure of linguistic theory for a more careful formulation.

411

SYNTACTIC S I R l ( II Kl s

the + man + have + S # be + en # read + ing # the + hook
(29ii) - three times.
# the # man 4 tow + S # to + en # r r a / + fej # f/r? # too* #
(29 Hi)
The morphophoncmic rules (19), etc., will convert the last line of
this derivation into:
(31)

the man has been reading the book

in phonemic transcription. Similarly, every other auxiliary verb
phrase can be generated. We return later to the question of further
restrictions that must be placed on these rules so that only grammatical sequences can be generated. Note, incidentally, that the
morphophoncmic rules will have to include such rules as: will +- S-»
will, will t past -> would. These rules can be dropped if we rewrite
(2X iii) so that either C or M. but not both, can be selected. But now
the forms would, could, might, should must be added to (28iv), and
certain 'sequence of tense' statements become more complex. It is
immateral to our further discussion which of these alternative
analysesis iadopted. Several other minor revisions are possible.
Notice that in order to apply (29i) in (30) we had to use the fact
that the + man is a singular noun phrase ffP^g. That is. we had to
refer back to some earlier step in the derivation in order to determine
the constituent structure of the + man. (The alternative of ordering
l2'h) and the rule that develops VP,,,, into the + man in such a wa>
that (29i) must precede the latter is not possible, for a variety of
reasons, some of which appear below). Hence. (29i). just like (26).
goes beyond the elementary Markovian character of grammars of
phrase structure, and cannot be incorporated within the [ I . FJ
grammar.
Rule (29ii) violates the requirements of [I, F] grammars even
more severely. It also requires reference to constituent structure
(i.e., past history of derivation) and in addition, we have no way to
express the required inversion within the terms of phrase structure.
Note that this rule is useful elsewhere in the grammar, at least in
the case where Aj is ing. Thus the morphemes to and lug play a ver>

LIMITATIONS OF PHRASE STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION

41

similar role within the noun phrase in that they convert verb phrases
into noun phrases, giving, e.g.,

{

to prove that theorem I
..,,,
} was difficult,

proving that theorem J
etc. We can exploit this parallel by adding to the grammar (13) the
rule

(33) W > - j ' ^ } ^
The rule (29 ii) will then convert ing + prove + that + theorem into
proving • that + theorem. A more detailed analysis of the VP shows
that this parallel extends much further than this, in fact.
The reader can easily determine that to duplicate the effect of
(28iii) and (29) without going beyond the bounds of a system [I, F]
of phrase structure, it would be necessary to give a fairly complex
statement. Once again, as in the case of conjunction, we see that
significant simplification of the grammar is possible if we are
permitted to formulate rules of a more complex type than those that
correspond to a system of immediate constituent analysis. By
allowing ourselves the freedom of (29ii) we have been able to state
the constituency of the auxiliary phrase in (28iii) without regard to
the interdependence of its elements, and it is always easier to describe
a sequence of independent elements than a sequence of mutually
dependent ones. To put the same thing differently, in the auxiliary
verb phrase we really have discontinuous elements — e.g., in (30),
the elements have, en and be. .ing. But discontinuities cannot be
handled within [I, F] grammars.* In (28iii) we treated these
• We might attempt to extend the notions of phrase structure to account
for discontinuities. It has been pointed out several limes that fairly serious
difficulties arise in any systematic attempt to pursue this course. Cf. my
"System of syntactic analysis," Journal of Symbolic Logic 18.242-56 (1953);
C. F. Hockett, "A formal statement of morphemic analysis," Studies in Linguistics 10.27-39 (1952); idem, "Two models of grammatical description,"
Linguistics Today. Word 10.210-33 (1954l. Similarly, one might seek to remedy
some of the other deficiencies of [I, F] grammars by a more complex account
of phrase structure. I think that such an approach is ill-advised, and that it can
only lead to the development of ad hoc and fruitless elaborations. It appears to
be the case that the notions of phrase structure are quite adequate for a small

42

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

elements as continuous, and we introduced the discontinuity by the
very simple additional rule (29ii). We shall sec below, in § 7, that
this analysis of the element Verb serves as the basis for a far-reaching and extremely simple analysis of several important features of
English syntax.
5.4 As a third example of the inadequacy of the conceptions of
phrase structure, consider the case of the active-passive relation.
Passive sentences are formed by selecting the element be + en in rule
28 iii). But there are heavy restrictions on this element that make it
unique among the elements of the auxiliary phrase. For one thing.
be + en can be selected only if the following V is transitive (e.g.,
was + eaten is permitted, but not was + occurred); but with a few
exceptions the other elements of the auxiliary phrase can occur
freely with verbs. Furthermore, be + en cannot be selected if the
verb V is followed by a noun phrase, as in (30) (e.g., we cannot in
general have NP + is + Y + en + NP, even when V is transitive — we
cannot have "lunch is eaten John"). Furthermore, if Fis transitive
and is followed by the prepositional phrase by + NP, then we must
select be + en (we can have "lunch is eaten by John" but not "John
is eating by lunch." etc.). Finally, note that in elaborating (13) into
a full-fledged grammar we will have to place many restrictions on
the choice of Fin terms of subject and object in order to permit such
sentences as: "John admires sincerity," "sincerity frightens John,"
"John plays golf." "John drinks wine," while excluding the 'inverse'
non-sentences7 "sincerity admires John," "John frightens sincerity,"
part of the language and that the rest of the language can be derived by repeated
application or a rather simple set of transformations to the strings given by the
phrase structure grammar. If M were to attempt to extend phrase structure
grammar to cover the entire language directly, we would lose the simplicity of
the limited phrase structure grammar and of the transformational development.
This approach would miss the main point of level construction (cf. first paragraph of § 3.1), namely, to rebuild the vast complexity of the actual language
more elegantly and systematically by extracting the contribution to this complexity of several linguistic levels, each of which is simple in itself.
' Here too we might make use of a notion of levels of grammaticalness as
suggested in footnote 2, p. 35. Thus "sincerity admires John," though clearly
less grammatical than "John admires sincerity," is certainly more grammatical

LIMITATIONS OF PHRASE STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION

43

"golf plays John," "wine drinks John". But this whole network of
restrictions fails completely when we choose be + en as part of the
auxiliary verb. In fact, in this case the same sclcctional dependencies hold, but in the opposite order. That is, for every sentence
NPl — V—NPi we can have a corresponding sentence NP2-is+ Ven
— by + NPX. If we try to include passives directly in the grammar
(13), we shall have to restate all of these restrictions in the opposite
order for the case in which be + en is chosen as part of the auxiliary
verb. This inelegant duplication, as well as the special restrictions
involving the clement be + en, can be avoided only if we deliberately
exclude passives from the grammar of phrase structure, and
reintroduce them by a rule such as:
(34)

If S, is a grammatical sentence of the form

,\Pi-Aux-

V-NPi,

then the corresponding string of the form
MP, - Aux + be + en- V - by + NP,
is also a grammatical sentence.
For example, if John - C — admire — sincerity is a sentence, then
sincerity - C 4- be + en — admire - by + John (which by (29) and
(19) becomes "sincerity is admired by John") is also a sentence.
We can now drop the element be + en, and all of the special
restrictions associated with it, from (28iii). The fact that be + en
requires a transitive verb, that it cannot occur before V + NP, that it
must occur before V + by + MP (where k'is transitive), that it inverts
the order of the surrounding noun phrases, is in each case an
automatic consequence of rule (34). This rule thus leads to a considerable simplification of the grammar. But (34) is well beyond the
limits of [I, F] grammars. Like (29ii), it requires reference to the
constituent structure of the string to which it applies and it carries
out an inversion on this string in a structurally determined manner.
than "of admires John," I believe that a workable notion of degree of grammaticalness can be developed in purely formal terms (cf. my The logical structure of
linguistic theory), but this goes beyond the bounds of the present discussion.
See § 7.5 for an even stronger demonstration that inversion is necessary in the
passive.

44

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURFS

5.5 We have discussed three rules ((26), (29), (34)) which materially
simplify the description of English but which cannot be incorporated into a [ I , F] grammar. There are a great many other rules of this
type, a few of which wc shall discuss below. By further study of the
limitations of phrase structure grammars with respect to English we
can show quite conclusively that these grammars will be so hopelessly complex that they will be without interest unless wc incorporate such rules.
If wc examine carefully the implications of these supplementary
rules, however, wc see that they lead to an entirely new conception
of linguistic structure. Let us call each such rule a "grammatical
transformation." A grammatical transformation T operates on a
given string (or, as in the case of (26). on a set of strings) with a
given constituent structure and converts it into a new string with a
new derived constituent structure. To show exactly how this
operation is performed requires a rather elaborate study which
would go far beyond the scope of these remarks, but we can in fact
develop a certain fairly complex but reasonably natural algebra of
transformations having the properties that we apparently require
for grammatical description.6
From these few examples we can already detect some of the
essential propci ties of a transformational grammar. For one thing,
it is clear that wc must dctinc an order of application on these
transformations. The passive transformation (34), for example,
must apply before (29). It must precede (29i), in particular, so that
the verbal element in the resulting sentence will have the same
number as the new grammatical subject of the passive sentence.
And it must precede (29ii) so that the latter rule will apply properly
to the new inserted clement be + en. (In discussing the question of
whether or not (29 i) can be fitted into a |X, F] grammar, wc mentioned that this rule could not be required to apply before the rule
* See my "Three models for the description of language" (above, p. 22, fn. 3»
for a brief account of transformations, and The logical structure of linguistic
theory and Transformational Analysis for a detailed development of transformational algebra and transformational grammars. Sec /. S Harris, "Cooccurrence and Transformations in linguistic structure," Language 33.283-340
(I9S7), for a somewhat different approach to transformational analysis.

LIMITATIONS OV PHRASE STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION

45

analyzing NPitl,, into the + man, etc. One reason for this is now
obvious (29j) must apply alter (34). but (34) must apply after the
analysis of Af/>„IM, or we will not have the proper selectional
relations between the subject and verb and the verb and 'agent' in
the passive.)
Secondly, note that certain transformations are obligatory,
whereas others arc only optional. I or example, (29) must be applied
to every derivation, or the result will simply not be u sentence.9
But (34), the passive transformation, may or may not be applied in
any particular case. F.ither way the result is a sentence. Hence (29)
is an obligatory transformation and (34) is an optional transformation.
This distinction between obligatory and optional transformations
leads us to set up a fundamental distinction among the sentences of
the language. Suppose that we have a grammar G with a [L, F] part
and a transformational part, and suppose that the transformational
part has certain obligatory transformations and certain optional
ones. Then we define the kernel of the language (in terms of the
grammar G) as the set of sentences that arc produced when we
apply obligatory transformations to the terminal strings of the
(I, I ] grammar. The transformational part of the grammar will be
set up in such a way that transformations can apply to kernel
sentences (more correctly, to the forms that underlie kernel sentences— i.e., to terminal strings of the [£, F] part of the grammar)
or to prior transforms. Thus every sentence of the language will
cither belong to the kernel or will be derived from the strings
underlying one or more kernel sentences by a sequence of one or
more transformations.
From these considerations wc are led to a picture of grammars as
possessing a natural tripartite arrangement. Corresponding to the
level of phrase structure, a grammar has a sequence of rules of the
form X-> Y, and corresponding to lower levels it has a sequence of
• But of the three parts of (29i), only the third is obligatory. That is, past
may occur after NP,,^. or SP„. Whenever wc have an elcmeni such as C in (29 i)
which must be developed, but perhaps in several alternative ways, we can order
the alternatives and make each one but the last optional, and the last, obligatory.

46

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

morphophonemic rules of the same basic form. Linking these two
sequences, it has a sequence of transformational rules. Thus the
grammar will look something like this:
(35)

I : Sentence:
F: Xt -» Y,
Phrase structure

Transformational structure
Tj

Z, - Wx
Morphophonemics
To produce a sentence from such a grammar we construct an
extended derivation beginning with Sentence. Running through
the rules of F we construct a terminal string that will be a sequence
of morphemes, though not necessarily in the correct order. We then
run through the sequence of transformations T,, ... T,, applying
each obligatory one and perhaps certain optional ones. These
transformations may rearrange strings or may add or delete
morphemes. As a result they yield a string of words. We then run
through the morphophonemic rules, thereby converting this string
of words into a string of phonemes. The phrase structure segment
of the grammar will include such rules as those of (13), (17) and (28).
The transformational part will include such rules as (26), (29) and
(34), formulated properly in the terms that must be developed in a
full-scale theory of transformations. The morphophonemic part
will include such rules as (19). This sketch of the process of generation of sentences must (and easily can) be generalized to allow for
proper functioning of such rules as (26) which operate on a set of
sentences, and to allow transformations to reapply to transforms so
that more and more complex sentences can be produced.
When we apply only obligatory transformations in the generation
of a given sentence, we call the resulting sentence a kernel sentence.
Further investigation would show that in the phrase structure and

LIMITATIONS OF PHRASE STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION

47

morphophonemic parts of the grammar we can also extract a
skeleton of obligatory rules that must be applied whenever wc reach
them in the process of generating a sentence. In the last few paragraphs of § 4 wc pointed out that the phrase structure rules lead to a
conception of linguistic structure and "level of representation" that
is fundamentally different from that provided by the morphophonemic rules. On each of the lower levels corresponding to the lower
third of the grammar an utterance is, in general, represented by a
single sequence of elements. But phrase structure cannot be broken
down into sublevels: on the level of phrase structure an utterance is
represented by a set of strings that cannot be ordered into higher or
lower levels. This set of representing strings is equivalent to a
diagram of the form (15). On the transformational level, an
utterance is represented even more abstractly in terms of a sequence
of transformations by which it is derived, ultimately from kernel
sentences (more correctly, from the strings which underlie kernel
sentences). There is a very natural general definition of "linguistic
level" that includes all of these cases,10 and as wc shall sec later,
there is good reason to consider each of these structures to be a
linguistic level.
When transformational analysis is properly formulated wc find
that it is essentially more powerful than description in terms of
phrase structure, just as the latter is essentially more powerfull than
description in terms of finite state Markov processes that generate
sentences from left to right. In particular, such languages as (K)iii)
which lie beyond the bounds of phrase structure description with
context-free rules can be derived transformationally." It is
important to observe that the grammar is materially simplified when
wc add a transformational level, since it is now necessary to provide
phrase structure directly only for kernel sentences — the terminal
strings of the [I, F] grammar are just those which underlie kernel
'• Cf. The logical structure of linguistic theory and Transformational Analysis.
" Let G be a [I, F] grammar with the initial string Sentence and with the set
of all finite strings of a'% and b'% as its terminal output. There is such a grammar.
Let G' be the grammar which contains G as its phrase structure part, supplemented by the transformation T that operates on any string K which is a
Sentence, converting it into K + K. Then the output of Ci' is (lOiiii. Cf. p. 31.

48

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

sentences. We choose the kernel sentences in such a way that the
terminal strings underlying the kernel are easily derived by means
of a [I. F] description, while all other sentences can be derived from
thetC terminal strings by simply statable transformations. We have
seen, and shall see again below, several examples of simplifications
resulting from transformational analysis. Full-scale syntactic
investigation af English provides a great many more cases.
One further point about grammars of the form (35) deserves
mention, since it has apparently led to some misunderstanding.
We have described these grammars as devices for generating
sentences. This formulation has occasionally led to the idea that
there is a certain asymmetry in grammatical theory in the sense
that grammar is taking the point of view of the speaker rather
than the hearer: that it is concerned with the process of producing
utterances rather than the 'inverse' process of analyzing and
reconstructing the structure of given utterances. Actually, grammars of the form that we have been discussing are quite neutral
as between speaker and hearer, between synthesis and analysis
of utterances. A grammar does not tell us how to synthesize a
specific utterance; it doe's not tell us how to analyze a particular
given utterance. In fact, these two tasks which the speaker and
hearer must perform arc essentially the same, and are both outside
the scope of grammars of the form (35). Each such grammar is
simply a description of a certain set of utterances, namely, those
which it generates. From this grammar wc can reconstruct the
formal relations that hold among these utterances in terms of the
notions of phrase structure, transformational structure, etc. Perhaps
the issue can be clarified by an analogy to a part of chemical theory
concerned with the structurally possible compounds. This theory
might be said to generate all physically possible compounds just as
a grammar generates all grammatically 'possible' utterances. It
would serve as a theoretical basis for techniques of qualitative
analysis and synthesis of specific compounds, just as one might rely
on a grammar in the investigation of such special problems as
analysis and synthesis of particular utterances.

