ESD TDR 65-157

ESTI FILE COPY

OF THE
THEORY OF
SYNTAX

S^M';

N*
ft 1/ V> |V ? ^~s
 $7.50
57/-

Beginning in the middle fifties and em-

anating largely from M.I.T., an approach
was developed to linguistic theory and
to the study of the structure of particular
languages that diverges in many respects
from modern linguistics. Although this
approach is connected to the traditional
study of language, it differs enough in its
general objectives and in its specific con-
clusions about the structure of language
to warrant a name, "generative gram-
mar," or more specifically, "transforma-
tional generative grammar."
Deficiencies of various kinds have been
discovered in the first attempts to formu-
late a theory of transformational gen-
erative grammar and in the descriptive
analysis of particular languages that mo-
tivated these formulations. At the same
time, it has become apparent that these
formulations can be extended and deep-
ened in certain ways.
The major purpose of this book is to
review these developments and to pro-
pose a reformulation of the theory of
transformational generative grammar
that takes them into account. The em-
phasis in this study is syntax; semantic
and phonological aspects of language
structure are discussed only insofar as
they bear on syntactic theory.
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax should
attract the interest of professional lin-
guists, psychologists concerned with lin-
guistics, philosophers, and English teach-
ers.

(continued on back flap)

* At 46157

ft^O UK<p S3^

 ASPECTS OF THE
THEORY OF SYNTAX
 ASPECTS OF THE
THEORY OF SYNTAX

Noam Chomsky

THE M.I.T. PRESS

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Prefcace

The idea that a language is based on a system of rules deter-

mining the interpretation of its infinitely many sentences is by
no means novel. Well over a century ago, it was expressed with
reasonable clarity by Wilhelm von Humboldt in his famous but
rarely studied introduction to general linguistics (Humboldt,
1836). His view that a language "makes infinite use of finite
means" and that its grammar must describe the processes that
make this possible is, furthermore, an outgrowth of a persistent
concern, within rationalistic philosophy of language and mind,
with this "creative" aspect of language use (for discussion, see
Chomsky, 1964, forthcoming). What is more, it seems that even
Panini's grammar can be interpreted as a fragment of such a
"generative grammar," in essentially the contemporary sense of
this term.
Nevertheless, within modern linguistics, it is chiefly within
the last few years that fairly substantial attempts have been made
to construct explicit generative grammars for particular lan-
guages and to explore their consequences. No great surprise
should be occasioned by the extensive discussion and debate
concerning the proper formulation of the theory of generative
grammar and the correct description of the languages that have
been most intensively studied. The tentative character of any
conclusions that can now be advanced concerning linguistic
theory, or, for that matter, English grammar, should certainly
be obvious to anyone working in this area. (It is sufficient to
VI PREFACE

consider the vast range of linguistic phenomena that have re-

sisted insightful formulation in any terms.) Still, it seems that
certain fairly substantial conclusions are emerging and receiving
continually increased support. In particular, the central role of
grammatical transformations in any empirically adequate gen-
erative grammar seems to me to be established quite firmly,
though there remain many questions as to the proper form
of the theory of transformational grammar.
This monograph is an exploratory study of various problems
that have arisen in the course of work on transformational gram-
mar, which is presupposed throughout as a general framework
for the discussion. What is at issue here is precisely how this
theory should be formulated. This study deals, then, with ques-
tions that are at the border of research in transformational gram-
mar. For some, definite answers will be proposed; but more
often the discussion will merely raise issues and consider pos-
sible approaches to them without reaching any definite conclu-
sion. In Chapter 3, I shall sketch briefly what seems to me, in the
light of this discussion, the most promising direction for the
theory of generative grammar to take. But I should like to reiter-
ate that this can be only a highly tentative proposal.
The monograph is organized in the following way. Chapter 1
sketches background assumptions. It contains little that is new,
but aims only to summarize and to clarify certain points that
are essential and that in some instances have been repeatedly
misunderstood. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with a variety of defects
in earlier versions of the theory of transformational grammar.
The position discussed is that of Chomsky (1957), Lees (1960a),
and many others. These writers take the syntactic component
of a transformational grammar to consist of a phrase structure
grammar as its base, and a system of transformations that map
structures generated by the base into actual sentences. This posi-
tion is restated briefly at the beginning of Chapter 3. Chapter 2
is concerned with the base of the syntactic component, and with
difficulties that arise from the assumption that it is, strictly
speaking, a phrase structure grammar. Chapter 3 suggests a revi-
sion of the transformational component and its relation to base
PREFACE Vll

structures. The notion of "grammatical transformation" itself

is taken over without change (though with some simplifications).
In Chapter 4, various residual problems are raised, and discussed
briefly and quite inconclusively.
I should like to acknowledge with gratitude the very helpful
comments of many friends and colleagues who have taken the
trouble to read earlier versions of this manuscript. In particular,
I am indebted to Morris Halle and Paul Postal, who have sug-
gested many valuable improvements, as well as to Jerrold Katz,
James McCawley, George Miller, and G. H. Matthews; and to
many students whose reactions and ideas when this material has
been presented have led to quite substantial modifications.
The writing of this book was completed while I was at Harvard
University, Center for Cognitive Studies, supported in part by
Grant No. MH 05120-04 and -05 from the National Institutes of
Health to Harvard University, and in part by a fellowship of the
American Council of Learned Societies.
NOAM CHOMSKY
Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 1964
Contents

Preface v

1 Methodological Preliminaries 3
§ 1. GENERATIVE GRAMMARS AS THEORIES OF LIN-
GUISTIC COMPETENCE 3
§ 2. TOWARD A THEORY OF PERFORMANCE IO
§ 3. THE ORGANIZATION OF A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR 15
§ 4. JUSTIFICATION OF GRAMMARS 18
§ 5. FORMAL AND SUBSTANTIVE UNIVERSALS 27
§ 6. FURTHER REMARKS ON DESCRIPTIVE AND EX-
PLANATORY THEORIES 30
§ 7. ON EVALUATION PROCEDURES 37
§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 47
§ 9. GENERATIVE CAPACITY AND ITS LINGUISTIC REL-
EVANCE 60

2 Categories and Relations in Syntactic Theory 63

§ 1. THE SCOPE OF THE BASE 63
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 64
§ 2.1. Categorization 64
§ 2.2. Functional notions 68

ix
X CONTENTS

§ 2.3. Syntactic features 75

§ 2.3.1. The problem 75
§ 2.3.2. Some formal similarities between syntax
and phonology yo
§ 2.3.3. General structure of the base component 84
§ 2-3~f. Context-sensitive subcategorization rules 90
§ 3. AN ILLUSTRATIVE FRAGMENT OF THE BASE COM-
PONENT 106
§ 4. TYPES OF BASE RULES 111
§ 4.1. Summary m
§ 4.2. Selectional rules and grammatical relations 113
§ 4.3. Further remarks on subcategorization rules 120
§ 4.4. The role of categorial rules 123

