Linguistics from a Conceptual Viewpoint (aspects of Aspects of a Theory of Syqtax)

Some of the assertions made by Chomsky in AspecIs_of the Theory of Syntax are considered. In particular, the notion of a competence' model in linguistics is criticized. Formal postulates for a conceptually-based linguistic theory are presented. This research is supported by Grant PHS MH 06645-07 from the National Institute of Mental Health, and (in part) by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (SD-183). AL 001 969 Linguistics from a Conceptual Viewpoint (Aspects of Aspects of a Theory of Syntax) 1. Although linguistics is often referred to as the 'science of language', it has been usual for linguists to resist this label and its concomitant expectations. With the exception of the attempts of Bloch (19)48) and Bloomfield (1926) at establishing postulates for language, the formalization that is often present in a science was difficult to find before 1957. With the advent of transformational generative grammar however, the direction of the bulk of linguistic research changed considerably. Linguists who are in the transformational camp tend to be more concerned with precision and formalization than was common in the past. It is perhaps enlightening to attempt to discover just how valid the assumptions that have led to the present conception of transformational grammar are; and, if they are not valid, a good question is just what assumptions might be considered valid. Initially, transformational theory dealt only with kernels and transforms. The kernels were the output of the PSG and certain obligatory transformations. Thus a transformational grammar was simply a specification of the permutations involved in correcting the output of a PSG. This system was still used until it became clear that it was insufficient to handle all the complexities involved in natural language. Bach (1964) stated that 'The minimal requirement that we can place on a theory about a particular language is that it specify or predict all and only the sentences of the language'. Until this time, these were precisely the requirements that were placed on a transformational grammar. Hawever, two important problems resulted from this view of what a linguistic theory was to accomplish. The first was that the systom of phrase structure grammar and the transformations that were added simply did not account for all the sentences of English. The second problem is that the system As it stood could not be extended to other languages without completel.y revamping both components in such a way that the two grammars would be very dissimilar. This clearly is in contradiction to a fact of language that we know very well.. Namely, than any baby possesses the mechanisms to learn any language and that therefore, there must be some similarity between languages. Furthermore, this similarity should pervade the grammars of different languages such that things like translatability can be explained. Thus it appeared obvious that an important step towards solving both the first and second problems would be the positing of a Universal grammar that would hold for all languages and a particular grammar for each language. Therefore, since the framework was alraady available, the phrase