6

ON T H E GOALS OF LINGUISTIC THEORY

6.1 In §§ 3,4 two models of linguistic structure were developed: a
simple communication theoretic model and a formalized version of
immediate constituent analysis. Each was found to be inadequate,
and in § 5 I suggested a more powerful model combining phrase
structure and grammatical transformations that might remedy these
inadequacies. Before going on to explore this possiblity, I would
like to clarify certain points of view that underlie the whole approach
of his study.
Our fundamental concern throughout this discussion of linguistic
structure is the problem of justification of grammars. A grammar
of the language L is essentially a theory of L. Any scientific theory
is based on a finite number of observations, and it seeks to relate the
observed phenomena and to predict new phenomena by constructing general laws in terms of hypothetical constructs such as (in
physics, for example) "mass" and "electron." Similarly, a grammar
of English is based on a finite corpus of utterances (observations),
and it will contain certain grammatical rules (laws) stated in terms
of the particular phonemes, phrases, etc., of English (hypothetical
constructs). These rules express structural relations among the
sentences of the corpus and the indefinite number of sentences
generated by the grammar beyond the corpus (predictions). Our
problem is to develop and clarify the criteria for selecting the correct
grammar for each language, that is, the correct theory of this
language.
Two types of criteria were mentioned in §2.1. Clearly, every
grammar will have to meet certain external conditions of adequacy;
e.g., the sentences generated will have to be acceptable to the native

50

S t N I A C T I C STRUCTIRLS

speaker. In § 8 wc shall consider several other external conditions of
this sort. In addition, we pose a condition of generality on grammars; we require that the grammar of a given language be constructed in accordance with a specific theory of linguistic structure in
which such terms as "phoneme" and "phrase" are defined independently of any particular language.' If wc drop cither the external
conditions or the generality requirement, there will be no way to
choose among a vast number of totally different 'grammars,' each
compatible with a given corpus. But, as we observed in § 2.1, these
requirements jointly give us a very strong test of adequacy for a
general theory of linguistic structure and the set of grammars that
it provides for particular languages.
Notice that neither the general theory nor the particular grammars are fixed for all time, in this view. Progress and revision may
come from the discovery of new facts about particular languages,
or from purely theoretical insights about organization of linguistic
data — that is, new models for linguistic structure. But there is also
no circularity in this conception. At any given time we can attempt
to formulate as precisely as possible both the general theory and the
set of associated grammars that must meet the empirical, external
conditions of adequacy.
Wc have not yet considered the following very crucial question:
What is the relation between the general theory and the particular
grammars that follow from it? In other words, what sense can we
give to the notion "follow from," in this context? It is at this point
that our approach will diverge sharply from many theories of
linguistic structure.
The strongest requirement that could be placed on the relation
between a theory of linguistic structure and particular grammars is
that the theory must provide a practical and mechanical method for
1
I presume that these two conditions are similar to what Hjelmslev has in
mind when he speaks of the appropriateness and arbitrariness of linguistic theory.
Cf. L. Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a theory of language =- Memoir 7, Indiana
University Publications Antropology and Linguistics (Baltimore, 1953), p. 8.
See also Hockctt's discussion of "metacriteria" for linguistics ("Two models of
grammatical description," Linguistics Today, Word 10.232-3) in this connection.

ON THE GOALS OF LINGUISTIC THEORY

51

actually constructing the grammar, given a corpus of utterances.
Let us say that such a theory provides us with a discovery procedure
for grammars.
A weaker requirement would be that the theory must provide a
practical and mechanical method for determining whether or not a
grammar proposed for a given corpus is, in fact, the best grammar
of the language from which this corpus is drawn. Such a theory,
which is not concerned with the question of how this grammar was
constructed, might be said to provide a decision procedure for
grammars.
An even weaker requirement would be that given a corpus and
given two proposed grammars G, and G 2 , the theory must tell us
which is the better grammar of the language from which the corpus
is drawn. In this case we might say that the theory provides an
evaluation procedure for grammars.
These theories can be represented graphically in the following
manner.

CORPUS

GRAMMAR

GRAMMAR

YES

CORPUS

NO

G,

Gt

G2

G2

CORPUS

52

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

Figure (36i) represents a theory conceived as a machine with a
corpus as its input and a grammar as its output; hence, a theory that
provides a discovery procedure. (36ii) is a device with a grammar
and a corpus as its inputs, and the answers "yes" or "no" as its
outputs, as the grammar is or is not the correct one; hence, it
represents a theory that provides a decision procedure for grammars. (36iii) represents a theory with grammars G, and G 2 and a
corpus as inputs, and the more preferable of G, and G 2 as output;
hence a theory that provides an evaluation procedure for grammars. 2
The point of view adopted here is that it is unreasonable to
demand of linguistic theory that it provide anything more than a
practical evaluation procedure for grammars. That is, we adopt the
weakest of the three positions described above. As I interpret most
of the more careful proposals for the development of linguistic
theory, 3 they attempt to meet the strongest of these three requirements. That is, they attempt to state methods of analysis that an
investigator might actually use, if he had the time, to construct a
grammar of a language directly from the raw data. I think that it is
very questionable that this goal is attainable in any interesting way,
' The baste question at issue is not changed if we are willing to accept a
small set of correct grammars instead of a single one.
* For example, B. Bloch, "A set of postulates for phonemic analysis,"
Language 24.3-4* (1948); N. Chomsky, "Systems of syntactic analysis."
Journal of Symbolic Logic 18.242-56 (1953); Z. S. Harris, "From phoneme to
morpheme," language 31.190-222 (1955); idem, Methods in structural linguistics
(Chicago, 1951); C. F. Hockett, "A formal statement of morphemic analysis,"
Studies in Linguistics 10.27-39 (1952); idem, "Problems of morphemic analysis,"
Language 23.321-43 (1947); R. S. Wells, "Immediate constituents," Language
23.81-117 (1947); and many other works. Although discovery procedures are
the explicit goal of these works, we often find on careful examination that the
theory that has actually been constructed furnishes no more than an evaluation
procedure for grammars. For example, Hockett states his aim in "A formal
statement of morphemic analysis" as the development of "formal procedures
by which one can work from scratch to a complete description of the pattern of
a language" (p. 27); but what he actually docs is describe some of the formal
properties of a morphological analysis and then propose a "criterion whereby
the relative efficiency of two possible morphic solutions can be determined;
with that, we can choose the maximally efficient possibility, or. arbitrarily, any
one of those which are equally efficient but more efficient than all others" (p. 29).

ON THE GOALS OF LINGUISTIC THEORY

53

and I suspect that any attempt to meet it will lead into a maze of
more and more elaborate and complex analytic procedures that
will fail to provide answers for many important questions about the
nature of linguistic structure. I believe that by lowering our sights
to the more modest goal of developing an evaluation procedure for
grammars we can focus attention more clearly on really crucial
problems of linguistic structure and we can arrive at more satisfying
answers to them. The correctness of this judgment can only be
determined by the actual development and comparison of theories
of these various sorts. Notice, however, that the weakest of these
three requirements is still strong enough to guarentee significance
for a theory that meets it. There are few areas of science in which one
would seriously consider the possibility of developing a general,
practical, mechanical method for choosing among several theories,
each compatible with the available data
In the case of each of these conceptions of linguistic theory we
have qualified the characterization of the type of procedure by the
word "practical". This vague qualification is crucial for an empirical science. Suppose, for example, that we were to evaluate grammars by measuring some such simple property as length. Then it
would be correct to say that we have a practical evaluation procedure for grammars, since we could count the number of symbols
they contain; and it would also be literally correct to say that we
have a discovery procedure, since we can order all sequences of the
finite number of symbols from which grammars are constructed in
terms of length, and we can test each of these sequences to see if it
is a grammar, being sure that after some finite amount of time we
shall find the shortest sequence that qualifies. But this is not the
type of discovery procedure that is contemplated by those w ho are
attempting to meet the strong requirement discussed above.
Suppose that we use the word "simplicity" to refer to the set of
formal properties of grammars that we shall consider in choosing
among them. Then there are three main tasks in the kind of program for linguistic theory that we have suggested. First, it is
necessary to state precisely (if possible, with operational, behavioral
tests) the external criteria of adequacy for grammars. Second, we

<4

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

must characterize the form of grammars in a general and explicit
way so that we can actually propose grammars of this form for
particular languages. Third, we must analyze and define the notion
of simplicity that we intend to use in choosing among grammars all
of which are of the proper form. Completion of the latter two tasks
will enable us to formulate a general theory of linguistic structure in
which such notions as "phoneme in L", "phrase in L", "transformation in L" are defined for an arbitrary language L in terms of
physical and distributional properties of utterances of L and formal
properties of grammars of L.4 For example, we shall define the set
of phonemes of L as a set of elements which have certain physical
and distributional properties, and which appear in the simplest
grammar for L. Given such a theory, we can attempt to construct
grammars for actual languages, and we can determine whether or
not the simplest grammars that we can find (i.e., the grammars that
the general theory compels us to choose) meet the external conditions of adequacy We shall continue to revise our notions of
simplicity and out characterization of the form of grammars until
the grammars selected by the theory do meet the external conditions.*
Notice that this theory may not tell us, in any practical way, how
to actually go about constructing the grammar of a given language
from a corpus. But it must tell us how to evaluate such a grammar;
it must thus enable us to choose between two proposed grammars.
In the preceding sections of this study we have been concerned
with the second of these three tasks. We have assumed that the set
of grammatical sentences of English is given and that we have some
notion of simplicity, and we have tried to determine what sort of
grammar will generate exactly the grammatical sentences in some
simple way. To formulate this goal in somewhat different terms,
4
Linguistic theory will thus be formulated in a metalanguage 10 the language in which grammars are written — a metametalanguage to any language
for which a grammar is constructed.
• We may in fact revise the criteria of adequacy, loo, in the course of research. That is, we may decide that certain of these tests do not apply lo grammatical phenomena. The subject matter of a theory is not completely determined in advance of investigation. It is partially determined by the possibility of
giving an organized and systematic account of some range of phenomena.

ON Till: GOALS OF LINGUISTIC THEORY

55

we remarked above that one of the notions that must be defined in
general linguistic theory is "sentence in L." Entering into the
definitions will be such terms as "observed utterance in L", "simplicity i»| the grammar of L." etc. This general theory is accordingly
concerned with clarifying the relation between the set of grammatical sentence and the set of observed sentences. Our investigation of
the siructure of the former set is a preparatory study, proceeding
from the assumption that before we can characterize this relation
clearly, we will have to know a great deal more about the formal
properties of each of these sets.
In § 7 below, we shall continue to investigate the relative complexity of various ways of describing English structure. In particular, we shall be concerned with the question of whether the whole
grammar is simplified if we consider a certain class of sentences to
be kernel sentences or ii we consider them to be derived by transformation. We thus arrive at certain decisions about the structure
of English. In ^ S we shall argue that there is independent evidence
in favor of our method for selecting grammars. That is. we shall try
to show that the simpler grammars meet certain external conditions
of adequacy while the more complex grammars that embody
dillerent decisions about assignment of sentences to the kernel, etc.,
fail these conditions. These results can be no more than suggestive,
however, until we give a rigorous account of the notion of simplicity
employed. I think that such an account can be given, but this would
go beyond the scope of the present monograph. Nevertheless, it
should be fairly clear that under any reasonable definition of
"simplicity of grammar", most of the decisions about relative
complexity that we reach below will stand.'
Notice that simplicity is a systematic measure; the only ultimate
* Sec my The logical siructure of linguistic theory for discussion of methods
for evaluating grammars in terms of formal properties of simplicity.
W« arc not, incidentally, denying the usefullncss of even partially adequate
discovery procedures. They may provide valuable hints to the practicing linguist
or they may lead to a small set of grammars that can then be evaluated. Our
main point is that a linguistic theory should not be identified with a manual
of useful procedures, nor should it be expected to provide mechanical procedures for the discovery of grammars.

56

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURLS

criterion in evaluation is the simplicity of the whole system. In
discussing particular cases, we can only indicate how one or another
decision will affect the over-all complexity. Such validation can
only be tentative, since by simplifying one part of the grammar we
may complicate other parts. It is when we find that simplification
of one part of the grammar leads to corresponding simplification of
other parts that we feci that we are really on the right track. Below.
we shall try to show that the simplest transformational analysis of
one class of sentences does quite frequently clear the way to a
simpler analysts of other classes.
In short, we shall never consider the question of how one might
have arrived at the grammar whose simplicity is being determined;
e.g., how one might have discovered the analysis of the verb phrase
presented in § 5.3. Question of this sort are not relevant to the
program of research that we have outlined above. One may arrive
at a grammar by intuition, guess-work, all sorts of partial methodological hints, reliance on past experience, etc. It is no doubt possible
to give an organized account of many useful procedures of analysis,
but it is questionable whether these can be formulated rigorously,
exhaustively and simply enough to qualify as a practical and mechanical discovery procedure. At any rate, this problem is not within
the scope of our investigations here. Our ultimate aim is to provide
an objective, non-intuitive way to evaluate a grammar once presented, and to compare it with other proposed grammars. We are thus
interested in describing the form of grammars (equivalently, the
nature of linguistic structure) and investigating the empirical consequences of adopting a certain model for linguistic structure.
rather than in showing how, in pnncipe, one might have arrived at
the grammar of a language.
6.2 Once we have disclaimed any intention of finding a practical
discovery procedure for grammars, certain problems that have been
the subject of intense methodological controversy simply do not
arise. Consider the problem of interdependence of levels. It has
been correctly pointed out that if morphemes are defined in terms of
phonemes, and, simultaneously, morphological considerations are

ON THE GOALS OF LINGUISTIC THEORY

57

considered relevant to phonemic analysis, then linguistic theory may
be nullified by a real circularity. However, interdependence of levels
does not necessarily lead to circularity. In this case, for example, we
can define "tentative phoneme set" and "tentative morpheme set"
independently and we can develop a relation of compatibility that
holds between tentative phoneme sets and tentative morpheme sets.
We can then define a pair of a phoneme set and a morpheme set for
a given language as a compatible pair of a tentative phoneme set and
a tentative morpheme set. Our compatibility relation may be
framed partially in terms of simplicity considerations; that is, we
may define the phonemes and morphemes of a language as the
tentative phonemes and morphemes which, among other things,
jointly lead to the simplest grammar. This gives us a perfectly
straightforward way to define interdependent levels with no circularity. Of course, it does not tell us how to find the phonemes and
morphemes in a direct, mechanical way. But no other phonemic or
morphological theory really meets this strong requirement either,
and there is little reason to believe that it can be met significantly.
In any event, when wc lower our aims to the development of an
evaluation procedure, there remains little motivation for any
objection to mixing of levels, and there is no difficulty in avoiding
circularity in the definition of interdependent levels.'
' See Z. S. Harris, Methods in structural linguistics (Chicago, 1951) (e.g..
Appendix to 7.4, Appendix to 8.2. chapters 9, 12) for examples of procedures
which lead to interdependent levels. I think that Fowler's objections to Harris'
morphological procedures (cf.. Language 28.504-9 [1952]) can be met without
difficulty by a noncircular formulation of the type just proposed. Cf. C. F.
Hockett. A manual of phonology
Memoir II, Indiana University Publications
in Anthropology and linguistics (Baltimore, 1955); idem, "Two fundamental
problems in phoncmics," Studies in Linguistics 7.33 (1949); R. Jakobson. "The
phonemic and grammatical aspects of language and their interrelation."
Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Linguists 5-18 (Pans, 1948i;
K. L. Pike. "Grammatical prerequisites to phonemic analysis." Word 3.155-72
(1947); idem, "More on grammatical prerequisites." Word 8.106-21 (1952i, tor
further discussion on interdependence of levels. Also N. Chomsky, M. Halle.
F. LukofT, "On accent and juncture in English," For Roman Jakobson I's-Gravenhage, 1^56). 65-80.
Bar-Hillel has suggested in "Logical syntax and semantics", Language
30.230-7 (1954) that Pike's proposals can be formalized without the circularity