3 Deep Structures and Grammatical

Transformations 128
4 Some Residual Problems 148
§ 1. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS 148
§ /./. Degrees of grammaticalness 148
§ 1.2. Further remarks on selectional rules 753
§ 1.3. Some additional problems of semantic
theory 160
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 164
§ 2.1. Redundancy 164
§ 2.2. Inflectional processes IJO
§ 2.3. Derivational processes 184

Notes 193
Notes to Chapter 1 ipj
Notes to Chapter 2 208
Notes to Chapter 3 322
Notes to Chapter 4 227

Bibliography 237
Index 247
 ASPECTS OF THE
THEORY OF SYNTAX
Methodological Preliminaries

§ /. GENERATIVE GRAMMARS AS THEORIES OF

LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
THIS study will touch on a variety of topics in syntactic
theory and English syntax, a few in some detail, several quite
superficially, and none exhaustively. It will be concerned with
the syntactic component of a generative grammar, that is, with
the rules that specify the well-formed strings of minimal syn-
tactically functioning units (formatives) and assign structural
information of various kinds both to these strings and to strings
that deviate from well-formedness in certain respects.
The general framework within which this investigation will
proceed has been presented in many places, and some familiarity
with the theoretical and descriptive studies listed in the bibliog-
raphy is presupposed. In this chapter, I shall survey briefly some
of the main background assumptions, making no serious attempt
here to justify them but only to sketch them clearly.
Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-
listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who
knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammati-
cally irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions,
shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or character-
istic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual per-
formance. This seems to me to have been the position of the
founders of modern general linguistics, and no cogent reason for
4 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

modifying it has been offered. To study actual linguistic per-

formance, we must consider the interaction of a variety of factors,
of which the underlying competence of the speaker-hearer is
only one. In this respect, study of language is no different from
empirical investigation of other complex phenomena.
We thus make a fundamental distinction between competence
(the speaker-hearer's knowledge of his language) and performance
(the actual use of language in concrete situations). Only under
the idealization set forth in the preceding paragraph is per-
formance a direct reflection of competence. In actual fact, it
obviously could not directly reflect competence. A record of
natural speech will show numerous false starts, deviations from
rules, changes of plan in mid-course, and so on. The problem
for the linguist, as well as for the child learning the language, is
to determine from the data of performance the underlying system
of rules that has been mastered by the speaker-hearer and that
he puts to use in actual performance. Hence, in the technical
sense, linguistic theory is mentalistic, since it is concerned with
discovering a mental reality underlying actual behavior.1 Ob-
served use of language or hypothesized dispositions to respond,
habits, and so on, may provide evidence as to the nature of this
mental reality, but surely cannot constitute the actual subject
matter of linguistics, if this is to be a serious discipline. The
distinction I am noting here is related to the langue-parole
distinction of Saussure; but it is necessary to reject his concept of
langue as merely a systematic inventory of items and to return
rather to the Humboldtian conception of underlying competence
as a system of generative processes. For discussion, see Chomsky
(1964).
A grammar of a language purports to be a description of the
ideal speaker-hearer's intrinsic competence. If the grammar is,
furthermore, perfectly explicit — in other words, if it does not
rely on the intelligence of the understanding reader but rather
provides an explicit analysis of his contribution — we may
(somewhat redundantly) call it a generative grammar.
A fully adequate grammar must assign to each of an infinite
range of sentences a structural description indicating how this
§ 1. GENERATIVE GRAMMARS AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE 5

sentence is understood by the ideal speaker-hearer. This is the

traditional problem of descriptive linguistics, and traditional
grammars give a wealth of information concerning structural
descriptions of sentences. However, valuable as they obviously
are, traditional grammars are deficient in that they leave un-
expressed many of the basic regularities of the language with
which they are concerned. This fact is particularly clear on the
level of syntax, where no traditional or structuralist grammar
goes beyond classification of particular examples to the stage of
formulation of generative rules on any significant scale. An
analysis of the best existing grammars will quickly reveal that
this is a defect of principle, not just a matter of empirical detail
or logical preciseness. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that the
attempt to explore this largely uncharted territory can most
profitably begin with a study of the kind of structural information
presented by traditional grammars and the kind of linguistic
processes that have been exhibited, however informally, in
these grammars.2
The limitations of traditional and structuralist grammars
should be clearly appreciated. Although such grammars may
contain full and explicit lists of exceptions and irregularities, they
provide only examples and hints concerning the regular and
productive syntactic processes. Traditional linguistic theory was
not unaware of this fact. For example, James Beattie (1788)
remarks that
Languages, therefore, resemble men in this respect, that, though each
has peculiarities, whereby it is distinguished from every other, yet all
have certain qualities in common. The peculiarities of individual
tongues are explained in their respective grammars and dictionaries.
Those things, that all languages have in common, or that are necessary
to every language, are treated of in a science, which some have called
Universal or Philosophical grammar.
Somewhat earlier, Du Marsais defines universal and particular
grammar in the following way (1729; quoted in Sahlin, 1928,
pp. 29-30):
II y a dans la grammaire des observations qui conviennent a toutes
les langues; ces observations forment ce qu'on appelle la grammaire
0 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

generale: telles sont les remarques que Ton a faites sur les sons articules,
sur les lettres qui sont les signes de ces sons; sur la nature des mots, et
sur les differentes manieres dont ils doivent etre ou arranges ou termines
pour faire un sens. Outre ces observations generates, il y en a qui ne
sont propres qu'a une langue particuliere; et c'est ce qui forme les gram-
maires particulieres de chaque langue.

Within traditional linguistic theory, furthermore, it was clearly

understood that one of the qualities that all languages have in
common is their "creative" aspect. Thus an essential property of
language is that it provides the means for expressing indefinitely
many thoughts and for reacting appropriately in an indefinite
range of new situations (for references, cf. Chomsky, 1964, forth-
coming). The grammar of a particular language, then, is to be
supplemented by a universal grammar that accommodates the
creative aspect of language use and expresses the deep-seated
regularities which, being universal, are omitted from the
grammar itself. Therefore it is quite proper for a grammar to
discuss only exceptions and irregularities in any detail. It is only
when supplemented by a universal grammar that the grammar
of a language provides a full account of the speaker-hearer's
competence.
Modern linguistics, however, has not explicitly recognized the
necessity for supplementing a "particular grammar" of a lan-
guage by a universal grammar if it is to achieve descriptive
adequacy. It has, in fact, characteristically rejected the study
of universal grammar as misguided; and, as noted before, it has
not attempted to deal with the creative aspect of language use.
It thus suggests no way to overcome the fundamental descriptive
inadequacy of structuralist grammars.
Another reason for the failure of traditional grammars,
particular or universal, to attempt a precise statement of regular
processes of sentence formation and sentence interpretation lay
in the widely held belief that there is a "natural order of
thoughts" that is mirrored by the order of words. Hence, the
rules of sentence formation do not really belong to grammar but
to some other subject in which the "order of thoughts" is
studied. Thus in the Grammaire generate et raisonnee (Lancelot
§ 1. GENERATIVE GRAMMARS AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE 7

