Understanding Formal Grammar and Generative Theory in Linguistics

Grammar and Grammars : Part 3 By: Asst. Prof. Dr. Ghazwan Adnan MohammedUniversity of DiyalaCollege of Education for HumanitiesDepartment of English

Form and Function . Formal grammar is concerned with the forms themselves and with how they operate within the overall system of grammar. Traditional grammar , which describes the structure of sentences is perhaps the best known formal grammar. Among linguists , the most influential formal grammar in the latter half of twentieth century has been the generative (transformational) theory of grammar , the general principles of which are still the basis for Chomsky's later versions of generative grammar in the form of principles and parameters and the minimalist program , and for dozens of other competing variants developed within some version of the generative framework. The focus is primarily syntax and morphology.

Generative theory is based on a rationalist approach the central assumption being that language is represented as a speaker's mental grammar a set of abstract rules for generating grammatical sentences. This mental grammar. or internalized un conscious knowledge of the system of rules is termed competence . The rules generate the syntactic structure and lexical items from appropriate grammatical categories (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) are selected to fill in the corresponding grammatical slots in the syntactic frame of the sentence. The interests of generative linguists focus mainly on rule-governed behavior. and on the grammatical structure of sentences and do not include concerns for the appropriate use of language in context

Hymes extended it and gave greater emphasis to sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors A central concern of his model is the concept of 'communicative competence which emphasizes language as meaningful communication, including the appropriate use of language in particular social contexts (for example, informal conversation at the dinner table versus formal conversation at the bank). For Hymes communicative competence is defined as 'the capabilities of person' , a competence which is 'dependent upon both tacit knowledge and ability for use.

In applied linguistics, the influence of these theoretical models is evident in various areas. For example, the approach to grammar as abstract linguistic descriptions is found in learners' grammars such as Quirk et al. (1972), a descriptive grammar that deals with abstract forms as syntactic combinations of words. On the other hand, a functional approach is evident in Leech and Svartvik (1975), a communicative grammar based on correspondences between structure and (function) In this learners' grammar, each section is built around a major function of language, such as denial and affirmation, describing emotions, and presenting and focusing information.

Influence of different models of grammar can also be seen in syllabus design. Many ESL or EFL grammar texts are based on structural syllabus design defined in formal terms with lexical items and grammatical patterns presented according to structural categories such as nouns and noun phrases, verbs and verb phrases. verb tense and aspect, and clause and sentence types. In contrast notional syllabuses are defined in functional terms such as the speech acts of requesting, 'Could you VP? ' ; offering, ' Would you like X? ' and so on

these notional syllabuses developed at a time when linguistic interest had begun to shift to the communicative properties of language Various teaching approaches also draw on insights from these differing approaches to grammar. Approaches influenced by formal theories such as generative grammar tend to view language learning as rule acquisition and , therefore, focus on formalized rules of grammar. Those that evolved from functional considerations known as communicative language teaching, view language as communications and tend to promote fluency over accuracy consequently shifting the focus from sentence-level forms to communicative functions, such as requests, greetings apologies and the like.

What is needed is an approach that provides a middle ground in that it neglects neither. Newer linguistic theories that attempt to combine form and meaning though they give less attention to appropriate use are cognitive grammar , and construction grammar , Constructions integrate from and meaning at various levels of complexity from the morphology of words to phrases to clauses .An oft-cited example is that of English verb argument constructions.

For instance, many English verbs enter into a pattern called the 'ditransitive' or double object construction, in which the indirect object precedes the direct object following the verb. This construction entails the meaning 'X causes Y to receive A' as in ' 'Sam mailed Paul a letter' When newer verbs enter into this construction, they inherit the semantics of the construction and force us to interpret the sentence in the same way. For example, 'Paul faxed Sam a reply '. It is important to note that, contrary to formal grammar construction grammar takes the position that certain words fit certain patterns. In other words it is not the case that any word will fill any slot in a construction.

Pedagogical grammarians Celce-Murcia and Larsen- Freeman (1999) give strong support to the view that in language teaching , a formal or functional approach should not be taken to the exclusion of the other. In fact, these authors recommend adopting a three-prong approach, including meaning as a separate dimension, along with those of form and function They recognize that grammar is not merely a collection of forms 'but rather involves the three dimensions of what linguists refer to as (Morpho) syntax, semantics, and pragmatics'

Type versus Token. Descriptions of language will also have different outcomes depending on whether they account for types of linguistic elements in the abstract or for tokens of linguistic elements as they actually occur in contexts of use. Descriptions that deal with actual tokens (instances) of language use reveal more than category types: they also reveal the frequency of forms and their habitual ci-occurrence in different contexts

With the development of computers and computer analysis of language, token descriptions are now possible on a massive scale, and such descriptions have revolutionized the way we view language . A well-known example is the COBUILD Bank of English Corpus, which contains more than 500 million words (mostly from written texts). Sinclair (1985) notes that type descriptions lacking attested data do not provide an adequate source of reference for language teaching. Instead, he believes that language for pedagogical purposes should be a projection of what actually occurs as recorded by the computer analysis of text.

Discourse Grammar Corpus studies have also led to an increased interest in analyses of discourse grammar that is , analyses of the functional roles of grammatical structures in discourse. Here we are using discourse to mean the organization of language at a level above the sentence or individual conversational turn - that which connects language at the supra sentential level. In addition to the discourse context, there is also the influence that the non- linguistic co-text plays in the deployment of a speaker's grammatical resources.

Speakers and writers make grammatical choices that depend on how they construe and wish to represent the context and on how they wish to position themselves in it for Example, speakers use the past perfect tense-aspect combination in English , not only to indicate the first of two past events, but also to give a reason or justification for the main events of the narrative.

Hughes and McCarthy, note that the italicized past perfect seem to give reason or justification for the main events. In a similar vein, Celce-Murcia argues that the vast majority of grammatical choices that writers make represent rules that are discourse-sensitive including position of adverbials, passive versus active voice, indirect object and direct object, sequencing, pronominalization across independent clauses, article. The order of adverbial clauses viz-a-viz. main clauses in sentences, for instance, is not simply random. Rather, it has been found that sentences-initial adverbial clauses serve an important discourse-organizing role by linking up information in the main clause with information in the previous discourse; sentence-final clauses. in contrast, generally only expand the local main clause.

Spoken and Written Grammar Corpus studies also reveal important distinctions between spoken and written grammar Comparisons of spoken and written corpora have raised some basic questions concerning descriptions of grammar, such as how different types of spoken language can be classified how features of the spoken language is as an object of study within applied linguistics . Carter and McCarthy believe that the differences between spoken and written grammar are especially important for pedagogical grammars, since descriptions that rest on the written mode or on restricted genres and registers of spoken language are likely to omit many common features of everyday informal grammar and usage.

For instance, grammars these authors surveyed gave examples of the reporting verb in the simple past tense (X said that Y), and yet in their spoken corpus they found various examples of the reporting verb in past continuous (X was saying Y). While undoubtedly such observations are valid, leech contends that the same grammatical repertoires operate in both speech and writing, although the structures used in each may occur with different frequencies. It should also be noted that there has often been a 'written bias' in linguistic descriptions .