58

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

Many problems of morphemic analysis also receive quite simple
solutions if we adopt the general framework outlined above. In
attempting to develop discovery procedures for grammars we are
naturally led to consider morphemes as classes of sequences of
phonemes, i.e., as having actual phonemic 'content' in an almost
literal sense. This leads to trouble in such well-known cases as
English "took" tuk , where it is difficult without artificiality to
associate any part of this word with the past tense morpheme which
appears as I in walked" wokt.', as d in "framed" freymd/, etc.
We can avoid all such problems by regarding morphology and
phonology as two distinct but interdependent levels of representation, related in the grammar by morphophonemic rules such as
(19). Thus "took" is represented on the morphological level as
take + past just as "walked" is represented as walk + past. The
morphophonemic rules (I9ii), (I9v), respectively, carry these strings
of morphemes into tuk , wokt . The only difference between the
two.cases is that ( 1 9 \ ) is a much more general rule than (19ii). 8 If we
give up the idea that higher levels are literally constructed out of

that many sense in them by the use of recursive definitions. He does not pursue
this suggestion in any detail, and my own feeling is that success along these lines
is unlikely. Moreover, if we are satisfied with an evaluation procedure for
grammars, we can construct interdependent levels with only direct definitions, as
we have just seen.
The problem of interdependence of phonemic and morphemic levels must not
r-c confused with the question of whether morphological information is required
to read a phonemic transcription. Even if morphological considerations are
considered relevant to determining the phonemes of a language, it may still be
the case that the phonemic transcription provides complete 'reading' rules with
no reference to other levels. Cf. N. Chomsky, M. Halle. F. LukofT, "On accent
and juncture in English," For Roman Jakobson ('s-Gravenhage, 19561, 65-80,
for discussion and examples.
• Hockett gives a very clear presentation of this approach to levels in
A manual of phonology U955). P- 15. In "Two models of grammatical description," Linguistics Today, Word 10.210-33 (1954), Hockett rejected a solution
very much like the one we have just proposed on the grounds that "look and take
are partly similar in phonemic shape just as are baked and bake, and similar in
meaning also in the same way; this fact should not be obscured" (p. 2241. But
the similarity in meaning is not obscured in our formulation, since the morpheme past appears in the morphemic representation of both "took" and
"baked." And the similarity in phonemic shape can be brought out in the actual

ON THE GOALS OF LINGUISTIC THEORY

»

lower level elements, as 1 think we must, then it becomes much more
natural to consider even such abstract systems of representation as
transformational structure (where each utterance is represented by
the sequence of transformations by which it is derived from a
terminal string of the phrase structure grammar) as constituting
a linguistic level.
We are not actually forced to give up hope of finding a practical
discovery procedure by adopting cither the view that levels are
interdependent, or the conception of linguistic levels as abstract
systems of representation related only by general rules. Nevertheless, I think it is unquestionable that opposition to mixing levels,
as well as the idea that each level is literally constructed out of lower
level elements, has its origin in the attempt to develop a discovery
procedure for grammars. If we renounce this goal and if we distinguish clearly between a manual of suggestive and helpful
procedures and a theory of linguistic structure, then there is little
reason for maintaining either of these rather dubious positions.
There are many other commonly held views that seem to lose
much of their appeal if we formulate our goals in the manner
suggested above. Thus it is sometimes argued that work on syntactic theory is premature at this time in view of the fact that many
of the problems that arise on the lower levels of phonemics and
morphology arc unsolved. It is quite true that the higher levels of
linguistic description depend on results obtained at the lower levels.
But there is also a good sense in which the converse is true. For
example, we have seen above that it would be absurd, or even
hopeless, to state principles of sentence construction in terms of
phonemes or morphemes, but only the development of such higher
levels as phrase structure indicates that this futile task need not be

formulation of the morphophonemic rule that carries take ~past into ,'tuk/.
We will no doubt formulate this rules as
ey — u in the context I—k+past
in the actual morphophonemic statement. This will allow us to simplify the
grammar by a generalization that will bring out the parallel between "lakc""took," "shake"-"'shook," "forsake"-"forsook," and more generally, "stand""stood," etc.

611

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURLS

undertaken on lower levels.* Similarly, we have argued that description of sentence structure by constituent analysis will be unsuccessful, if pushed beyond certain limits. But only the development
of the still more abstract level of transformations can prepare the
way for the development of a simpler and more adequate technique
of constituent analysis with narrower limits. The grammar of a
language is a complex system with many and varied interconnections
between its parts. In order to develop one part of grammar
thoroughly, it is often useful, or even necessary, to have some
picture of the character of a completed system. Once again, I think
that the notion that syntactic theory must await the solution of
problems of phonology and morphology is completely untenable
whether or not one is concerned with the problem of discovery
procedures, but I think it has been nurtured by a faulty analogy
between the order of development of linguistic theory and the
presumed order of operations in discovery of grammatical structure.

• See N. Chomsky, M. Halle. F. LukofT, "On accent and juncture in English," For Roman Jakohson ('s-Gravcnhage, l*>56l, 65-80, for a discussion of the
possibility that considerations on all higher levels, including morphology,
phrase structure, and transformations, arc relevant to the selection of a phonemic analysis.

7

SOME T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S IN E N G L I S H

7.1 After this digression, we can return to the investigation of the
consequences of adopting the transformational approach in the
description of English syntax. Our goal is to limit the kernel in such
a way that the terminal strings underlying the kernel sentences are
derived by a simple system of phrase structure and can provide the
basis from which all sentences can be derived by simple transformations: obligatory transformations in the case of the kernel,
obligatory and optional transformations in the case of non-kernel
sentences.
To specify a transformation explicitly we must describe the
analysis of the strings to which it applies and the structural change
that it effects on these strings.1 Thus, the passive transformation
applies to strings of the form NP - Aux — V — jV/'and has the effect
of interchanging the two noun phrases, adding by before the final
noun phrase, and adding be -I- en to Aux (Cf. (34)). Consider now
the introduction of not or n't into the auxiliary verb phrase. The
simplest way to describe negation is by means of a transformation
which applies before (29 ii) and introduces not or n't after the second
morpheme of the phrase given by (28iii) if this phrase contains at
least two morphemes, or after the first morpheme of this phrase if
it contains only one. Thus this transformation T M , operates on
strings that arc analyzed into three segments in one of the following
ways:
(37) (i)
NP-C-V...
1
For a more detailed discussion of the specification of transformations in
general and of specific transformations, see the references cited in footnote 8,
p. 44.

62

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

NP-C
HP-C

\P-C+M-...
+
have-...
+
be-...

where the symbols arc as in (28), (29), and it is immaterial what
stands in place of the dots. Given a string analyzed into three
segments in one of these ways, T„„, adds not (or n't) after the second
segment of the string. For example, applied to the terminal string
they 0 + can — come (an instance of (37ii)), T,,,, gives they 0 + can + n't — come (ultimately, "they can't come"); applied to
they — 0 4- have - en + come (an instance of (37 iii)), it gives they 0 + have + n't - en + come (ultimately, "they haven't come"); applied to they - 0 + he - ing + come (an instance of (37iv)), it gives
they — 0 + be + n't — ing + come (ultimately, "they aren't coming")
The rule thus works properly when we select the last three cases of (37).
Suppose, now, that we select an instance of (37i), i e., a terminal
string such as
(38) John — S — come.
which would give the kernel sentence "John comes" by (29ii).
Applied to (38), T„„, yields
(39) John — S + n't — come.
But we specified that T„or applies before (29ii), which has the effect
of rewriting . 4 / - v as r - Af%. However, we see that (29 ii) does not
apply at all to (39) since (39) docs not now contain a sequence
Af+ v. Let us now add to the grammar the following obligatory
transformational rule which applies after (29):
(40)

# A/-* *do + Af

where do is the same element as the main verb in "John does his
homework". Cf. (29iii) for introduction of #.) What (40) states is
that do is introduced as the 'bearer' of an unaffixed affix. Applying
(40) and morphological rules to (39) we derive "John doesn't come."
The rules (37) and (40) now enable us to derive all and only the
grammatical forms of sentence negation.
As it stands, the transformational treatment of negation is somewhat simpler than any alternative treatment within phrase structure.

SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

63

The advantage of the transformational treatment (over inclusion of
negatives in the kernel) would become much clearer if we could find
other cases in which the same lormulations (i.e.. (37) and (40)) arc
required for independent reasons. But in fact there are such cases.
Consider the class of 'yes-or-no' questions such as "have they
arrived", "can they arrive." "did they arrive". W'e can generate all
(and only) these sentences by means of a transformation T„ that
operates on strings with the analysis (37), and has the effect of
interchanging the first and second segments of these strings, as these
segments are defined in (37). We require that Tq apply after (29i)
and before (29ii). Applied to
(41) (i) they - O - arrive
(ii) they — O + can - arrive
(iii) they — 0 + hare - en + arrive
(iv) they — O + he — ing + arrive
which are of the forms (37 i -iv), Tq yields the strings
(42) (i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

OO+
O+
O+

they - arrive
can — they — arrive
hare — they — en + arrive
be - they - ing + arrive.

Applying to these the obligatory rules (29ii, iii) and (40). and then
the morphophonemic rules, wc derive
(43) (i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

do they arrive
can they arri\c
have they arrived
are they arriving

in phonemic transcription. Had we applied the obligatory rules
directly to (41), with no intervening Tq, we would have derived the
sentences
(44) (i) they
(ii) they
(iii) they
(iv) they

arrive
can arrive
have arrived
are arriving.

Thus (431 - i v ) arc the interrogative counterparts to (44i -iv).

64

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

In the case of (42i), do is introduced by rule (40) as the bearer of
the unaffixcd clement O. If C had been developed into S or past by
rule (29i), rule (40) would have introduced do as a bearer of these
elements, and we would have such sentences as "does he arrive,"
"did he arrive." Note that no new morphophoncmic rules arc
needed to account for the fact that do -t- O -»,duw/, do + S-*jdxf,
do + past -»/did;; we need these rules anyway to account for the
forms of do as a main verb. Notice also that Tq must apply after
(29i). or number will not be assigned correctly in questions.
In analyzing the auxiliary verb phrase in rules (28), (29), we
considered S to be the morpheme of the third person singular and
O to be the morpheme affixed to the verb for all other forms of the
subject. Thus the verb has S if the noun subject has 0 ("the boy
arrives") and the verb has O if the subject has 5 ("the boys arrive").
An alternative that we did not consider was to eliminate the zero
morpheme and to state simply that no affix occurs if the subject is
not third person singular. We sec now that this alternative is not
acceptable. We must have the 0 morpheme or there will be no
affix in (42i) fordo to bear, and rule (40) will thus not apply to (42i).
There are many other cases where transformational analysis provides
compelling reasons for or against the establisment of zero morphemes. As a negative case, consider the suggestion that intransitive verbs be analyzed as verbs with zero object. But then the
passive transformation (34) would convert, e.g., "John - slept — 0"
into the non-sentence "0 — was slept - by John"-»"was slept by
John." Hence this analysis of intransitives must be rejected. We
return to the more general problem of the role of transformations
in determining constituent structure in § 7.6.
The crucial fact about the question transformation TM is that
almost nothing must be added to the grammar in order to describe
it. Since both the subdivision of the sentence that it imposes and
the rule for appearance of do were required independently for
negation, we need only describe the inversion effected by Tq in
extending the grammar to account for yes-or-no questions. Putting
it differently, transformational analysis brings out the fact that
negatives and interrogates have fundamentally the same 'struc-

SOMt TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

63

ture', and it can make use of this fact to simplify the description
of English syntax.
In treating the auxiliary verb phrase we left out of consideration
forms with the heavy stressed element do as in "'John does come,"
etc. Suppose we set up a morpheme A of contrastive stress to which
the following morphophonemic rule applies.
(45)

. .V. . + A-+. .y..,

where ' indicates extra heavy stress.

We now set up a transformation T^ that imposes the same
structural analysis of strings as does T,,,, (i.e., (37)), and adds A to
these strings in exactly the position where T. 0I adds not or n't.
Then just as T„„ yields such sentences as
(46)(i) John doesn't arrive (from John %S + n't #arrive, by (40))
(ii) John can't arrive (from John # S + can + n't # arrive)
(iii) John hasn't arrived (from John#S + have + n't #e« + arrive)
JA yields the corresponding sentences
(47) (i) John does arrive (from John # S + A # arrive, by (40))
(ii) John can arrive (from John # S + can + A • arrive)
(iii) John has arrived (from John$S + have + A$en + arrive).
Thus T.4 is a transformation of 'affirmation' which affirms the
sentences "John arrives", "John can arrive", "John has arrived,"
etc., in exactly the same way as T„OI negates them. This is formally
the simplest solution, and it seems intuitively correct as well.
There are still other instances of transformations that are
determined by the same fundamental syntactic analysis of sentences,
namely (37). Consider the transformation T„ that converts the
pairs of strings of (48) into the corresponding strings of (49):
(48) (i)
(ii)
(iii)
(49) (i)
(ii)
(iii)

John — S - arrive, 1—0- arrive
John — S + can — arrive, I - 0 + can - arrive
John — S + have — en + arrive, I — 0 + have — en + arrive
John - S - arrive
-and-so-0-l
John — S + can — arrive - and — so — 0 + can — I
John — S + have - en + arrive - and — so — 0 + have — I.