et al., 1660) it is asserted that, aside from figurative speech, the

sequence of words follows an "ordre naturel," which conforms
"a l'expression naturelle de nos pensees." Consequently, few gram-
matical rules need be formulated beyond the rules of ellipsis,
inversion, and so on, which determine the figurative use of lan-
guage. The same view appears in many forms and variants. To
mention just one additional example, in an interesting essay
devoted largely to the question of how the simultaneous and
sequential array of ideas is reflected in the order of words, Diderot
concludes that French is unique among languages in the degree
to which the order of words corresponds to the natural order of
thoughts and ideas (Diderot, 1751). Thus "quel que soit 1'ordre
des termes dans une langue ancienne ou moderne, l'esprit de
l'e-crivain a suivi 1'ordre didactique de la syntaxe franchise"
(p. 390); "Nous disons les choses en francais, comme l'esprit est
force' de les conside-rer en quelque langue qu'on derive" (p. 371).
With admirable consistency he goes on to conclude that "notre
langue pedestre a sur les autres l'avantage de l'utile sur
l'agr^able" (p. 372); thus French is appropriate for the sciences,
whereas Greek, Latin, Italian, and English "sont plus avanta-
geuses pour les lettres." Moreover,
le bons sens choisirait la langue francaise; mais . . . l'imagination et les
passions donneront la preference aux langues anciennes et a celles de
nos voisins . . . il faut parler francais dans la soci£t£ et dans les 6coles
de philosophic; et grec, latin, anglais, dans les chaires et sur les thea-
tres; . . . notre langue sera celle de la verity, si jamais elle revient sur
la terre; et. . . la grecque, la latine et les autres seront les langues de la
fable et du mensonge. Le francais est fait pour instruire, eclairer et con-
vaincre; le grec, le latin, l'italien, l'anglais, pour persuader, emouvoir et
tromper: parlez grec, latin, italien au peuple; mais parlez francais au
sage. (pp. y]i-tfi)
In any event, insofar as the order of words is determined by
factors independent of language, it is not necessary to describe
it in a particular or universal grammar, and we therefore have
principled grounds for excluding an explicit formulation of
syntactic processes from grammar. It is worth noting that this
naive view of language structure persists to modern times in
8 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

various forms, for example, in Saussure's image of a sequence of

expressions corresponding to an amorphous sequence of concepts
or in the common characterization of language use as merely a
matter of use of words and phrases (for example, Ryle, 1953).
But the fundamental reason for this inadequacy of traditional
grammars is a more technical one. Although it was well under-
stood that linguistic processes are in some sense "creative," the
technical devices for expressing a system of recursive processes
were simply not available until much more recently. In fact, a
real understanding of how a language can (in Humboldt's words)
"make infinite use of finite means" has developed only within
the last thirty years, in the course of studies in the foundations of
mathematics. Now that these insights are readily available it is
possible to return to the problems that were raised, but not
solved, in traditional linguistic theory, and to attempt an explicit
formulation of the "creative" processes of language. There is,
in short, no longer a technical barrier to the full-scale study of
generative grammars.
Returning to the main theme, by a generative grammar I
mean simply a system of rules that in some explicit and well-
defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences. Obviously,
every speaker of a language has mastered and internalized a gen-
erative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language.
This is not to say that he is aware of the rules of the grammar or
even that he can become aware of them, or that his statements
about his intuitive knowledge of the language are necessarily
accurate. Any interesting generative grammar will be dealing,
for the most part, with mental processes that are far beyond the
level of actual or even potential consciousness; furthermore, it is
quite apparent that a speaker's reports and viewpoints about his
behavior and his competence may be in error. Thus a generative
grammar attempts to specify what the speaker actually knows,
not what he may report about his knowledge. Similarly, a theory
of visual perception would attempt to account for what a person
actually sees and the mechanisms that determine this rather than
his statements about what he sees and why, though these state-
§ 1. GENERATIVE GRAMMARS AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE 9

ments may provide useful, in fact, compelling evidence for

such a theory.
To avoid what has been a continuing misunderstanding, it is
perhaps worth while to reiterate that a generative grammar is
not a model for a speaker or a hearer. It attempts to characterize
in the most neutral possible terms the knowledge of the language
that provides the basis for actual use of language by a speaker-
hearer. When we speak of a grammar as generating a sentence
with a certain structural description, we mean simply that the
grammar assigns this structural description to the sentence.
When we say that a sentence has a certain derivation with respect
to a particular generative grammar, we say nothing about how
the speaker or hearer might proceed, in some practical or
efficient way, to construct such a derivation. These questions
belong to the theory of language use — the theory of per-
formance. No doubt, a reasonable model of language use will
incorporate, as a basic component, the generative grammar that
expresses the speaker-hearer's knowledge of the language; but
this generative grammar does not, in itself, prescribe the char-
acter or functioning of a perceptual model or a model of speech
production. For various attempts to clarify this point, see
Chomsky (1957), Gleason (1961), Miller and Chomsky (1963), and
many other publications.
Confusion over this matter has been sufficiently persistent to
suggest that a terminological change might be in order. Never-
theless, I think that the term "generative grammar" is completely
appropriate, and have therefore continued to use it. The term
"generate" is familiar in the sense intended here in logic,
particularly in Post's theory of combinatorial systems. Further-
more, "generate" seems to be the most appropriate translation
for Humboldt's term erzeugcn, which he frequently uses, it seems,
in essentially the sense here intended. Since this use of the term
"generate" is well established both in logic and in the tradition
of linguistic theory, I can see no reason for a revision of
terminology.
10 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

§ 2. TOWARD A THEORY OF PERFORMANCE

There seems to be little reason to question the traditional view
that investigation of performance will proceed only so far
as understanding of underlying competence permits. Further-
more, recent work on performance seems to give new support to
this assumption. To my knowledge, the only concrete results
that have been achieved and the only clear suggestions that have
been put forth concerning the theory of performance, outside of
phonetics, have come from studies of performance models that
incorporate generative grammars of specific kinds — that is, from
studies that have been based on assumptions about underlying
competence.8 In particular, there are some suggestive observations
concerning limitations on performance imposed by organization
of memory and bounds on memory, and concerning the ex-
ploitation of grammatical devices to form deviant sentences of
various types. The latter question is one to which we shall return
in Chapters 2 and 4. To clarify further the distinction between
competence and performance, it may be useful to summarize
briefly some of the suggestions and results that have appeared in
the last few years in the study of performance models with limita-
tions of memory, time, and access.
For the purposes of this discussion, let us use the term "ac-
ceptable" to refer to utterances that are perfectly natural and
immediately comprehensible without paper-and-pencil analysis,
and in no way bizarre or outlandish. Obviously, acceptability
will be a matter of degree, along various dimensions. One could
go on to propose various operational tests to specify the notion
more precisely (for example, rapidity, correctness, and uniformity
of recall and recognition, normalcy of intonation).4 For present
purposes, it is unnecessary to delimit it more carefully. To illus-
trate, the sentences of (1) are somewhat more acceptable, in the
intended sense, than those of (2):
(1) (i) I called up the man who wrote the book that you told me
about
(ii) quite a few of the students who you met who come from
New York are friends of mine
§ 2. TOWARD A THEORY OF PERFORMANCE 11

(iii) John, Bill, Tom, and several of their friends visited us

last night
(2) (i) I called the man who wrote the book that you told me
about up
(ii) the man who the boy who the students recognized pointed
out is a friend of mine
The more acceptable sentences are those that are more likely to
be produced, more easily understood, less clumsy, and in some
sense more natural.6 The unacceptable sentences one would tend
to avoid and replace by more acceptable variants, wherever
possible, in actual discourse.
The notion "acceptable" is not to be confused with "gram-
matical." Acceptability is a concept that belongs to the study of
performance, whereas grammaticalness belongs to the study of
competence. The sentences of (2) are low on the scale of ac-
ceptability but high on the scale of grammaticalness, in the
technical sense of this term. That is, the generative rules of the
language assign an interpretation to them in exactly the way in
which they assign an interpretation to the somewhat more ac-
ceptable sentences of (1). Like acceptability, grammaticalness is,
no doubt, a matter of degree (cf. Chomsky, 1955, 1957, 1961), but
the scales of grammaticalness and acceptability do not coincide.
Grammaticalness is only one of many factors that interact to
determine acceptability. Correspondingly, although one might
propose various operational tests for acceptability, it is unlikely
that a necessary and sufficient operational criterion might be
invented for the much more abstract and far more important
notion of grammaticalness. The unacceptable grammatical sen-
tences often cannot be used, for reasons having to do, not with
grammar, but rather with memory limitations, intonational and
stylistic factors, "iconic" elements of discourse (for example, a
tendency to place logical subject and object early rather than
late; cf. note 32, Chapter 2, and note 9, Chapter 3), and so on.
Note that it would be quite impossible to characterize the un-
acceptable sentences in grammatical terms. For example, we can-
not formulate particular rules of the grammar in such a way as
12 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

to exclude them. Nor, obviously, can we exclude them by limiting

the number of reapplications of grammatical rules in the gen-
eration of a sentence, since unacceptability can just as well arise
from application of distinct rules, each being applied only once.
In fact, it is clear that we can characterize unacceptable sentences
only in terms of some "global" property of derivations and the
structures they define — a property that is attributable, not to a
particular rule, but rather to the way in which the rules inter-
relate in a derivation.
This observation suggests that the study of performance could
profitably begin with an investigation of the acceptability of the
simplest formal structures in grammatical sentences. The most
obvious formal property of utterances is their bracketing into
constituents of various types, that is, the "tree structure" as-
sociated with them. Among such structures we can distinguish
various kinds — for example, those to which we give the follow-
ing conventional technical names, for the purposes of this
discussion:
(3) (i) nested constructions
(ii) self-embedded constructions
(iii) multiple-branching constructions
(iv) left-branching constructions
(v) right-branching constructions
The phrases A and B form a nested construction if A falls
totally within B, with some nonnull element to its left within B
and some nonnull element to its right within B. Thus the phrase
"the man who wrote the book that you told me about" is nested
in the phrase "called the man who wrote the book that you told
me about up," in (2i). The phrase A is self-embedded in B if A
is nested in B and, furthermore, A is a phrase of the same type
as B. Thus "who the students recognized" is self-embedded in
"who the boy who the students recognized pointed out," in (211),
since both are relative clauses. Thus nesting has to do with
bracketing, and self-embedding with labeling of brackets as well.
A multiple-branching construction is one with no internal
structure. In (1 iii), the Subject Noun Phrase is multiple-branch-
§ 2. TOWARD A THEORY OF PERFORMANCE 13

ing, since "John," "Bill," "Tom," and "several of their friends"

are its immediate constituents, and have no further association
among themselves. In terms of bracketing, a multiple-branching
construction has the form [[^][B]***[M]]. A left-branching struc-
ture is of the form [[[•'•]•"]'"]— f°r example, in English, such
indefinitely iterable structures as [[[[/oJm]'$ brother's father]'s
uncle] or [[[the man who you met] from Boston] who was on the
train], or (iii), which combines several kinds of left-branching.
Right-branching structures are those with the opposite prop-
erty— for example, the Direct-Object of (li) or [this is [the cat
that caught [the rat that stole the cheese]]].
The effect of these superficial aspects of sentence structure on
performance has been a topic of study since almost the very
inception of recent work on generative grammar, and there are
some suggestive observations concerning their role in determin-
ing acceptability (that is, their role in limiting performance).
Summarizing this work briefly, the following observations seem
plausible:
(4) (i) repeated nesting contributes to unacceptability
(ii) self-embedding contributes still more radically to unac-
ceptability
(iii) multiple-branching constructions are optimal in accepta-
bility
(iv) nesting of a long and complex element reduces accepta-
bility
(v) there are no clear examples of unacceptability involving
only left-branching or only right-branching, although these
constructions are unnatural in other ways — thus, for
example, in reading the right-branching construction
"this is the cat that caught the rat that stole the cheese,"
the intonation breaks are ordinarily inserted in the wrong
places (that is, after "cat" and "rat," instead of where the
main brackets appear)
In some measure, these phenomena are easily explained. Thus
it is known (cf. Chomsky, 1959a; and for discussion, Chomsky,
1961, and Miller and Chomsky, 1963) that an optimal perceptual
14 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

device, even with a bounded memory, can accept unbounded

left-branching and right-branching structures, though nested
(hence ultimately self-embedded) structures go beyond its
memory capacity. Thus case (4i) is simply a consequence of
finiteness of memory, and the unacceptability of such examples
as (2ii) raises no problem.
If (4ii) is correct,6 then we have evidence for a conclusion about
organization of memory that goes beyond the triviality that it
must be finite in size. An optimal finite perceptual device of the
type discussed in Chomsky (1959a) need have no more difficulty
with self-embedding than with other kinds of nesting (see Bar-
Hillel, Kasher, and Shamir, 1963, for a discussion of this point).
To account for the greater unacceptability of self-embedding
(assuming this to be a fact), we must add other conditions on the
perceptual device beyond mere limitation of memory. We might
assume, for example, that the perceptual device has a stock of
analytic procedures available to it, one corresponding to each
kind of phrase, and that it is organized in such a way that it is
unable (or finds it difficult) to utilize a procedure <p while it is
in the course of executing (p. This is not a necessary feature of
a perceptual model, but it is a rather plausible one, and it would
account for (4ii). See, in this connection, Miller and Isard (1964).
The high acceptability of multiple-branching, as in case (4iii),
is easily explained on the rather plausible assumption that the
ratio of number of phrases to number of formatives (the node-to-
terminal node ratio, in a tree-diagram of a sentence) is a rough
measure of the amount of computation that has to be performed
in analysis. Thus multiple coordination would be the simplest
kind of construction for an analytic device — it would impose the
least strain on memory.7 For discussion, see Miller and Chomsky
0963)-
Case (4iv) suggests decay of memory, perhaps, but raises un-
solved problems (see Chomsky, 1961, note 19).
Case (4V) follows from the result about optimal perceptual
models mentioned earlier. But it is unclear why left- and right-
branching structures should become unnatural after a certain
point, if they actually do.8
§ 3- THE ORGANIZATION OF A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR 15