Applying rules (29ii, iii), (40), and the morphophonemic rules, we
ultimately derive

66

SYNTACTIC STRUCTTHES

(50) (i) John arrives and so do I
(ii) John can arrive and so can I
(iii) John has arrived and so have I.
T,, operates on the second sentence in each pair in (48), first
replacing the third segment of this sentence by so, and then interchanging the first and third segment. (The clement so is thus a
pro- VP, in much the same sense in which he is a pronoun). The
transformation T,0 combines with the conjunction transformation
to give (49). While we have not described this in anywhere near
sufficient detail, it is clear that both the analysis (37) of sentences
and the rule (40) again are fundamental. Thus almost nothing new
is required in the grammar to incorporate such sentences as (50),
which are formed on the same underlying transformational pattern
as negatives, questions, and emphatic affirmatives.
There is another remarkable indication of the fundamental
character of this analysis that deserves mention here. Consider the
kernel sentences
(51) (i) John has a chance to live
(ii) John is my friend.
The terminal strings that underly (51) are
(52) (i) John + C + have + a + chance + to + live
(ii) John + C + be + my + friend
where have in (52i) and be in (52ii) are main verbs, not auxiliaries.
Consider now how the transformations T. 0( , T, and T„ apply to
these underlying strings. TBO, applies to any string of the form (37),
adding not or n't between the second and the third segments, as
given in (37). But (52i) is, in fact, an instance of both (37i) and
(37iii). Hence T,,,, applied to (52i) will give either (53i) or (53ii):
(53) (i) John —C + n't — have + a + chance + to + live
(-+ "John doesn't have a chance to live")
(ii) John - C + have + n't - a + chance + to + live
(-•"John hasn't a chance to live").
But in fact both forms of (53) arc grammatical. Furthermore have is
the only transitive verb for which this ambiguous negation is

SOMi: TRANSFORMATIONS IN F.NOI.ISH

67

possible, just as it is the only transitive verb that can be ambiguously
analyzed in terms of (37). That is, we have "John doesn't read
books" but not "John readsn't books".
Similarly, T„ applied to (52i) will give cither form of (54), and T„
will give either form of (55), since these transformations are also
based on the structural analysis (37).
(54) (i) does John have a chance to live?
(ii) has John a chance to live?
(55) (i) Bill has a chance to live and so does John,
(ii) Bill has a chance to live and so has John.
But in the case of all other transitive verbs such forms as (54ii),
(55ii) are impossible. We do not have "reads John books?" or
"Bill reads books and so reads John". We see, however, that the
apparently irregular behavior of "have" is actually an automatic
consequence of our rules. This solves the problem raised in § 2.3
concerning the grammaticalness of (3) but not (5).
Now consider (52ii). Wc have not shown this, but it is in fact
true that in the simplest phrase structure grammar of English there
is never any reason for incorporating "be" into the class of verbs;
i.e., it will not follow from this grammar that be is a V. Just as one
of the forms of the verb phrase is V 4- NP, one of the forms is
be + Predicate. Hence, even though be is not an auxiliary in (52ii),
it is nevertheless the case that of the analyses permitted by (37), only
(37iv) holds of (52ii). Therefore the transformations T M „ T,, and
T„, applied to (52ii), yield, respectively (along with (29i)),
(56) (i) John - S + be + n't-

my + friend (-»"John isn't my
friend")
(ii) S + be - John — my + friend (-»"is John my friend")
(iii) Bill — S + be — my +friend — and — so — S + be — John
(-»"Bill is my friend and so is John").

Again, the analogous forms (e.g., "John readsn't books," etc.) are
impossible with actual verbs. Similarly, T^ gives "John is here"
instead of "John does be here", as would be the case with actual
verbs.
If wc were to attempt to describe English syntax wholly in terms

68

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

of phrase structure, the forms with "be" and "have" would appear
as glaring and distinct exceptions. But wc have just seen that
exactly these apparently exceptional forms result automatically
from the simplest grammar constructed to account for the regular
cases. Hence, this behavior of "be" and "have" actually turns out
to be an instance of a deeper underlying regularity when we consider
English structure from the point of view of transformational analysis.
Notice that the occurrence of have as an auxiliary in such terminal
strings as John + C + have + en + arrive (underlying the kernel
sentence "John has arrived") is not subject to the same ambiguous
analysis. This terminal string is an instance of (37iii), but not of
(37 i). That is, it can be analyzed as in (57 i), but not (57ii).
(57) (i) John -C + have -en + arrive (AT -C + have - ..., i.e.,
(37 hi))
(ii) John - C-have + en + arrive (NP-CV..., i.e., (37i))
This string is not an instance of (37 i) since this occurrence of have is
not a V, even though certain other occurrences of have (e.g., in
(52i)) are K*s. The phrase structure of a terminal string is determined from its derivation, by tracing segments back to node points in
the manner described in § 4.1. But have in (57) is not traceable to
any node point labelled V in the derivation of this string. (52 i) is
ambiguously analyzable, however, since the occurrence of have in
(52 i) is traceable back to a V, and of course, is traceable back to a
have (namely, itself), in the diagram corresponding to the derivation
of the string (52 i). The fact that (57 ii) is not a permissible analysis
prevents us from deriving such non-sentences as "John doesn't have
arrived", "does John have arrived", etc.
In this section we have seen that a wide variety of apparently
distinct phenomena all fall into place in a very simple and natural
way when we adopt the viewpoint of transformational analysis and
that, consequently, the grammar of English becomes much more
simple and orderly. This is the basic requirement that any conception of linguistic structure (i.e., any model for the form of grammars)
must meet. I think that these considerations give ample justification for our earlier contention that the conceptions of phrase

SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

M

structure are fundamentally inadequate and that the theory of
linguistic structure must be elaborated along the lines suggested in
this discussion of transformational analysis.
7.2 We can easily extend the analysis of questions given above to
include such interrogatives as
(58) (i) what did John cat
(ii) who ate an apple
which do not receive yes-or-no answers. The simplest way to
incorporate this class of sentences into the grammar is by setting up
a new optional transformation T„ which operates on any string of
the form
(59)

X-NP-Y

where X and Y stands for any string (including, in particular, the
'null' string — i.e., the first or third position may be empty). Tw
then operates in two steps:
(60) (i) T», converts the string of the form X-NPY into the
corresponding string of the form NP — X- Y; i.e., it
inverts the first and second segments of (59). It thus has
the same transformational effect as T, (cf. (41)-(42)).
(ii) T« 2 converts the resulting string N'P — X - Y into who —
X - Y if NP is an animate NP or into what - X - >'if NP
is inanimate.3
We now require that T„ can apply only to strings to which Tq has
already applied. We specified that Tq must apply after (29i) and
before (29ii). T„ applies after T, and before (29ii), and it is conditional upon Tq in the sense that it can only apply to forms given
by T„. This conditional dependence among transformations is a
generalization of the distinction between obligatory and optional
transformations which we can easily build into the grammar, and
* More simply.- we can limit application of Tw to strings X - NP - Y where
NP is he, him, or it, anil wc can define T . 2 as the transformation that converts
any string Z into wh -f Z, where wh is a morpheme. In the morphophonemics of
English wc shall have rules: wh + ht -*/huw/, wh •»- him -»/huwm/, wh + it-*
/wat/.

70

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURtS

which proves essential. The terminal string underlying both (58 i)
and (58 ii) (as well as (62), (64)) is
(61) John -C-eat

+ an + apple (NP-C-

V...),

where the dashes indicate the analysis imposed by T„. Thus (61) is
a case of (37i), as indicated. If we were to apply only obligatory
transformations to (61), choosing past in developing C by (29 i), we
would derive
(62)

# John # eat + past # an # apple # (-• "John ate an apple")

If we apply (29 i) and T„ to (61), we derive
(63) past - John -eat + an + apple,
where C is taken as past. If we were now to apply (40) to (63),
introducing do as the bearer of past, we would have the simple
interrogative
(64) did John eat an apple
If we apply T„ to (63), however, wc derive first (65), by T w l , and
then (66), by T w2 .
(65) John — past — eat + an + apple
(66) who — past — eat + an + apple.
Rule (29 ii) and the morphophonemic rules then convert (66) into
(58ii). To form (58ii), then, wc apply first T, and then T„ to the
terminal string (61) that underlies the kernel sentence (62). Note
that in this case T wl simply undoes the effect of T q , which explains
the absence of inversion in (58ii).
To apply T„ to a string, wc first select a noun phrase and then
invert this noun phrase with the string that precedes it. In forming
(58ii), we applied T„ to (63), choosing the noun phrase John.
Suppose now that we apply T„ to (63), choosing the noun phrase
an + apple. Thus for the purposes of this transformation we now
analyze (63) as
(67) past + John + eat - an + apple,
a string of the form (59), where Y in this case is null. Applying Tw
to (67) we derive first (68). by T»,, and then (69), by T„ 2 .
(68) an + apple — past + John + eat

SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

(69)

71

what - past + John H eat.

(29 ii) does not now apply to (69), just as it did not apply to (39) or
(42i), since (69) docs not contain a substring of the form A/+ v.
Hence (40) applies to (69), introducing do as a bearer of the
morpheme past. Applying the remaining rules, we finally derive
(58 i).
T„ as formulated in (59)-{60) will also account for all such whquestions as "what will he cat", "what has he been eating". It can
easily be extended to cover intcrrogatives like "what book did he
read", etc.
Notice that T„, as defined in (60i) carries out the same transformation as does T g ; that is, it inverts the first two segments of the
string to which it applies. We have not discussed the effect of
transformations on intonation. Suppose that we set up two fundamental sentence intonations: falling intonations, which we associate with kernel sentences, and rising intonations, which we associate with yes-or-no questions. Then the effect of T, is in part to
convert the intonation from one of these to the other; hence, in the
case of (64), to convert a falling intonation into a rising one. But we
have seen that T», applies only after Ta, and that its transformational effect is the same as that of T,. Hence T wl will convert the rising
intonation back into a falling one. It seems reasonable to put this
forth as an explanation for the fact that the intcrrogatives (58i-ii)
normally have the falling intonation of declaratives. There arc
many problems in extending our discussion to intonational phenomena and this remark is too sketchy to carry much weight, but it
does suggest that such an extension may be fruitful.
To summarize, we see that the four sentences
(70) (i)
(ii)
(in)
(iv)

John ate an apple
did John cat an apple
what did John eat
who ate an apple

( = (62))
( = (64))
( = (S8i))
( = (58ii))

are all derived from the underlying terminal string (61). (70i) is a
kernel sentence, since only obligatory transformations enter into its
'transformational history.' (70ii) is formed from (61) by applying

72

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURIS

T„. (70iii) and (70iv) are even more remote from the kernel, since
they are formed from (61) by applying first Tq and then T„. Wc
shall refer to this analysis briefly in § 8.2.
7.3 In § 5.3 we mentioned that there are certain noun phrases of
the form to + IP, ing + VP ("to prove that theorem," "proving that
theorem"— cf. (32) (33)). Among these we will have such phrases .is
"to be cheated," "being cheated", which arc derived from passives.
But passives have been deleted from the kernel. Hence noun
phrases of the type to + VP, ing + NP can no longer be introduced
within the kernel grammar by such rules as (33). They must
therefore be introduced by a 'nominali/ing transformation' which
converts a sentence of the form NP — VP into a noun phrase of the
form to + VP or ing + VP.1 Wc shall not go into the structure of
this very interesting and ramified set of nominalizing transformations except to sketch briefly a transformational explanation for a
problem raised in § 2.3.
One of the nominalizing transformations will be the transformation T—j which operates on any string of the form
(71)

T— N- is- Adj (i.e., article — noun - is - adjective)

and converts it into the corresponding noun phrase of the form
7*4- Adj + N. Thus, it converts "the boy is tall" into "the tall boy,"
etc. It is not difficult to show that this transformation simplifies the
grammar considerably, and that it must go in this, not the opposite
direction. When we formulate this transformation properly, we
find that it enables us to drop all adjective-noun combinations from
the kernel, reintroducing them by TAJJ.
In the phrase structure grammar we have a rule
(72) Adj - old, tall, ...
" This nominalizing transformation will be given as a generalized transformation such as (26). It will operate on a pair sentences, one of which it
converts from SP — VP into to + VP (or ing + VP), which it then substitutes for
an NP of the other sentence. Sec my The logical structure of linguistic theory and
Transformational analysis for a detailed discussion. - For a fuller and more
adequate analysis of the material in this subsection, see my "A transformational
approach to syntax," Proceedings of the University of Texas Symposium of 1958
(to appear).

SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

73

which lists all of the elements that can occur in the kernel sentences
of the form (71). Words like "sleeping", however, will not be given
in this list, even though we have such sentences as
(73) the child is sleeping.
The reason for this is that even when "sleeping" is not listed in (72),
(73) is generate by the transformation (29ii) (that carries Af+ v
into v + / ! / # ) form the underlying terminal string
(74) the + child +C + be-ingsleep,
where be + ing is part of the auxiliary verb (cf. (28iii)). Alongside of
(73), we have such sentences as "the child will sleep," "the child
sleeps," etc., with different choices for the auxiliary verb.
Such words as "interesting", however, will have to be given in the
list (73). In such sentences as
(75) the book is interesting,
"interesting" is an Adj, not part of the Verb, as can be seen from the
fact that we do not have "the book will interest." "the book
interests." etc.
An independent support for this analysis of "interesting" and
"sleeping" comes from the behavior of "very," etc., which can occur
with certain adjectives, but not others. The simplest way to account
for "very" is to put into the phrase structure grammar the rule
(76) Adj-* very + Adj.
"very" can appear in (75), and in general with "interesting"; but it
cannot appear in (73) or with other occurrences of "sleeping."
Hence, if we wish to preserve the simplest analysis of "very," we
must list "interesting" but not "sleeping" in (72) as an Adj.
We have not discussed the manner in which transformations
impose constituent structure, although we have indicated that this
is necessary; in particular, so that transformations can be compounded. One of the general conditions on derived constituent
structure will be the following:
(77)

If A" is a Z in the phrase structure grammar, and a string >'
formed by a transformation is of the same structural form
as X, then Y is also a Z.

7-4

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

In particular, even when passives are deleted from the kernel we will
want to say that thefcy-phrase(as in "the food was eaten — by the
man") is a prepositional phrase (PP) in the passive sentence. (77)
permits this, since we know from the kernel grammar that by + NP
is a PP. (77) is not stated with sufficient accuracy, but it can be
elaborated as one of a set of conditions on derived constituent
structure.
But now consider (73). The word "sleeping" is formed by transformation (i.e., (29 ii)) and it is of the same form as "interesting"
(i.e., it is a V + ing), which, as we know from the phrase structure
grammar, is an Adj. Hence, by (77), "sleeping" is also an Adj in the
transform (73). But this means that (73) can be analyzed as a string
of the form (71) so that TAdJ applies to it, forming the noun phrase
(78)

the sleeping child

just as it forms "the interesting book" from (75). Thus even though
"sleeping" is excluded from (72), it will appear as an adjective
modifying nouns.
This analysis of adjectives (which is all that we are required to
give to account for the actually occurring sentences) will not
introduce the word "sleeping," however, into all the adjective
positions of such words as "interesting" which remained in the
kernel. For example, it will never introduce "sleeping" into the
context "very —." Since "very" never modifies verbs, "very" will
not appear in (74) or (73), and all occurences of "sleeping" as a
modifier are derived from its occurrence as a verb in (74), etc.
Similarly, there will be phrase structure rules that analyze the verb
phrase into
(79)

Aux + seem + Adj

just as other rules analyze IP into Aux + V + NP, Aux + be + Adj.
etc. But "sleeping" will never be introduced into the context
"seems —" by this grammar, which is apparently the simplest one
constructive for the actually occurring sentences.
When we develop this sketchy argument more carefully, we reach
the conclusion that the simplest transformational grammar for the
occurring sentences will exclude (80) while generating (81).

SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

(80) (i)
(ii)
(81) (i)
(ii)

the
the
the
the

75

child seems sleeping
very sleeping child
book seems interesting
very interesting book.

We see, then, that the apparently arbitrary distinctions noted in
§ 2.3 between (3) ( = "have you a book on modern music?") and
(4) ( = (81 i)) on the one hand, and (5) ( = "read you a book on
modern music?") and (6) ( = (80i)) on the other, have a clear structural origin, and are really instances of higher level regularity in the
sense that they are consequences of the simplest transformational
grammar. In other words, certain linguistic behavior that seems
unmotivated and inexplicable in terms of phrase structure appears
simple and systematic when we adopt the transformational point of
view. To use the terminology of § 2.2, if a speaker were to project
his finite linguistic experience by using phrase structure and transformations in the simplest possible way, consistent with his experience, he would include (3) and (4) as grammatical while rejecting
(5) and (6).
7.4 In (28), § 5.3, wc analyzed the element Verb into Aux + V, and
then simply listed the verbal roots of the class V. There are, however, a large number of productive subscontructions of V that
deserve some mention, since they bring to light some basic points
in a rather clear way. Consider first such verb + particle (K+ Prt)
constructions as "bring in," "call up," "drive away." We can have
such forms as (82) but not (83).
(82) (i) the police brought in the criminal
(ii) the police brought the criminal in
(iii) the police brought him in
(83) the police brought in him.
Wc know that discontinuous elements cannot be handled readily
within the phrase structure grammar. Hence the most natural way
of analyzing these constructions is to add to (28 ii) the following
possibility:
(84)

K-> Vt + Prt

7o

SYNTACTIC STRUCT (J RliS

along with a set of supplementary rules to indicate which F, can go
with which Prt. To allow for the possibility of (82ii) we set up an
optional transformation TJJP which operates on strings with the
structural analysis
(85)

X-

Vt-Prt-

NP

and has the effect of interchanging the third and fourth segments of
the string to which it applies. It thus carries (82i) into (82ii). To
provide for (82iii) while excluding (83), we must indicate that this
transformation is obligatory when the NP object is a pronoun
(Pron). Equivalently, we can set up an obligatory transformation
T7cbp which has the same structural effect as TJfp but which operates
on strings with the structural analysis
(86)

X-

Vx-Prt-Pron

We know that the passive transformation operates on any string of
the form NP — Verb — NP. If we specify that the passive transformation applies before T7,pp or T?bp, then it will form the passives
(87) (i) the criminal was brought in by the police
(ii) he was brought in by the police
from (82), as it should.
Further investigation of the verb phrase shows that there is a
general verb + complement (V + Comp) construction that behaves
very much like the verb + particle construction just discussed.
Consider the sentences
(88) everyone in the lab considers John incompetent
(89) John is considered incompetent by everyone in the lab.
If we wish to derive (89) from (88) by the passive transformation we
must analyze (88) into the structure NPt - Verb - NP2, where NPt =
everyone + in + the + lab and NP2 = John. That is, wc must apply the
passive not to (88), but to a terminal string (90) that underlies (88):
(90) everyone in the lab — considers incompetent — John.
Wc can now form (88) from (90) by a transformation analogous to
T°bp. Suppose that wc add to the phrase structure grammar the rule
(91), alongside (84).
(91)

V-*V, + Comp

SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN FNGLISH

77

We now extend T?bp permitting it to apply to strings of the form
(92) as well as to strings of the form (86), as before.

(92)

X-V,-Comp-NP.

This revised transformation T?bp will convert (90) into (88). Thus,
the treatment of the verb + complement and verb + particle constructions arc quite similar. The former, in particular, is an extremely well-developed construction in English.'
7.5 We have barely sketched the justification for the particular
form of each of the transformations that we have discussed, though
it is very important to study the question of the uniqueness of this
system. I think it can be shown that in each of the cases considered
above, and in many other cases, there are very clear and easily
generalizablc considerations of simplicity that determine which set
of sentences belong to the kernel and what sorts of transformations
are required to account for the non-kernel sentences. As a paradigmatic instance, we shall briefly review the status of the passive
transformation.
In § 5.4 we showed that the grammar is much more complex if it
contains both actives and passives in the kernel than if the passives
are deleted and reintroduced by a transformation that interchanges
the subject and object of the active, and replaces the verb V by
« + V + en + by. Two questions about uniqueness immediately
suggest themselves. First, we ask whether it is necessary to inter4
Further study shows thai most of the verb + complement forms introduced
by rule (91) should themselves be excluded from the kernel and derived transformationally from "John is incompetent," etc. But this is a complex matter
that requires a much more detailed development of transformational theory
than we can give here. Cf. my The logical structure of linguistic theory. Transformational analysis and "A transformational approach to syntax".
There are several other features of these constructions that we have passed
over far too briefly. It is not at all clear that tins is an obligatory transformation.
With long and complex objects we can have, e.g., "they consider incompetent
anyone who is unable to..." Hence we might extend Ttfp, rather than T°fp, to
take care of this case. It is interesting to study those features of the grammatical
object that necessitate or preclude this transformation. Much more than length
is involved. There are also other possibilities for the passive that we shall not
consider here, for lack of space, though they make an interesting study.

7S

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

change the noun phrases to form the passive. Second, we ask
whether passives could have been chosen as the kernel, and actives
derived from them by an 'active' transformation.
Consider first the question of the interchange of subject and
object. Is this interchange necessary, or could we describe the
passive transformation as having the following effect:
(93) NP{ - Aux-VV-by + NP2.

NP2 is rewritten NP, - Aux + be + en-

In particular, the passive of "John loves Mary" would be "John is
loved by Mary."
In § 5.4 we argued against (93) and in favor of inversion on the
basis of the fact that wc have such sentences as (94) but not (95).
(94) (i)
(ii)
(iii)
(95) (i)
(ii)
(iii)

John admires sincerity — sincerity is admired by John
John plays golf
— golf is played by John
sincerity frightens John — John is frightened by sincerity
sincerity admires John — John is admired by sincerity
golf plays John
— John is played by golf
John frightens sincerity — sincerity is frightened by John.

We pointed out, however, that this approach requires that a notion
of "degree of grammaticalness" be developed to support this
distinction. I believe that this approach is correct, and that there is
a clear sense in which the sentences of (94) arc more grammatical
than those of (95), which are themselves more grammatical than
"sincerity admires eat," etc. Any grammar that distinguishes
abstract from proper nouns would be subtle enough to characterize
the difference between (94i, iii) and (95i, iii), for example, and surely
linguistic theory must provide the means for this distinction. However, since we have not gone into the question of category analysis
in this discussion, it is interesting to show that there is even a
stronger argument against (93). In fact, any grammar that can
distinguish singular from plural is sufficiently powerful to enable us
to prove that the passive requires inversion of noun phrases.
To see this, consider the verb + complement construction discussed in §7.4. Alongside (88), (89) we have such sentences as:

SOMF TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

?g

(96) all the people in the lab consider John a fool
(97) John is considered a fool by all the people in the lab.
In § 7.4 wc saw that (96) is formed by the transformation T ^ from
the underlying string
(98) all the people in the lab consider a fool - John (NP - Verb
NP),
with the Verb "consider a fool" being an instance of (91). We
also saw that the passive transformation applies directly to (98). If
the passive interchanges subject and object, it will correctly form
(97) from (98) as the passive of (96). If, however, wc take (93) as the
definition of the passive, we will derive the non-sentence.
(99) all the people in the lab are considered a fool by John
by application of this transformation to (98).
The point is that wc have found a verb — namely, "consider a
fool" — which must agree in number both with its subject and its
object.5 Such verbs prove quite conclusively that the passive must
be based on an inversion of subject and object.
Consider now the question of whether passives could be taken as
the kernel sentences instead of actives. It is quite easy to see that
this proposal leads to a much more complex grammar. With actives
as kernel sentences, the phrase structure grammar will include (28)
with be + en dropped from (28iii). But if passives arc taken as kernel sentences, be + en will have to be listed in (28iii), along with all
the other forms of the auxiliary, and we will have to add special rules
indicating that if V is intransitive, it cannot have the auxiliary
be + en (i.e., we cannot have "is occurred"), whereas if V is transitive it must have be + en (i.e., we cannot have "lunch eats
by John"). Comparing the two alternatives, there is no doubt as
to relative complexity; and we arc forced to take actives, not
passives, as the kernel sentences.
Notice that if passives were chosen as kernel sentences instead of
actives we would run into certain difficulties of quite a different sort.
' The agreement between "a fool" and "John" in (98) is of course one
support for the futher transformational analysis of the verb • complement +
noun phrase constructions mentioned in footnote 4 on p. 77.

so

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

The active transformation would have to apply to strings of the form
(100)

AT, - Aux + be + en-

V- by + NP2,

converting them to NP2 - Aux - V — NPX. For example, it would
convert
(101) the wine was drunk by the guests
into "the guests drank the wine," where "drunk" in (101) originates
from en + drink. But there is also an adjective "drunk" that must be
listed in (72) along with "old," "interesting," etc., since we have
"he is very drunk," "he seem;, drunk," etc. (cf. § 7.3), and this
adjective will also originate from en + drink. It thus appears that in
the simplest system of phrase structure for English, the sentence
(102)

John was drunk by midnight

is also based on an underlying terminal string that can be analyzed
in accordance with (100). In other words, there is no structural way
to differentiate properly between (101) and (102), if both are taken
as kernel sentences. But application of the 'active' transformation
to (102) does not give a grammatical sentence.
When we actually try to set up. for English, the simplest grammar
that contains a phrase structure and transformational part, wc find
that the kernel consist of simple, declarative, active sentences (in
fact, probably a finite number of these), and that all other sentences
can be described more simply as transforms. Each transformation
that I have investigated can be shown to be irreversible in the sense
that it is much easier to carry out the transformation in one direction
than in the other, just as in the case of the passive transformation
discussed above. This fact may account for the traditional practice
of grammarians, who customarily begin the grammar of English,
for example, with the study of simple "actor-action" sentences and
simple grammatical relations such as subject-predicate or verbobject. No one would seriously begin the study of English constituent structure with such a sentence as "whom have they nominated," attempting to analyze it into two parts, etc.; and while some
very detailed considerations of English structure (e.g., reference (33])
do not mention interrogatives, none fails to include simple declara-

SOME TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

81

lives. Transformational analysis provides a rather simple explanation for this assymmetry (which is otherwise formally '.snmotivated)
on the assumption that grammarians have been acting on the basis
of a correct intuition about the language.'
7.6 One other point deserves some mention before we leave the
topic of English transformations. At the outset of § 5 we noted that
the rule for conjunction provides a useful criterion for constituent
analysis in the sense that this rule is greatly simplified if constituents
are set up in a certain way. Now we are interpreting this rule as a
transformation. There are many other cases in which the behavior
of a sentence under transformations provides valuable, even compelling evidence as to its constituent structure.
Consider for example the pair of sentences
(103) (i) John knew the boy studying in the library,
(ii) John found the boy studying in the library.
It is intuitively obvious that these sentences have different grammatical structure (this becomes clear, for example, w hen we attempt
to add "not running around in the streets" to (103)), but I do not
believe that within the level of phrase structure grounds can be
found for analyzing them into different constituents. The simplest
analysis in both cases is as NP— Verb— NP- ing+ VP. But consider
the behavior of these sentences under the passive transformation.
We have the sentences (104) but not (105).'
' In determining which of two related forms is more central, we are thus
following the reasoning outlined by Bloomiield for morphology: " • • • when forms
arc partially similar, there may be a question as to which one we had better take
as the underlying form., the structure of the language may decide this question
for us, since, taking it one way, we get an unduly complicated description, and
taking it the other way, a relatively simple one," [Language [New York, 1933],
p. 218). Bloomftcld continues by pointing out that "this same consideration
often leads us to set up an artificial underlying form." We have also found this
insight useful in transformational analysis, as, e.g., when we set up the terminal
string John — C — have • en - he + ing — read underlying the kernel sentence
"John has been reading."
' The sentences of (104) without the parenthesi/cd expression are formed by
a second 'elliptical' transformation that converts e.g., "the boy was seen by
John" into "the boy was seen."

s:

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

(104) (i) the boy studying in the library was known (by John)
(ii) the boy studying in the library was found (by John)
(iii) the boy was found studying in the library (by John)
(105) the boy was known studying in the library (by John)
The passive transformation applies only to sentences of the form
NP- Verb - NP. Hence, to yield (104ii), (103ii) must be analyzable as
(106)

John - found - the boy studying in the library,

with the noun phrase object "the boy studying in the library,"
(103i) will have a corresponding analysis, since we have the passive
(I04i).
But (103 ii) also has the passive (104iii). From this we learn that
(103ii) is a case of the verb •+• complement construction studied in
§7.4; i.e., that it is derived by the transformation T?*p from the
underlying string
(107) John - found studying in the library - the boy,
with the verb "found" and the complement "studying in the
library." The passive transformation will convert (107) into (104 iii).
just as it converts (90) into (89). (103 i), however, is not a transform
of the string "John - knew studying in the library - the boy" (the
same form as (107)), since (105) is not a grammatical sentence.
By studying the grammatical passives, then, we determine that
"John found the boy studying in the library" (= (103 ii) is analyzablc
ambiguously as either NP — Verb — NP, with the object "the boy
studying in the library," or as NP—Aux+ V — NP-Comp, a
transform of the string (107 which has the complex Verb "found
studying in the library." "John knew the boy studying in the
library" ( = (103i)), however, has only the first of these analyses.
The resulting description of (103) seems quite in accord with
intuition.
As another example of a similar type, consider the sentence
(108)

John came home.

SOMfc TRANSFORMATIONS IN ENGLISH

83

Although "John" and "home" are NP's, and "came" is a Verb,
investigation of the effect of transformations on (108) shows that it
cannot be analyzed as a case of NP — Verb — NP. We cannot have
"home was come by John" under the passive transformation, or
"what did John come" under the question transformation T„. We
must therefore analyze (108) in some other way (if we are not to
complicate unduly the description of these transformations),
perhaps as NP — Verb — Adverb. Apart from such considerations
as these, there do not appear to be very strong reasons for denying
to (108) the completely counterintuitive analysis NP — Verb - NP,
with "home" the object of "came".
I think it is fair to say that a significant number of the basic
criteria for determining constituent structure are actually transformational. The general principle is this: if we have a transformation that simplifies the grammar and leads from sentences to sentences in a large number of cases (i.e., a transformation under which
the set of grammatical sentences is very nearly closed), then we
attempt to assign constituent structure to sentences in such a way
that this transformation always leads to grammatical sentences, thus
simplifying the grammar even further.
The reader will perhaps have noted a certain circularity or even
apparent inconsistency in our approach. We define such transformations as the passive in terms of particular phrase structure
analyses, and wc then consider the behavior of sentences under
these transformations in determining how to assign phrase structure
to these sentences. In § 7.5 wc used the fact that "John was drunk
by midnight" (=(102)) does not have a corresponding 'active' as an
argument against setting up a passive-to-active transformation. In
§ 7.6 wc have used the fact that "John came home" (-(108)) does
not have a passive as an argument against assigning to it the constituent structure NP - Verb - NP. However, if the argument is
traced carefully in each case it will be clear that there is no circularity
or inconsistency. In each case our sole concern has been to decrease
the complexity of the grammar, and we have tried to show that the
proposed analysis is clearly simpler than the rejected alternatives.
In some cases the grammar becomes simpler if we reject a certain

S4

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

transformation: in some cases reassignment of constituent structure
is preferable. We have thus been following the course outlined in
§ 6. Making use of phrase structure and transformations, we are
trying to construct a grammar of English that will be simpler than
any proposed alternative; and we are giving no thought to the
question of how one might actually arrive at this grammar in some
mechanical way from an English corpus, no matter how extensive.
Our weaker goal of evaluation instead of discovery eliminates any
fear of vicious circularity in the cases discussed above. The intuitive
correspondences and explanations of apparent irregularities seem
to me to offer important evidence for the correctness of the approach
we have been following. Cf. § 8.