One might ask whether attention to less superficial aspects

of grammatical structure than those of (3) could lead to somewhat
deeper conclusions about performance models. This seems
entirely possible. For example, in Miller and Chomsky (1963)
some syntactic and perceptual considerations are adduced in
support of a suggestion (which is, to be sure, highly speculative)
as to the somewhat more detailed organization of a perceptual
device. In general, it seems that the study of performance models
incorporating generative grammars may be a fruitful study;
furthermore, it is difficult to imagine any other basis on which
a theory of performance might develop.
There has been a fair amount of criticism of work in generative
grammar on the grounds that it slights study of performance in
favor of study of underlying competence. The facts, however,
seem to be that the only studies of performance, outside of
phonetics (but see note 3), are those carried out as a by-product
of work in generative grammar. In particular, the study of
memory limitations just summarized and the study of deviation
from rules, as a stylistic device, to which we return in Chapters
2 and 4, have developed in this way. Furthermore, it seems that
these lines of investigation can provide some insight into per-
formance. Consequently, this criticism is unwarranted, and,
furthermore, completely misdirected. It is the descriptivist
limitation-in-principle to classification and organization of data,
to "extracting patterns" from a corpus of observed speech, to
describing "speech habits" or "habit structures," insofar as these
may exist, etc., that precludes the development of a theory of
actual performance.

§ 5. THE ORGANIZATION OF A GENERATIVE

GRAMMAR
Returning now to the question of competence and the gen-
erative grammars that purport to describe it, we stress again that
knowledge of a language involves the implicit ability to under-
stand indefinitely many sentences.9 Hence, a generative grammar
must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an in-
l6 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

definitely large number of structures. This system of rules can

be analyzed into the three major components of a generative
grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic com-
ponents.10
The syntactic component specifies an infinite set of abstract
formal objects, each of which incorporates all information
relevant to a single interpretation of a particular sentence.11
Since I shall be concerned here only with the syntactic com-
ponent, I shall use the term "sentence" to refer to strings of
formatives rather than to strings of phones. It will be recalled that
a string of formatives specifies a string of phones uniquely (up
to free variation), but not conversely.
The phonological component of a grammar determines the
phonetic form of a sentence generated by the syntactic rules.
That is, it relates a structure generated by the syntactic com-
ponent to a phonetically represented signal. The semantic com-
ponent determines the semantic interpretation of a sentence.
That is, it relates a structure generated by the syntactic com-
ponent to a certain semantic representation. Both the phono-
logical and semantic components are therefore purely inter-
pretive. Each utilizes information provided by the syntactic
component concerning formatives, their inherent properties, and
their interrelations in a given sentence. Consequently, the syn-
tactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence,
a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and
a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.
The first of these is interpreted by the semantic component; the
second, by the phonological component.12
It might be supposed that surface structure and deep structure
will always be identical. In fact, one might briefly characterize
the syntactic theories that have arisen in modern structural
(taxonomic) linguistics as based on the assumption that deep and
surface structures are actually the same (cf. Postal, ig64a, Chomsky,
1964). The central idea of transformational grammar is that they
are, in general, distinct and that the surface structure is deter-
mined by repeated application of certain formal operations
called "grammatical transformations" to objects of a more
§3- THE ORGANIZATION OF A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR 17

elementary sort. If this is true (as I assume, henceforth), then the

syntactic component must generate deep and surface structures,
for each sentence, and must interrelate them. This idea has been
clarified substantially in recent work, in ways that will be
described later. In Chapter 3, I shall present a specific and, in
part, new proposal as to precisely how it should be formulated.
For the moment, it is sufficient to observe that although the
Immediate Constituent analysis (labeled bracketing) of an actual
string of formatives may be adequate as an account of surface
structure, it is certainly not adequate as an account of deep
structure. My concern in this book is primarily with deep struc-
ture and, in particular, with the elementary objects of which
deep structure is constituted.
To clarify exposition, I shall use the following terminology,
with occasional revisions as the discussion proceeds.
The base of the syntactic component is a system of rules that
generate a highly restricted (perhaps finite) set of basic strings,
each with an associated structural description called a base
Phrase-marker. These base Phrase-markers are the elementary
units of which deep structures are constituted. I shall assume
that no ambiguity is introduced by rules of the base. This
assumption seems to me correct, but has no important conse-
quences for what follows here, though it simplifies exposition.
Underlying each sentence of the language there is a sequence
of base Phrase-markers, each generated by the base of the
syntactic component. I shall refer to this sequence as the basis
of the sentence that it underlies.
In addition to its base, the syntactic component of a generative
grammar contains a transformational subcomponent. This is
concerned with generating a sentence, with its surface structure,
from its basis. Some familiarity with the operation and effects of
transformational rules is henceforth presupposed.
Since the base generates only a restricted set of base Phrase-
markers, most sentences will have a sequence of such objects as
an underlying basis. Among the sentences with a single base
Phrase-marker as basis, we can delimit a proper subset called
"kernel sentences." These are sentences of a particularly simple
l8 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

sort that involve a minimum of transformational apparatus in

their generation. The notion "kernel sentence" has, I think, an
important intuitive significance, but since kernel sentences play
no distinctive role in generation or interpretation of sentences,
I shall say nothing more about them here. One must be careful
not to confuse kernel sentences with the basic strings that under-
lie them. The basic strings and base Phrase-markers do, it seems,
play a distinctive and crucial role in language use.
Since transformations will not be considered here in detail,
no careful distinction will be made, in the case of a sentence with
a single element in its basis, between the basic string underlying
this sentence and the sentence itself. In other words, at many
points in the exposition I shall make the tacit simplifying (and
contrary-to-fact) assumption that the underlying basic string is
the sentence, in this case, and that the base Phrase-marker is the
surface structure as well as the deep structure. I shall try to
select examples in such a way as to minimize possible confusion,
but the simplifying assumption should be borne in mind through-
out.