8

T H E EXPLANATORY POWER OF LINGUISTIC
THEORY

8.1 So far we have considered the linguist's task to be that of
producing a device of some sort (called a grammar) for generating
all and only the sentences of a language, which we have assumed
were somehow given in advance. We have seen that this conception
of the linguist's activities leads us naturally to describe languages in
terms of a set of levels of representation, some of which arc quite
abstract and non-trivial. In particular, it leads us to establish phrase
structure and transformational structure as distinct levels of
representation for grammatical sentences. We shall now proceed to
formulate the linguist's goals in quite different and independent
terms which, however, lead to very similar notions of linguistic
structure.
There are many facts about language and linguistic behavior that
require explanation beyond the fact that such and such a string
(which no one may ever hase produced) is or is not a sentence. It is
reasonable to expect grammars to provide explanations for some
of these facts. For example, for many English speakers the phoneme
sequence ,'oneym can be understood ambiguously as either "a
name" or "an aim". If our grammar were a one-level system dealing only with phonemes, we would have no explanation for this fact.
But when we develop the level of morphological representation, we
find that, for quite independent reasons, we arc forced to set up
morphemes "a", "an", "aim" and "name", associated with the
phonemic shapes /a/, /an/, ,'eym/ and /neym/. Hence, as an automatic consequence of the attempt to set up the morphology in the
simplest possible way wc find that the phoneme sequence /aneym, is
ambiguously represented on the morphological level. In general,

86

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

we say that we have a case of constructional homonymity when a
certain phoneme sequence is analyzed in more than one way on
some level. This suggests a criterion of adequacy for grammars
We can test the adequacy of a given grammar by asking whether or
not each case of constructional homonymity is a real case of ambiguity and each case of the proper kind of ambiguity is actually a
case of constructional homonymity.1 More generally, if a certain
conception of the form of grammar leads to a grammar of a given
language that fails this test, we may question the adequacy of this
conception and the linguistic theory that underlies it. Thus, a
perfectly good argument for the establishment of a level of morphology is that this will account for the otherwise unexplained
ambiguity of /aneym/.
We have a case of constructional homonymity when some phoneme sequence is ambiguously represented. Suppose that on some
level two distinct phoneme sequences are similarly or identically
analyzed. We expect that these sequences should somehow be
'understood' in a similar manner, just as cases of dual representation arc 'understood' in more than one way. For example, the
sentences
(109) (i) John played tennis
(ii) my friend likes music
are quite distinct on phonemic and morphemic levels. But on the
level of phrase structure they are both represented as/VP- Verb — MP;
correspondingly, it is evident that in some sense they are similarly
understood. This fact could not be explained in terms of a grammar that did not go beyond the level words or morphemes, and
such instances offer a motivation for establishing the level of phrase
stnicture that is quite independent of that advanced in § 3. Note
that considerations of structural ambiguity can also be brought
1

Obviously, not all kinds of ambiguity will be analyzable in syntactic terms.
For example, we would not expect a grammar to explain the referential ambiguity of "son"-"sun", "light" (in color, weight), etc.
In his "Two models of grammatical description," Linguistics Today, Word
10.210-33 (1954), Hockett uses notions of structural ambiguity to demonstrate
the independence of various linguistic notions in a manner very similar to what
we are suggesting here.

THE EXPLANATORY POWER OF LINGUISTIC THEORY

87

forth as a motivation for establishing a level of phrase structure.
Such expressions as "old men and women" and "they are flying
planes" (i.e.. "those specks on the horizon are ...", "my friends
are ...") arc evidently ambiguous, and in fact they are ambiguously
analyzed on the level of phrase structure, though not on any lower
level Recall that the analysis of an expression on the level of
phrase structure is provided not by a single string but by a diagram
such as (15) or. equivalently, by a certain set of representing strings.2
What wc arc suggesting is that the notion of "understanding a
sentence" be explained in part in terms of the notion of "linguistic
level". To understand a sentence, then, it is first necessary to
reconstruct its analysis on each linguistic level; and we can test the
adequacy of a given set of abstract linguistic levels by asking whether
or not grammars formulated in terms of these levels enable us to
provide a satisfactory analysis of the notion of "understanding."
Cases of higher level similarity of representation and higher level
dissimilarity (constructional homonymity) are simply the extreme
cases which, if this framework is accepted, prove the existence of
higher levels. In general, we cannot understand any sentence fully
unless wc know at least how it is analyzed on all levels, including
such higher levels as phrase structure, and, as we shall sec, transformational structure.
We were able to show the inadequacy of a theory of linguistic
structure that stopped short of phrase structure by exhibiting c ases
of ambiguity and similarity of understanding that were unexplained
on lower levels. But it turns out that there is still a large residue of unexplained cases even after the level of phrase structure is established
and applied to English. Analysis of these cases demonstrates the
* That is. by vvhal is called a "phrase marker" in my The logical structure of
linguistic theory and "Three models for the description of language" (above,
p. 22, fn. 1). See "Three models..." for discussion of the constructional
homonymity of "they are flying planes" within a phrase structure grammar.
When we adjoin a transformational grammar to the phrase structure grammar,
this sentence is, however, an example of transformational ambiguity, not
constructional homonymity within phrase structure. In fact, it is not clear that
there are any cases of constructional homonymity purely within the level of
phrase structure once a transformational grammar is developed.

SK

SYNTACTIC STRUCTIRFS

necessity for a still 'higher' level of transformational analysis in a
manner independent of §§ 5, 7. I shall mention only a few representative instances.
8.2 In § 7.6 we came across at example of a sentence (i.e., "I found
the boy studying in the library" =(103ii)) whose ambiguity of
representation could not be demonstrated without bringing transformational criteria to bear. We found that under one interpretation this sentence was a transform under T°tbp of "1 - found
studying in the library — the boy," and that under another interpretation it was analyzed into an XP — Verb— ^^construction with
the object "the boy studying in the library." Further transformational analysis would show that in both cases the sentence is a
transform of the pair of terminal strings that underlie the simple
kernel sentences
(110) (i) I found the boy
(ii) the boy is studying in the library.
Hence this is an interesting case of a sentence whose ambiguity is
the result of alternative transformational developments from the
same kernel strings. This is quite a complicated example, however,
requiring a fairly detailed study of the way in which transformations
assign constituent structure, and simpler examples of ambiguit)
with a transformational origin arc not hard to find.
Consider the phrase (111), which can be understood ambiguously
with "hunters" as the subject, analogously to ( l l - i ) . or as the
object, analogously to (112ii).
(111) the shooting of the hunters
(112) (i) the growling of lions
(ii) the raising of flowers.
On the level of phrase structure there is no good way to explain this
ambiguity; all of these phrases are represented as the - I + Ing
of+ XP.3 In transformational terms, however, there is a clear and
* It is true that (111) may be represented ambiguously with shooi taken
either as a transitive or an intransitive verb, but the essential fact here is that the

THE EXPLANATORY POWER OF LINGUISTIC THEORY

89

automatic explanation. Careful analysis of English shows that we
can simplify the grammar if we strike such phrases as (111) and (112)
out of the kernel and reintroduce them by transformation. To
account for such phrases as (112i), we will set up a transformation
that carries any sentence of the form NP - C - V into the corresponding phrase of the form the—V+ing~of+NP;
and this
transformation will be designed in such a way that the result is an
NP.1 To account for (I I2ii), we will set up a transformation which
carries any sentence of the form AT, — C — V— SP2 into the corresponding AT of the form the - V + ing - of+ NP2. Thusthefirst of
these transformations will carry "lions growl" into "the growling of
lions," and the second will carry "John raises flowers" into "the
raising of flowers." But both "the hunters shoot*' and "they shoot
the hunters" are kernel sentences. Hence (111) = "the shooting of
the hunters" will have two distinct transformational origins; it will
be ambiguously represented on the transformational level. The
ambiguity of the grammatical relation in (111) is a consequence of
the fact that the relation of "shoot" to "hunters" differs in the two
underlying kernel sentences. We do not have this ambiguity in (112),
since neither "they growl lions" nor "flowers raise" are grammatical
kernel sentences.
Similarly, consider such pairs as
(113) (i)
lii)

the picture was painted by a new technique
the picture was painted by a real artist.

These sentences are understood quite differently, though identically
represented as AT—uur-f lerb + en-by + NP on the level of
phrase structure. But their transformational history is quite different.
(H3ii) is the passive of "a real artist painted the picture". (113i) is
grammatical relation in (1111 is ambiguous (i.e., 'hunters*' may be subject or
object). Grammatical relations can be defined within phrase structure in terms
of the shape of the diagrams (15). etc. But in these terms there will be no grounds
for the assertion that either the subject-verb or the verb-object relation is to be
found in (til) If Me analyze verbs into three classes, transitive, intransitive and
either transitive or intransitive, then even this I in itself insufficient) distinction
disappears,
4
Cf. footnote i on p. 72.

'Ml

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

formed from. e.g.. "John painted the picture by a new technique"
by a double transformation; first the passive, then the elliptical
transformation (mentioned in fn. 7 on p. 81) that drops the 'agent'
in the passive. An absolute homonym on the model of (113) is not
hard to find. For example,
(114) John was frightened by the new methods.
may mean cither that John isftconservative new methods frighten
him; or that new methods of frightening people were used to
frighten John (an interpretation that would be the more normal one
if "being" were inserted after "was"). On the transformational
level, (114) has both the analysis of (Il3i) and (H3ii), which
accounts for its ambiguity.
8.3 We can complete the argument by presenting an example of
the opposite extreme; namely, a case of sentences which are understood in a similar manner, though they are quite distinct in phrase
structure and lower level representation. Consider the following
sentences, discussed in § 7.2.
(115) (i)
in)
(iii)
(iv)

John ate an apple
— declarative
did John eat an apple— yes-or-no-question
what did John eat
interrogative
- n/i-qucstion
who ate an apple

It is intuitively obvious that (115) contains two types of sentences,
declaratives (115i) and interrogatives (115ii—iv). Furthermore, the
interrogatives are intuitively subdivided into two types, the yes-orno-question (115ii). and the n/i-questions (115iii, iv). It is difficult,
however, to find a formal basis for this classification that is not
arbitrary and ad hoc. If, for example, we classify sentences by their
'normal' intonation, then (115i), (H5iii) and (II5iv), with the
normal declarative (falling) intonation, will be opposed to (115ii),
with rising intonation. If we classify sentences on the basis of word
order, then (115 i) and (115iv), with normal AT - Verb - NP order,
will be opposed to (115ii) and (115iii), which have inversion of
subject and auxiliary. Nevertheless, any grammar of English will

THE EXPLANATORY POWER OF LINGUISTIC TIIIORV

91

classify these sentences in the manner indicated in (115), and any
speaker of English will understand these sentences according to this
pattern. Certainly a linguistic theory that fails to provide grounds
for this classification must be judged inadequate.
The representation of a string on the level of transformations is
given by the terminal string (or strings) form which it originates and
the sequence of transformations by which it is derived from this
underlying string. In §§ 7.1 -2 we came to the following conclusions
about the sentences (115) (=(70)). Each of these sentences originates from the underlying terminal string.
(116) John C- eat + an - apple ( = (61)).
which is derived within the phrase structure grammar. (I15i) is
derived from (116) by applying obligatory transformations only;
hence, it is by definition a kernel sentence. (115ii) is formed from
(116) by applying the obligatory transformations and T„. Both
(115Hi) and (115iv) are formed by applying obligatory transformations, T q . and T». They differ from one another only in the choice of
the noun phrase to which T„ applies. Suppose that we determine
sentence types in general in terms of transformational history, i.e.,
representation on the transformational level. Then the major subdivisions of (I 15) are the kernel sentence (1151) on the one hand, and
(HSU-iv), all of which have T„ in their transformational representation, on the other. Thus (115 ii—iv) are all interrogatives.
(115iii-iv) form a special subclass of interrogatives, since they are
formed by the additional subsidiary transformation Tw. Thus when
we formulate the simplest transformational grammar for (115), we
find that the intuitively correct classification of sentences is given by
the resulting transformational representations.

<>

SYNTAX A N D SEMANTICS

9.1 We have now found cases of sentences that are understood in
more than one way and arc ambiguously represented on the transformational level (though not on other levels) and cases of sentences
that arc understood in a similar manner and are similarly represented on the transformational level alone. This gives an independent
justification and motivation for description of language in terms of
transformational structure, and for the establishment of transformation a I representation as a linguistic level with the same fundamental character as other levels. Furthermore it adds force to the
suggestion that the process of "understanding a sentence" can be
explained in part in terms of the notion of linguistic level. In
particular, in order to understand a sentence it is necessary to know
the kernel sentences from which it originates (more precisely, the
terminal strings underlying these kernel sentences) and the phrase
structure of each of these elementary components, as well as the
transformational history of development of the given sentence from
these kernel sentences.1 The general problem of analyzing the
process of "understanding" is thus reduced, in a sense, to the
problem of explaining how kernel sentences are understood, these
being considered the basic 'content elements' from which the usual,
more complex sentences of real life arc formed by transformational
development.
1
When transformational analysis is more carefully formulated, we find that
knowledge of the transformational representation of a sentence (which incorporates the phrase structure of the kernel strings from which the sentence
originates) is all that is necessary to determine the derived phrase structure of
the transform.

SYNTAX AND SFM ANTICS

93

In proposing that syntactic structure can provide a certain insight
into problems of meaning and understanding we have entered onto
dangerous ground. There is no aspect of linguistic study more
subject to confusion and more in need of clear and careful formulation than that which deals with the points of connection between
syntax and semantics. The real question that should be asked is:
"How are the syntactic devices available in a given language put to
work in the actual use of this language?" Instead of being concerned
with this very important problem, however, the study of interconnections between syntax and semantics has largely been dominated by a side issue and a misformulatcd question. The issue has
been whether or not semantic information is required for discovering or selecting a grammar; and the challenge usually posed by
those who take the affirmative in this dispute is: "How can you
construct a grammar with no appeal to meaning?"
The remarks in fj 8 about possible semantic implications of
syntactic study should not be misinterpreted as indicating support
for the notion that grammar is based on meaning. In fact, the
theory outlined in §§ 3 7 was completely formal and non-semantic.
In § 8, we have indicated briefly some ways in which the actual use
of available syntactic devices can be studied. Perhaps this problem
can be elucidated somewhat further by a purely negative discussion
of the possibility oflinding semantic foundations for syntactic theory
9.2.1 A great deal of effort has been expended in attempting to
answer the question: "How can you construct a grammar with no
appeal to meaning?" The question itself, however, is wrongly put,
since the implication that obviously one can construct a grammar
with appeal to meaning is totally unsupported. One might with
equal justification ask: "How can you construct a grammar with no
knowledge of the hair color of speakers?" The question that should
be raised is: "How can you construct a grammar?" I am not
acquainted with any detailed attempt to develop the theory of
grammatical structure in partially semantic terms or any specific
and rigorous proposal for the use of semantic information in constructing or evaluating grammars. It is undeniable that "intuition

M

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURtS

about linguistic form" is very useful to the investigator of linguistic
form (i.e., grammar). It is also quite clear that the major goal of
grammatical theory is to replace this obscure reliance on intuition
by some rigorous and objective approach. There is, however, little
evidence that "intuition about meaning" is at all useful in the
actual investigation of linguistic form. I believe that the inadequacy
Of suggestions about the use of meaning in grammatical analysis
fails to be apparent only because of their vagueness and because of
an unfortunate tendency to confuse "intuition about linguistic
form" with "intuition about meaning," two terms that have in
common only their vagueness and their undesirability in linguistic
theory. However, because of the widespread acceptance of such
suggestion, it may be worthwhile to investigate some of them
briefly, even though the burden of proof in this case rests completely
on the linguist who claims to have been able to develop some grammatical notion in semantic terms.
9.2.2 Among the more common assertions put forth as supporting
the dependence of grammar on meaning we have the following:
(117) (i) two utterances arc phonemically distinct if and only if
they differ in meaning;
(ii) morphemes are the smallest elements that have meaning;
(iii) grammatical sentences are those that have semantic
significance;
(iv) the grammatical relation subject-verb (i.e., NP - IP as
an analysis of Sentence) corresponds to the general
'structural meaning' actor-action;
(v) the grammatical relation verb-object (i.e.. Verb — NP as
an analysis of VP) corresponds to the structural meaning
action-goal or action-object of action;
(vi) an active sentence and the corresponding passive are
synonymous.

9.2.3 A great many linguists have expressed the opinion that
phonemic distinctness must be defined in terms of differential
meaning (synonymity, to use a more familiar term), as proposed in

SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

9S

(I17i). However, it is immediately evident that (I17i) cannot be
accepted, as it stands, as a definition of phonemic distinctness.2 If
we are not to beg the question, the utterances in question must be
tokens, not types. But there are utterance tokens that are phonemically distinct and identical in meaning (synonyms) and there are
utterance tokens that are phoncmically identical and different in
meaning (homonyms). Hence (117i) is false in both directions.
From left to right it is falsified by such pairs as "bachelor*' and
"unmarried man," or, even more seriously, by such absolute
synonyms as /ekinamiks: and /iykinamiks ("economics"), "adult"
and "adult," ra-sin and ,/reysin', ("ration"), and many others,
which may coexist even within one style of speech. From right to
left, (1171) is falsified by such pairs as "bank" (of a river) and "bank"
(for savings),3 "metal" and "medal" (in many dialects), and
numerous other examples. In other words, if wc assign two utterance tokens to the same utterance type on the basis of (117i), we
will simply get the wrong classification in a large number of cases.
A weaker claim than (H7i) might be advanced as follows.
Suppose that we have an absolute phonetic system given in advance
of the analysis of any language, and guaranteed to be detailed
enough so that every two phonemically distinct utterances in any
language will be differently transcribed. It may now be the case that
certain different tokens will be identically transcribed in this
phonetic transcription. Suppose that we define the "ambiguous
meaning" of an utterance token as the set of meanings of all tokens
transcribed identically with this utterance token. We might now
revise (H7i), replacing "meaning" by "ambiguous meaning." This
might provide an approach to the homonymity problem, if wc had
an immense corpus in which wc could be fairly sure that each of the
1

See my "Semantic considerations in grammar," Monograph no. S, pp.
141-53 0955), for a more detailed investigation of (117i).
* Note that we cannot argue that "bank" in "the river bank" and "bank"
in "the savings bank" are two occurrences of the same word, since this is
precisely the question under investigation. To say that two utterance tokens
die occurrences of the same word is to say that they arc not phonemically
distinct, and presumably this is what the synonymity criterion (II7 i) is supposed
to determine for us.

%

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

phonetically distinct forms of a given word occurred with each of
the meanings that this word might have. It may be possible to
elaboratei this approach even further to cope with the problem cf
synonyms. In such a way one might hope to determine phoncmo
distinctness by laborious investigation of the meanings of phoneticallytranscribcd items in a vast corpus. The difficulty of determining
in any precise and realistic manner how many meanings several
items may have in common, however, as well as the vastness of the
undertaking, make the prospect for any such approach appear
rather dubious.
9.2.4 Fortunately, we do not have to pursue any such far-fetched
and elaborate program in order to determine phonemic distinctness.
In practice, every linguist uses much more simple and straightforward non-semantic devices. Suppose that a linguist is interested
in determining whether or not "metal" and "medal"1 are phonemically distinct in some dialect of English. He will not investigate the
meanings of these words, since this information is clearly irrelevant
to his purpose. He knows that the meanings are different (or he is
simply not concerned with the question) and he is interested in
determining whether or not the words are phoncmically distinct.
A careful field worker would probably use the pair test,4 either with
two informants or with an informant and a tape recorder. For
example, he might make a random sequence of copies of the
utterance tokens that interest him, and then determine whether or
not the speaker can consistently identify them. If there is consistent
identification, the linguists may apply an even strictertest, asking the
speaker to repeat each word several times, and running the pair test
over again on the repetitions. If consistent distinguishability is
maintained under repetition, he will say that the words "metal" and
"medal" are phonemically distinct. The pair test with its variants
' Cf. my "Semantic considerations of grammar," Monograph no. 8, pp.
141-54 (1955); M. Halle, "The strategy of phonemics," Linguistics Today, Word
10.197-209 (1954); Z. S. Harris, Methods in structural linguistics (Chicago,
1951), pp. 32f.; C. F. Hockett, A manual of phonology - Memoir 11, Indiana
University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics (Baltimore, 1955), p. 146.

SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

w

and elaborations provides us with a clear operational criterion for
phonemic distinctness in completely non-semantic terms.5
It is customary to view non-semantic approaches to grammar as
possible alternatives to semantic approaches, and to criticize them
as too complex, even if possible in principle. We have found, however, that in the case of phonemic distinctness, at least, exactly the
opposite is true. There is a fairly straightforward and operational
approach to the determination of phonemic distinctness in terms of
such non-semantic devices as the pair test. It may be possible in
principle to develop some scmantically oriented equivalent to the
pair test and its elaborations, but it appears that any such procedure
will be quite complex, requiring exhaustive analysis of an immense
corpus, and involving the linguists in the rather hopeless attempt to
determine how many meanings a given phone sequence might have.

• I .ounsbury argues in his "A semantic analysis of the Pawnee kinship usage,"
Language 32.158-94 (1956), p. 190, that appeal to synonymity is necessary to
distinguish between free variation and contrast: "If a linguist who knows no
English records from my lips the word cm first with a final aspirated stop and
later with a final prcglottalized unrclcased stop, the phonetic data will not tell
him whether these forms contrast or not. It is only when he asks me, his
informant, whether the meaning of the first form is different from that of the
second, and I say it is not, that he will be able to proceed with his phonemic
analysis." As a general method, this approach is untenable. Suppose that the
linguist records ckinamiks and /iykinamiks,', viksin; and /fiymeyl # faks,', etc.,
and asks whether or not they are different in meaning. He will learn that they
are not, and will incorrectly assign them the same phonemic analysis, if he takes
this position literally. On the other hand, there are many speakers who do not
distinguish "metal" from "medal," though if asked, they may be quite sure that
they do. The responses of such informants to Lounsbury's direct question about
meaning would no doubt simply becloud the issue.
We can make Lounsbury's position more acceptable by replacing the question
"do they have the same meaning?" with "are they the same word?" This will
avoid the pitfalls of the essentially irrelevant semantic question, but it is hardly
acceptable in this form, since it amounts to asking the informant to do the
linguist's work; it replaces an operational test of behavior (such as the pair test)
by an informant's judgment about his behavior. The operational tests for
linguistic notions may require the informant to respond, but not to express his
opinion about his behavior, his judgment about synonymy, about phonemic
distinctness, etc. The informant's opinions may be based on all sorts of irrelevant factors. This is an important distinction that must be carefully observed if
the operational basis for grammar is not be trivialized.

98

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

9.2.5 There is one further difficulty of principle that should be
mentioned in the discussion of any semantic approach to phonemic
distinctness. We have not asked whether the meanings assigned to
distinct (but phoncmically identical) tokens are identical, or merely
very similar. If the latter, then all of the difficulties of determining
phonemic distinctness arc paralleled (and magnified, because of the
inherent obscurity of the subject matter) in determining sameness of
meaning. We will have to determine when two distinct meanings
are sufficiently similar to be considered 'the same.' If, on the other
hand, we try to maintain the position that the meanings assigned
are always identical, that the meaning of a word is a fixed and
unchanging component of each occurrence, then a charge of
circularity seems warranted. It seems that the only way to uphold
such a position would be to conceive of the meaning of a token as
"the way in which tokens of this type are (or can be) used," the class
of situations in which they can be used, the type of response that
they normally evoke, or something of this sort. But it is difficult to
make any sense at all out of such a conception of meaning without a
prior notion of utterance type. It would appear, then, that even
apart from our earlier objections, any approach to phonemic
distinctness in semantic terms is either circular or is based on a
distinction that is considerably more difficult to establish than the
distinction it is supposed to clarify.
9.2.6 How, then, can we account for the widespread acceptance of
some such formulation as (117i)? I think that there are two explanations for this. In part, it is a consequence of the assumption
that semantic approaches are somehow immediately given and are
too simple to require analysis. Any attempt to provide a careful
description, however, quickly dispels this illusion. A semantic
approach to some grammatical notion requires as careful and
detailed a development as is justly required of any non-semantic
approach. And as we have seen, a semantic approach to phoncmic
distinctness is beset by quite considerable difficulties.
A second source for such formulations as (117 i), I believe, is a
confusion of "meaning" with "informant's response." We thus

SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

99

find such comments on linguistic method as the following: "In
linguistic analysis we define contrast among forms operationally in
terms of difference in meaning responses."* We have observed in
§9.2.3 that if we were to determine contrast by'meaning response' in
any direct way we would simply make the wrong decision in a great
many places; and if we try to avoid the difficulties that immediately
arise, we are led to a construction that is so elaborate and has such
intolerable assumptions that it can be hardly taken as a serious
proposal. And we saw in § 9.2.5 that there arc apparently even
more fundamental difficulties of principle. Hence, if we interpret
the quoted assertation literally, we must reject it as incorrect.
If wc drop the word "meaning" from this statement, however, we
have a perfectly acceptable reference to such devices as the pair
test. But there is no warrant for interpreting the responses studied
in the pair test as semantic in any way.7 One might very well
develop an operational test for rhyme that would show that "bill"
and "pill" are related in a way in which "bill" and "ball" are not.
There would be nothing semantic in this test. Phonemic identity is
essentially complete rhyme, and there is no more reason for
postulating some unobserved semantic reaction in the case of
"bill" and "bill" than in the case of "bill" and "pill."
It is strange that those who have objected to basing linguisitc
theory on such formulations as (117i) should have been accused of
disregard for meaning. It appears to be the case, on the contrary,
that those who propose some variant of (117i) must be interpreting
"meaning" so broadly that any response to language is called
"meaning." But to accept this view is to denude the term "meaning" of any interest or significance. 1 think that anyone who wishes
to save the phrase "study of meaning" as descriptive of an important
• F. Lounsbury, "A semantic analysis of the Pawnee kinship usage", Language 32.158-94 (1956), p. 191.
* One should not be confused by the fact that the subject in the pair (est
may be asked to identify the utterance tokens by meaning. He might just as well
be asked to identify them by arbitrarily chosen numbers, by signs of the zodiac,
etc. We can no more use some particular formulation of the pair test as an
argument for dependence of grammatical theory on meaning than as an argument that linguistics is based on arithmetic or astrology.

100

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

aspect of linguistic research must reject this identification of
"meaning" with "response to language," and along with it, such
formulations as (117i).
9.2.7 It is, of course, impossible to prove that semantic notions
are of no use in grammar, just as it is impossible to prove the
irrelevance of any other given set of notions. Investigation of such
proposals, however, invariably seems to lead to the conclusion that
only a purely formal basis can provide a firm and productive
foundation for the construction of grammatical theory. Detailed
investigation of each semantically oriented proposal would go
beyond the bounds of this study, and would be rather pointless, but
we can mention briefly some of the more obvious counterexamples
to such familiar suggestion as (117).
Such morphemes as "to" in "I want to go" or the dummy carrier
"do" in "did he come?" (cf. §7.1) can hardly be said to have a
meaning in any independent sense, and it seems reasonable to
assume that an independent notion of meaning, if clearly given,
may assign meaning of some sort to such non-morphemes as gl- in
"gleam," "glimmer," "glow."8 Thus we have counterexamples to
the suggestion (II7ii) that morphemes be defined as minimal
meaning-bearing elements. In § 2 we have given grounds for
rejecting "semantic significance" as a general criterion for grammaticalness, as proposed in (117iii). Such sentences as "John received a letter" or "the fighting stopped" show clearly the untenability of the assertion (117iv) that the grammatical relation
subject-verb has the 'structural meaning' actor-action, if meaning is
taken seriously as a concept independent of grammar. Similarly,
the assignment (117 v) of any such structural meaning as action-goal
to the verb-object relation as such is precluded by such sentences as
"I will disregard his incompetence" or "I missed the train." In
contradiction to (117 vi), we can describe circumstances in which a
'quantificational* sentence such as "everyone in the room knows at
• See L. Bloomfield, Language (New York, 1933), p. 156; Z. S. Harris,
Methods in structural linguistics (Chicago, 1951), p. 177; O. Jcspersen, Language
(New York, 1922), chapter XX, for many further examples.

SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

101

least two languages" may be true, while the corresponding passive
"at least two languages are known by everyone in the room" is false,
under the normal interpretation of these sentences — e.g., if one
person in the room knows only French and German, and another
only Spanish and Italian. This indicates that not even the weakest
semantic relation (factual equivalence) holds in general between
active and passive.
9.3 These counterexamples should not, however, blind us to the
fact that there arc striking correspondences between the structures
and elements that arc discovered in formal, grammatical analysis
and specific semantic functions. None of the assertions of (117)
is wholly false; some are very nearly true. It seems clear, then, that
undeniable, though only imperfect correspondences hold between
formal and semantic features in language. The fact that the correspondences are so inexact suggests that meaning will be relatively
useless as a basis for grammatical description • Careful analysis of
each proposal for reliance on meaning confirms this, and shows, in
fact, that important insights and generalizations about linguistic
structure may be missed if vague semantic clues are followed too
closely. For example, we have seen that the active-passive relation
is just one instance of a very general and fundamental aspect of
formal linguistic structure. The similarity between active-passive,
negation, declarative-interrogative, and other transformational
relations would not have come to light if the active-passive relation
had been investigated exclusively in terms of such notions as
synonymity.
• Another reason for suspecting that grammar cannot be effectively developed on a semantic basis was brought out in the particular case of phonemic
distinctness in § 9.2.5. More generally, it seems that the study of meaning is
fraught with so many difficulties even aflcr the linguistic meaningbearing
elements and their relations arc specified, that any attempt to study meaning
independently of such specification is out of the question. To put it differently,
given the instrument language and its formal devices, we can and should investigate their semantic function (as, e.g., in R. Jakobson, "Bcitrag zur allgemeincn Kasuslehre," Tnmiux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 6.240-88
(1936)); but we cannot, apparently, find semantic absolutes, known in advance
of grammar, that can be used to determine the objects of grammar in any way.

102

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE

The fact that correspondences between formal and semantic
features exist, however, cannot be ignored. These correspondences
should be studied in some more general theory of language thai will
include a theory of linguistic form and a theory of the use of
language as subparts. In § 8 we found that there are, apparently,
fairly general types of relations between these two domains that
deserve more intensive study. Having determined the syntactic
structure of the language, we can study the way in which this
syntactic structure is put to use in the actual functioning of language. An investigation of the semantic function of level structure,
as suggested briefly in § 8. might be a reasonable step toward! a
theory of the interconnections between syntax and semantics. In
fact, we pointed out in § 8 that the correlations between the form
and use of language can even provide certain rough criteria of
adequacy for a linguistic theory and the grammars to which it leads.
We can judge formal theories in terms of their ability to explain and
clarify a variety of facts about the way in which sentences arc used
and understood. In other words, we should like the syntactic
framework of the language that is isolated and exhibited by the
grammar to be able to support semantic description, and we shall
naturally rate more highly a theory of formal structure that leads
to grammars that meet this requirement more fully.
Phrase structure and transformational structure appear to provide
the major syntactic devices available in language for organization
and expression of content. The grammar of a given language must
show how these abstract structures are actually realized in the case
of the language in question, while linguistic theory must seek to
clarify these foundations for grammar and the methods for
evaluating and choosing between proposed grammars.
It is important to recognize that by introducing such considerations as those of § 8 into the metatheory that deals with grammar
and semantics and their points of connection, we have not altered
the purely formal character of the theory of grammatical structure
itself. In §§ 3 7 we outlined the development of some fundamental
linguistic concepts in purely formal terms. We considered the
problem of syntactic research to be that of constructing a device

SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

103

for producing a given set of grammatical sentences and of studying
the properties of grammars that do this effectively. Such semantic
notions as reference, significance, and synonymity played no role in
the discussion The outlined theory, of course, had serious gaps in
it — in particular, the assumption that the set of grammatical
sentences is given in advance is clearly too strong, and the notion of
"'simplicity" to which appeal was made explicitly or tacitly was left
unanahved. 1 lowever, neither these nor other gaps in this development of grammatical theory can be filled in or narrowed, to my
knowledge, by constructing this theory on a partially semantic
basis.
In §§ 3-7, then, we were studying language as an instrument or a
tool, attempting to describe its structure with no explicit reference
to the way in which this instrument is put to use. The motivation
for this self-imposed formality requirement for grammars is quite
simple — there seems to be n,o other basis that will yield a rigorous
effective, and 'revealing" theory of linguistic structure. The requirement that this theory shall be a completely formal discipline is
perfectly compatible with the desire to formulate it in such a was as
to have suggestive and significant interconnections with a parallel
semantic theory. What we have pointed out in § 8 is that this formal
study of the structure oflanguage as an instrument may be expected
to provide insight into the actual use of language, i.e., into the
process of understanding sentences.
9.4 To understand a sentence we must know much more than the
analysis of this sentence on each linguistic level. We must also
know the reference and meaning10 of the morphemes or words of
'• Goodman has argued—to my mind, quite convincingly—that the notion
of meaning of words can at least in part be reduced to that of reference of
expressions containing these words. See N. Goodman, "On likeness of meaning,"
Analysis, vol. 10, no. 1 (1949); idem. "On some differences about meaning."
Analysis, vol. 13, no. 4 (1953). Goodman's approach amounts to reformulating
a part of the theory of meaning in the much clearer terms of the theory of
reference, just as much of our discussion can be understood as suggesting a
reformulation of parts of the theory of meaning that deal with so-called "structural meaning" in terms of the completely nonsemanlic theory of grammatical
structure. Part of the difficulty with the theory of meaning is that "meaning"

104

SYNTACTIC STRL'CTURIS

which it is composed: naturally, grammar cannot be expected to be
of much help here. These notions form the subject matter for
semantics. In describing the meaning of a word it is often expedient, or necessary, to refer to the syntactic framework in which this
word is usually embedded; e.g., in describing the meaning of "hit"
we would no doubt describe the agent and object of the action in
terms of the notions "subject" and "object", which are apparently
best analyzed as purely formal notions belonging to the theory of
grammar." We shall naturally find that a great many words or
morphemes of a single grammatical category are described semantically in partially similar terms, e.g. verbs in terms of subject and
Object, etc. This is not surprising; it means that the syntactic
devicesavailable in the language are being used fairly systematically.
We have seen, however, that so generalize from this fairly systematic use and to assign 'structural meanings" to grammatical
categories or constructions just as 'lexical meanings* are assigned to
words or morphemes, is a step of very questionable validity.
Another common but dubious use of the notion 'structural
meaning' is with reference to the meanings of so-called 'grammatically functioning' morphemes such as fag, ly. prepositions, etc. The
contention that the meanings of these morphemes are fundamentally different from the meanings of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
perhaps other large classes, is often supported by appeal to the fact
that these morphemes can be distributed in a sequence of blanks or
nonsense syllables so as to give the whole the appearance of a
sentence, and in fact, so as to determine the grammatical category of
the nonsense elements. For example, in the sequence "Pirots
karulize etalically" we know that the three words arc noun, verb,
and adverb by virtue of the s, ize, and ly, respectively. But this
tends to be used as a catch-all term to include every aspect of language thai we
know very little about. Insofar as this is correct, we can expect various aspects
of this theory to be claimed by other approaches 10 language in the course of
their development.
" Such a description of the meaning of "hit" would then account automatically for the use of "hit" in such transforms as "Bill was hit by John," "hilling
Bill was wrong," etc., if we can show in sufficient detail and generality that
transforms are 'understood' in terms of the underlying kernel sentences.

SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

105

property does not sharply distinguish 'grammatical' morphemes
from others, since in such sequences as "the Pirots karul — yesterday" or "give him — water" the blanks are also determined as a
variant of past tense, in the first case, and as "the", "some," etc., but
not "a," in the second. The fact that in these cases we were forced
to give blanks rather than nonsense words is explained by the
productivity or 'open-endedness' of the categories Noun, Verb,
Adjective, etc., as opposed to the categories Article, Verbal Affix,
etc. In general, when we distribute a sequence of morphemes in a
sequence of blanks we limit the choice of elements that can be
placed in the unfilled positions to form a grammatical sentence.
Whatever differences there arc among morphemes with respect to
this property are apparently better explained in terms of such
grammatical notions as productivity, freedom of combination, and
size of substitution class than in terms of any presumed feature of
meaning.

10

SUMMARY

In this discussion we have stressed the following points: The most
that can reasonably be expected of linguistic theory is that it
shall provide an evaluation procedure for grammars. The theory
of linguistic structure must be distinguished clearly from a manual
of helpful procedures for the discovery of grammars, although
such a manual will no doubt draw upon the results of linguistic
theory, and the attempt to develop such a manual will probably
(as it has in the past) contribute substantially to the formation
of linguistic theory. If this viewpoint is adopted, there is little
motivation for the objection to mixing levels, for the conception of higher-level elements as being literally constructed out of
lower-level elements, or for the feeling that syntactic work is
premature until all problems of phonemics or morphology are
solved.
Grammar is best formulated as a self-contained study independent of semantics. In particular, the notion of grammaticalness cannot be identified with meaningfulness (nor does it have any special
relation, even approximate, to the notion of statistical order of
approximation). In carrying out this independent and formal study,
we find that a simple mode! of language as a finite state Markov
process that produces sentences from left to right is not acceptable,
and that such fairly abstract linguistic levels as phrase structure and
transformational structure arc required for the description of
natural languages.
We can greatly simplify the description of English and gain new
and important insight into its formal structure if we limit the direct
description in terms of phrase structure to a kernel of basic sen-

SUMMARY

107

tenets (simple, declarative, active, with no complex verb or noun
phrases), deriving all other sentences from these (more properly,
from the strings that underlie them) by transformation, possibly
repeated. Conversely, having found a set of transformations that
carry grammatical sentences into grammatical sentences, we can
determine the constituent structure of particular sentences by
investigating their behavior under these transformations with alternative constituent analyses.
We consequently view grammars as having a tripartite structure.
A grammar has a sequence of rules from which phrase structure can
be reconstructed and a sequence of morphophoncmic rules that
convert strings of morphemes into strings of phonemes. Connecting these sequences, there is a sequence of transformational rules
that carry strings with phrase structure into new strings to which
the morphophonemic rules can apply. The phrase structure and
morphophonemic rules arc elementary in a sense in which the
transformational rules are not. To apply a transformation to a
string, we must know some of the history of derivation of this string;
but to apply non-transformational rules, it is sufficient to know the
shape of the string to which the rule applies.
As an automatic consequence of the attempt to construct the
simplest grammar for English in terms of the abstract levels developed in linguistic theory we find that the apparently irregular
behavior of certain words (e.g., "have," "be," "seem") is really a
case of higher level regularity. We also find that many sentences
are assigned dual representations on some level, and many pairs of
sentences are assigned similar or identical representations on some
level. In a significant number of cases, dual representation (constructional homonymity) corresponds to ambiguity of the represented sentence and similar or identical representation appears
in cases of intuitive similarity of utterances.
More generally, it appears that the notion of "understanding a
sentence" must be partially analyzed in grammatical terms. To
understand a sentence it is necessary (though not, of course,
sufficient) to reconstruct its representation on each level, including
the transformational level where the kernel sentences underlying a

108

SYNTACTIC STRUCTtrRES

given sentence can be thought of. in a sense, as the 'elementary
content elements' out of which this sentence is constructed. In other
words, one result of the formal study of grammatical structure is
that a syntactic framework is brought to light which can support
semantic analysis. Description of meaning can profitably refer to
this underlying syntactic framework, although systematic semantic
considerations are apparently not helpful in determining it in the
first place. The notion of "structual meaning" as opposed to
"lexical meaning", however, appears to be quite suspect, and it is
questionable that the grammatical devices available in language are
used consistently enough so that meaning can be assigned to them
directly. Nevertheless, we do find many important correlations,
quite naturally, between syntactic structure and meaning; or. to put
it differently, we find that the grammatical devices are used quite
systematically. These correlations could form part of the subject
matter for a more general theory of language concerned with
syntax and semantics and their points of connection.

II

Appendix I
NOTATIONS A N D T E R M I N O L O G Y

In this appendix we shall present a brief account of the new or less
familiar notational and terminological conventions that wc have
used.
A linguistic level is a method of representing utterances. It has a
finite vocabulary of symbols (on the phonemic level, we call this
vocabulary the alphabet of the language) which can be placed in a
linear sequence to form strings of symbols by an operation called
concatenation and symbolized by + Thus on the morphemic level
in English we have the vocabulary elements the, boy, S, past, come,
etc., and we can form the string the + boy + S + come + past (which
would be carried by the morphophonemic rules into the string of
elements /6tb5yz #keym./) representing the utterance 'the boys
came." Apart form the phonemic level, we have used italics or
quotes for vocabulary symbols and strings of representing symbols;
on the phonemic level wc suppress the concatenation symbol + and
use the customary slant lines, as in the example just given. We use
X, Y, Z, W as variables over strings.
Occasionally we use a hyphen instead of the plus sign, to symbolize concatenation. Wc do this to call special attention to a
subdivision of the utterance with which we happen to be particularly
concerned at the moment. Sometimes we use wider spacing for the
same purpose. Neither of these notational devices has any systematic significance; they are introduced simply for clarity in exposition. In the discussion of transformations, we use the hyphen
to indicate the subdivision of a string that is imposed by a certain
transformation. Thus when we assert that the question transformation T q applies in particular to a string of the form

110

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

(118)

NP-have-en

+ V (c(. (37iii))

inverting the first two segments, we mean that it applies, for
example, to
(119)

they - have — en + arrive.

since they is an NP and arrive is a V in this string. The transform in
this case will be
(120)

have - they — en + arrive,

ultimately, "have they arrived?"
A rule of the form X-> Y is to be interpreted as the instruction
"rewrite X as Y," where A'and Y are strings. We use parentheses to
indicate that an element may or may not occur, and brackets (or
listing) to indicate choice among elements. Thus both the rules
(121 i) and (121 ii)
(121) (i)

a-*b(c)

(ii)

jfe + cl

are abbreviations for the pair of alternatives: a->b + e, a-*b.
The following list gives the page references for the first occurrence
of the special symbols other than those mentioned above.
(122)

AT
VP
7
A
NP,in1
AT,,

[E.F]
Aux
V
C
M

p. 26
p. 26
p. 26
p. 26
p. 28
p. 29
p. 29
p. 39
p. 39
p. 39
p. 39
p. 39

S

0
past

Af
I
A
wk
Adj
PP
Prt
Comp

p. 39
p. 39
p. 39
p. 39
p. 39
p. 65
p. 69, fn. 2
p. 72
p. 74
p. 75
p. 76

12
Appendix II
EXAMPLES OF ENGLISH PHRASE STRUCTURE
A N D TRANSFORMATIONAL RULES

We collect here for case of reference the examples of rules of English
grammar that played an important role in the discussion. The
numbers to the left give the proper ordering of these rules, assuming
that this sketch is the outline of a grammar of the form (35). The
parenthesized number to the right of each rule is the number of this
rule in the text. Certain rules have been modified from their forms
in the text in the light of subsequent decision or for more systematic
presentation.
Phrase Structure:
I : * Sentence #
F: 1. Sentence ->NP+VP
2. VP - Verb 4 Nf
3. NP
^\NP„„\

W,< J
4. . v p l l n , - * r + . v + 0
5. NP„
->T+N+S
6. T
^the
1. S
-»man, ball. etc.
8. Verb -»Aux + V
9. V
-'hit, take, walk, read, etc.
10. Aux -»C{M) (have + en) (be + ing)
11. M
-» will, can, may, shall, must
Transformational Structure:

(I3i)
(13)10
(p.29,fn.3)
(p. 29, fn.3)
(p. 29, fn.3)
(13iv)
(I3v)
(28 i)
(28ii)
(28iii)
(28iv)

A transformation is defined by the structural analysis of the strings
to which it applies and the structural change that it effects on these
strings.

112

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

12. Passive - optional:
Structural analysis: NP-AuxV-NP
Structural change: A', - X2 - X3 - XA - Xt - X2 + be +
en-Xi-by
+ Xl
(34)
13. T°, b „- obligatory:

•

- Prl - Pronoun]
\X-\\-.

Structural analy,m:

(86)
Comp - NP
(92)
2
X, — X2 — Xj — X«—• Xt — X2 — A 4 — Xy

[x-v ~

Structural change

14. T°fp - optional:
Structural analysis: A ' - Vx - Prl - NP
(85)
Structural change: same as 13
15. Number Transformation — obligatory
Structural analysis: X - C - Y
S in the context NPrtmStructural change: C-* 0 in other contexts
(29i)
past in any context
16. T,»t - optional
NP-CV...
NP-C+Af-...
Structural analysis:
(37)
NP-C + have-..
NP - C + he - ...
Structural change: Xx - X2 - X3 — AT, - X\ + n't - A',
17. 1A — optional:
Structural analysis: same as 16
(cf. (45)-(47))
Structural change: A", - A'2 - A'J -»A", - X2 + A - X3
18. Tq — optional:
Structural analysis: same as 16
(cf. (4IH43))
Structural change: A", — X2 - X3 -»X2 — Xx - X3
19. Tw —optional and conditional on T„:
T w ,: Structural analysis: X - NP - Y (X or Y may be null)
Structural change: same as 18
(60i)
T „ , : Structural analysis: NP — X
(60ii)
Structural change: A', - X2 -» wh + Xt— X2
where wh + animate noun -»who
(cf. p. 69, fn. 2)
wh + animate noun -• what

APPENDIX II

113

20.

Auxiliary Transformation — obligatory:
Structural analysis: X — Af— v — >' (where Af is any Cor is
en or ing; t is any M or
V, or have or be) (29ii)
Structural change:
Xi-X1-Xi-XA-*Xi-X3-X2^-X4

21.

Word Boundary Transformation — obligatory:
Structural analysis: X - Y (where J r | v o r Y$Af)
Structural change: Xt — X2 -*Xt - # X2

21.

do — Transformation — obligatory:
Structural analysis: # — Af
Structural change: Xx — X2 -» Xt — do + X2

(29iii)

(40)

Generalized Transformations:
22. Conjunction
(26)
Structural analysis: of 5 , : 7. - X — W
o\S,:Z-XW
where A* is a minimal element (e.g.. NP, VP, etc.) and
7, W are segments of terminal strings.
Structural change: (Af, — X2 — X3; XA — Xs — Xb) -»X, —
X2+and+X5-X3
23.

T„:
(48H50)
Structural analysis: of 5 , : same as 16
of 5 2 : same as 16
Structural change: (Xt - X2-X3; Xt- Xs- X6) AT, - X2 - X3 - and-so -X5A'4
T„ is actually a compound with the conjunction transformation.

24.

Nominating Transformation T ( e :
(p. 72, fn. 3)
Structural analysis: of 5 , : NP - VP
ofS2:X-NPY(XOT Tmay be null)
Structural change: (A', - X2; X3 - XA - Xs) -» X3 - to +
X2-X5

25.

Nominalizing Transformation T(1W:
(p. 72, fn. 3)
Same as 24, with ing in place of to in Structural change

114
26.

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

Nominalizing Transformation T ^ :
(71)
Structural analysis: of S,: 7"— N-is — A
of S2: same as 24
Structural change: (*, - X2 - X3 - X<; X$ - X6 - X-,) Xt - * , + Xt + X2 - X1

Morphophonemic Structure:
Rules (19); (45); p. 58, fn. 8; p. 69, fn. 2; etc.
We thus have three sets of rules, as in (35): rules of phrase
structure, transformational rules (including simple and generalized
transformations), and morphophonemic rules. Order of rules is
essential, and in a properly formulated grammar it would be indicated in all three sections, along with a distinction between optional
and obligatory rules and, at least in the transformational part, a
statement of conditional dependence among rules. The result of
applying all of these rules is an extended derivation (such as (13)(30)-(31)) terminating in a string of phonemes of the language under
analysis, i.e., a grammatical utterance. This formulation of the
transformational rules is meant only to be suggestive. Wc have not
developed the machinery for presenting all these rules in a proper
and uniform manner. See the references cited in fn. 8, p. 44, for a
more detailed development and application of transformational
analysis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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(1959).
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structure of language and its mathematical aspects, American Mathematical
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