§ 4. JUSTIFICATION OF GRAMMARS
Before entering directly into an investigation of the syntactic
component of a generative grammar, it is important to give some
thought to several methodological questions of justification
and adequacy.
There is, first of all, the question of how one is to obtain
information about the speaker-hearer's competence, about his
knowledge of the language. Like most facts of interest and
importance, this is neither presented for direct observation nor
extractable from data by inductive procedures of any known
sort. Clearly, the actual data of linguistic performance will
provide much evidence for determining the correctness of
hypotheses about underlying linguistic structure, along with
introspective reports (by the native speaker, or the linguist who
has learned the language). This is the position that is universally
adopted in practice, although there are methodological discus-
§ 4- JUSTIFICATION OF GRAMMARS lg

sions that seem to imply a reluctance to use observed perform-

ance or introspective reports as evidence for some underlying
reality.
In brief, it is unfortunately the case that no adequate for-
malizable techniques are known for obtaining reliable informa-
tion concerning the facts of linguistic structure (nor is this
particularly surprising). There are, in other words, very few
reliable experimental or data-processing procedures for obtaining
significant information concerning the linguistic intuition of the
native speaker. It is important to bear in mind that when an
operational procedure is proposed, it must be tested for adequacy
(exactly as a theory of linguistic intuition — a grammar — must
be tested for adequacy) by measuring it against the standard
provided by the tacit knowledge that it attempts to specify
and describe. Thus a proposed operational test for, say, segmenta-
tion into words, must meet the empirical condition of conform-
ing, in a mass of crucial and clear cases, to the linguistic intuition
of the native speaker concerning such elements. Otherwise, it is
without value. The same, obviously, is true in the case of any
proposed operational procedure or any proposed grammatical
description. If operational procedures were available that met
this test, we might be justified in relying on their results in
unclear and difficult cases. This remains a hope for the future
rather than a present reality, however. This is the objective situa-
tion of present-day linguistic work; allusions to presumably well-
known "procedures of elicitation" or "objective methods" simply
obscure the actual situation in which linguistic work must, for
the present, proceed. Furthermore, there is no reason to expect
that reliable operational criteria for the deeper and more
important theoretical notions of linguistics (such as "gram-
maticalness" and "paraphrase") will ever be forthcoming.
Even though few reliable operational procedures have been
developed, the theoretical (that is, grammatical) investigation of
the knowledge of the native speaker can proceed perfectly well.
The critical problem for grammatical theory today is not a
paucity of evidence but rather the inadequacy of present theories
of language to account for masses of evidence that are hardly
20 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

open to serious question. The problem for the grammarian is to

construct a description and, where possible, an explanation for the
enormous mass of unquestionable data concerning the linguistic
intuition of the native speaker (often, himself); the problem for
one concerned with operational procedures is to develop tests
that give the correct results and make relevant distinctions.
Neither the study of grammar nor the attempt to develop useful
tests is hampered by lack of evidence with which to check results,
for the present. We may hope that these efforts will converge,
but they must obviously converge on the tacit knowledge of the
native speaker if they are to be of any significance.
One may ask whether the necessity for present-day linguistics
to give such priority to introspective evidence and to the
linguistic intuition of the native speaker excludes it from the
domain of science. The answer to this essentially terminological
question seems to have no bearing at all on any serious issue. At
most, it determines how we shall denote the kind of research
that can be effectively carried out in the present state of our
technique and understanding. However, this terminological
question actually does relate to a different issue of some interest,
namely the question whether the important feature of the success-
ful sciences has been their search for insight or their concern for
objectivity. The social and behavioral sciences provide ample
evidence that objectivity can be pursued with little consequent
gain in insight and understanding. On the other hand, a good
case can be made for the view that the natural sciences have, by
and large, sought objectivity primarily insofar as it is a tool for
gaining insight (for providing phenomena that can suggest or
test deeper explanatory hypotheses).
In any event, at a given stage of investigation, one whose con-
cern is for insight and understanding (rather than for objectivity
as a goal in itself) must ask whether or to what extent a wider
range and more exact description of phenomena is relevant to
solving the problems that he faces. In linguistics, it seems to me
that sharpening of the data by more objective tests is a matter of
small importance for the problems at hand. One who disagrees
with this estimate of the present situation in linguistics can
§ 4- JUSTIFICATION OF GRAMMARS 81

justify his belief in the current importance of more objective

operational tests by showing how they can lead to new and
deeper understanding of linguistic structure. Perhaps the day
will come when the kinds of data that we now can obtain in
abundance will be insufficient to resolve deeper questions con-
cerning the structure of language. However, many questions that
can realistically and significantly be formulated today do not
demand evidence of a kind that is unavailable or unattainable
without significant improvements in objectivity of experimental
technique.
Although there is no way to avoid the traditional assumption
that the speaker-hearer's linguistic intuition is the ultimate
standard that determines the accuracy of any proposed grammar,
linguistic theory, or operational test, it must be emphasized, once
again, that this tacit knowledge may very well not be immediately
available to the user of the language. To eliminate what has
seemed to some an air of paradox in this remark, let me illustrate
with a few examples.
If a sentence such as "flying planes can be dangerous" is
presented in an appropriately constructed context, the listener
will interpret it immediately in a unique way, and will fail to
detect the ambiguity. In fact, he may reject the second inter-
pretation, when this is pointed out to him, as forced or un-
natural (independently of which interpretation he originally
selected under contextual pressure). Nevertheless, his intuitive
knowledge of the language is clearly such that both of the inter-
pretations (corresponding to "flying planes are dangerous" and
"flying planes is dangerous") are assigned to the sentence by the
grammar he has internalized in some form.
In the case just mentioned, the ambiguity may be fairly trans-
parent. But consider such a sentence as
(5) I had a book stolen
Few hearers may be aware of the fact that their internalized
grammar in fact provides at least three structural descriptions
for this sentence. Nevertheless, this fact can be brought to
consciousness by consideration of slight elaborations of sentence
22 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

(5), for example: (i) "I had a book stolen from my car when I
stupidly left the window open," that is, "someone stole a book
from my car"; (ii) "I had a book stolen from his library by a
professional thief who I hired to do the job," that is, "I had some-
one steal a book"; (iii) "I almost had a book stolen, but they
caught me leaving the library with it," that is, "I had almost
succeeded in stealing a book." In bringing to consciousness the
triple ambiguity of (5) in this way, we present no new informa-
tion to the hearer and teach him nothing new about his language
but simply arrange matters in such a way that his linguistic
intuition, previously obscured, becomes evident to him.
As a final illustration, consider the sentences
(6) I persuaded John to leave
(7) I expected John to leave
The first impression of the hearer may be that these sentences
receive the same structural analysis. Even fairly careful thought
may fail to show him that his internalized grammar assigns very
different syntactic descriptions to these sentences. In fact, so far
as I have been able to discover, no English grammar has pointed
out the fundamental distinction between these two constructions
(in particular, my own sketches of English grammar in Chomsky,
1955, 1962a, failed to note this). However, it is clear that the
sentences (6) and (7) are not parallel in structure. The difference
can be brought out by consideration of the sentences
(8) (i) I persuaded a specialist to examine John
(ii) I persuaded John to be examined by a specialist
(9) (i) I expected a specialist to examine John
(ii) I expected John to be examined by a specialist
The sentences (91) and (gii) are "cognitively synonymous": one is
true if and only if the other is true. But no variety of even weak
paraphrase holds between (8i) and (8ii). Thus (8i) can be true or
false quite independently of the truth or falsity of (8ii). What-
ever difference of connotation or "topic" or emphasis one may
find between (gi) and (gii) is just the difference that exists be-
§ 4- JUSTIFICATION OF GRAMMARS 2$

tween the active sentence "a specialist will examine John" and
its passive counterpart "John will be examined by a specialist."
This is not at all the case with respect to (8), however. In fact, the
underlying deep structure for (6) and (8ii) must show that "John"
is the Direct-Object of the Verb Phrase as well as the grammatical
Subject of the embedded sentence. Furthermore, in (8ii) "John"
is the logical Direct-Object of the embedded sentence, whereas
in (8i) the phrase "a specialist" is the Direct-Object of the Verb
Phrase and the logical Subject of the embedded sentence. In (7),
(gi), and (gii), however, the Noun Phrases "John," "a specialist,"
and "John," respectively, have no grammatical functions other
than those that are internal to the embedded sentence; in par-
ticular, "John" is the logical Direct-Object and "a specialist" the
logical Subject in the embedded sentences of (9). Thus the under-
lying deep structures for (8i), (8ii), (gi), and (gii) are, respectively,
the following:13
(10) (i) Noun Phrase — Verb — Noun Phrase — Sentence
(/ — persuaded — a specialist — a specialist will examine
John)
(ii) Noun Phrase — Verb — Noun Phrase — Sentence
(/ — persuaded — John — a specialist will examine John)
(11) (i) Noun Phrase — Verb — Sentence
(/ — expected — a specialist will examine John)
(ii) Noun Phrase — Verb — Sentence
(/ — expected — a specialist will examine John)

In the case of (ioii) and (1 lii), the passive transformation will

apply to the embedded sentence, and in all four cases other
operations will give the final surface forms of (8) and (g). The
important point in the present connection is that (8i) differs
from (8ii) in underlying structure, although (gi) and (gii) are
essentially the same in underlying structure. This accounts for
the difference in meaning. Notice, in support of this difference in
analysis, that we can have "I persuaded John that (of the fact
that) Sentence," but not "I expected John that (of the fact that)
Sentence."
24 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

The example (6)-(7) serves to illustrate two important points.

First, it shows how unrevealing surface structure may be as to
underlying deep structure. Thus (6) and (7) are the same in
surface structure, but very different in the deep structure that
underlies them and determines their semantic interpretations.
Second, it illustrates the elusiveness of the speaker's tacit knowl-
edge. Until such examples as (8) and (9) are adduced, it may not
be in the least clear to a speaker of English that the grammar
that he has internalized in fact assigns very different syntactic
analyses to the superficially analogous sentences (6) and (7).
In short, we must be careful not to overlook the fact that
surface similarities may hide underlying distinctions of a funda-
mental nature, and that it may be necessary to guide and draw
out the speaker's intuition in perhaps fairly subtle ways before
we can determine what is the actual character of his knowledge
of his language or of anything else. Neither point is new (the
former is a commonplace of traditional linguistic theory and
analytic philosophy; the latter is as old as Plato's Mend); both are
too often overlooked.
A grammar can be regarded as a theory of a language; it is
descriptively adequate to the extent that it correctly describes the
intrinsic competence of the idealized native speaker. The struc-
tural descriptions assigned to sentences by the grammar, the
distinctions that it makes between well-formed and deviant, and
so on, must, for descriptive adequacy, correspond to the linguistic
intuition of the native speaker (whether or not he may be
immediately aware of this) in a substantial and significant class
of crucial cases.
A linguistic theory must contain a definition of "grammar,"
that is, a specification of the class of potential grammars. We
may, correspondingly, say that a linguistic theory is descriptively
adequate if it makes a descriptively adequate grammar available
for each natural language.
Although even descriptive adequacy on a large scale is by no
means easy to approach, it is crucial for the productive develop-
ment of linguistic theory that much higher goals than this be
pursued. To facilitate the clear formulation of deeper questions,
§ 4- JUSTIFICATION OF GRAMMARS 25

it is useful to consider the abstract problem of constructing an

"acquisition model" for language, that is, a theory of language
learning or grammar construction. Clearly, a child who has
learned a language has developed an internal representation of a
system of rules that determine how sentences are to be formed,
used, and understood. Using the term "grammar" with a sys-
tematic ambiguity (to refer, first, to the native speaker's internally
represented "theory of his language" and, second, to the linguist's
account of this), we can say that the child has developed and
internally represented a generative grammar, in the sense de-
scribed. He has done this on the basis of observation of what we
may call primary linguistic data. This must include examples
of linguistic performance that are taken to be well-formed sen-
tences, and may include also examples designated as non-
sentences, and no doubt much other information of the sort that
is required for language learning, whatever this may be (see pp.
31-32). On the basis of such data, the child constructs a grammar
— that is, a theory of the language of which the well-formed
sentences of the primary linguistic data constitute a small
sample.14 To learn a language, then, the child must have a
method for devising an appropriate grammar, given primary
linguistic data. As a precondition for language learning, he
must possess, first, a linguistic theory that specifies the form of the
grammar of a possible human language, and, second, a strategy
for selecting a grammar of the appropriate form that is com-
patible with the primary linguistic data. As a long-range task for
general linguistics, we might set the problem of developing an
account of this innate linguistic theory that provides the basis
for language learning. (Note that we are again using the term
"theory" — in this case "theory of language" rather than "theory
of a particular language" — with a systematic ambiguity, to
refer both to the child's innate predisposition to learn a language
of a certain type and to the linguist's account of this.)
To the extent that a linguistic theory succeeds in selecting a
descriptively adequate grammar on the basis of primary linguistic
data, we can say that it meets the condition of explanatory ade-
quacy. That is, to this extent, it offers an explanation for the
26 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

intuition of the native speaker on the basis of an empirical

hypothesis concerning the innate predisposition of the child to
develop a certain kind of theory to deal with the evidence
presented to him. Any such hypothesis can be falsified (all too
easily, in actual fact) by showing that it fails to provide a
descriptively adequate grammar for primary linguistic data
from some other language — evidently the child is not pre-
disposed to learn one language rather than another. It is sup-
ported when it does provide an adequate explanation for some
aspect of linguistic structure, an account of the way in which
such knowledge might have been obtained.
Clearly, it would be Utopian to expect to achieve explanatory
adequacy on a large scale in the present state of linguistics.
Nevertheless, considerations of explanatory adequacy are often
critical for advancing linguistic theory. Gross coverage of a large
mass of data can often be attained by conflicting theories; for
precisely this reason it is not, in itself, an achievement of any
particular theoretical interest or importance. As in any other
field, the important problem in linguistics is to discover a
complex of data that differentiates between conflicting concep-
tions of linguistic structure in that one of these conflicting
theories can describe these data only by ad hoc means whereas
the other can explain it on the basis of some empirical assump-
tion about the form of language. Such small-scale studies of
explanatory adequacy have, in fact, provided most of the evi-
dence that has any serious bearing on the nature of linguistic
structure. Thus whether we are comparing radically different
theories of grammar or trying to determine the correctness
of some particular aspect of one such theory, it is questions of
explanatory adequacy that must, quite often, bear the burden of
justification. This remark is in no way inconsistent with the fact
that explanatory adequacy on a large scale is out of reach, for the
present. It simply brings out the highly tentative character of
any attempt to justify an empirical claim about linguistic
structure.
To summarize briefly, there are two respects in which one can
speak of "justifying a generative grammar." On one level (that
§ 5- FORMAL AND SUBSTANTIVE UNIVERSALS 27

of descriptive adequacy), the grammar is justified to the extent

that it correctly describes its object, namely the linguistic intui-
tion — the tacit competence — of the native speaker. In this
sense, the grammar is justified on external grounds, on grounds
of correspondence to linguistic fact. On a much deeper and hence
much more rarely attainable level (that of explanatory adequacy),
a grammar is justified to the extent that it is a principled descrip-
tively adequate system, in that the linguistic theory with which
it is associated selects this grammar over others, given primary
linguistic data with which all are compatible. In this sense, the
grammar is justified on internal grounds, on grounds of its rela-
tion to a linguistic theory that constitutes an explanatory hypoth-
esis about the form of language as such. The problem of
internal justification — of explanatory adequacy — is essentially
the problem of constructing a theory of language acquisition, an
account of the specific innate abilities that make this achieve-
ment possible.

§ 5. FORMAL AND SUBSTANTIVE UNIVERSALS

A theory of linguistic structure that aims for explanatory
adequacy incorporates an account of linguistic universals, and
it attributes tacit knowledge of these universals to the child. It
proposes, then, that the child approaches the data with the
presumption that they are drawn from a language of a certain
antecedently well-defined type, his problem being to determine
which of the (humanly) possible languages is that of the com-
munity in which he is placed. Language learning would be
impossible unless this were the case. The important question is:
What are the initial assumptions concerning the nature of
language that the child brings to language learning, and how
detailed and specific is the innate schema (the general definition
of "grammar") that gradually becomes more explicit and differ-
entiated as the child learns the language? For the present we
cannot come at all close to making a hypothesis about innate
schemata that is rich, detailed, and specific enough to account
for the fact of language acquisition. Consequently, the main
28 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

task of linguistic theory must be to develop an account of

linguistic universals that, on the one hand, will not be falsified
by the actual diversity of languages and, on the other, will be
sufficiently rich and explicit to account for the rapidity and
uniformity of language learning, and the remarkable com-
plexity and range of the generative grammars that are the
product of language learning.
The study of linguistic universals is the study of the prop-
erties of any generative grammar for a natural language. Partic-
ular assumptions about linguistic universals may pertain to
either the syntactic, semantic, or phonological component, or to
interrelations among the three components.
It is useful to classify linguistic universals as formal or sub-
stantive. A theory of substantive universals claims that items of a
particular kind in any language must be drawn from a fixed class
of items. For example, Jakobson's theory of distinctive features
can be interpreted as making an assertion about substantive
universals with respect to the phonological component of a
generative grammar. It asserts that each output of this component
consists of elements that are characterized in terms of some small
number of fixed, universal, phonetic features (perhaps on the
order of fifteen or twenty), each of which has a substantive
acoustic-articulatory characterization independent of any partic-
ular language. Traditional universal grammar was also a theory
of substantive universals, in this sense. It not only put forth
interesting views as to the nature of universal phonetics, but also
advanced the position that certain fixed syntactic categories
(Noun, Verb, etc.) can be found in the syntactic representations
of the sentences of any language, and that these provide the
general underlying syntactic structure of each language. A
theory of substantive semantic universals might hold for ex-
ample, that certain designative functions must be carried out in
a specified way in each language. Thus it might assert that each
language will contain terms that designate persons or lexical
items referring to certain specific kinds of objects, feelings, be-
havior, and so on.
It is also possible, however, to search for universal properties
§ 5- FORMAL AND SUBSTANTIVE UNIVERSALS 2g

of a more abstract sort. Consider a claim that the grammar of

every language meets certain specified formal conditions. The
truth of this hypothesis would not in itself imply that any
particular rule must appear in all or even in any two grammars.
The property of having a grammar meeting a certain abstract
condition might be called a formal linguistic universal, if shown
to be a general property of natural languages. Recent attempts to
specify the abstract conditions that a generative grammar must
meet have produced a variety of proposals concerning formal uni-
versal, in this sense. For example, consider the proposal that the
syntactic component of a grammar must contain transformational
rules (these being operations of a highly special kind) mapping
semantically interpreted deep structures into phonetically inter-
preted surface structures, or the proposal that the phonological
component of a grammar consists of a sequence of rules, a subset
of which may apply cyclically to successively more dominant con-
stituents of the surface structure (a transformational cycle, in the
sense of much recent work on phonology). Such proposals make
claims of a quite different sort from the claim that certain sub-
stantive phonetic elements are available for phonetic representa-
tion in all languages, or that certain specific categories must be
central to the syntax of all languages, or that certain semantic
features or categories provide a universal framework for semantic
description. Substantive universals such as these concern the
vocabulary for the description of language; formal universals
involve rather the character of the rules that appear in grammars
and the ways in which they can be interconnected.
On the semantic level, too, it is possible to search for what
might be called formal universals, in essentially the sense just
described. Consider, for example, the assumption that proper
names, in any language, must designate objects meeting a condi-
tion of spatiotemporal contiguity,15 and that the same is true
of other terms designating objects; or the condition that the
color words of any language must subdivide the color spectrum
into continuous segments; or the condition that artifacts are
defined in terms of certain human goals, needs, and functions
instead of solely in terms of physical qualities.16 Formal con-
30 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

straints of this sort on a system of concepts may severely limit

the choice (by the child, or the linguist) of a descriptive grammar,
given primary linguistic data.
The existence of deep-seated formal universals, in the sense
suggested by such examples as these, implies that all languages
are cut to the same pattern, but does not imply that there is any
point by point correspondence between particular languages.
It does not, for example, imply that there must be some reason-
able procedure for translating between languages.17
In general, there is no doubt that a theory of language, re-
garded as a hypothesis about the innate "language-forming
capacity" of humans, should concern itself with both substantive
and formal universals. But whereas substantive universals have
been the traditional concern of general linguistic theory, investi-
gations of the abstract conditions that must be satisfied by any
generative grammar have been undertaken only quite recently.
They seem to offer extremely rich and varied possibilities for
study in all aspects of grammar.

§ 6. FURTHER REMARKS ON DESCRIPTIVE AND

EXPLANATORY THEORIES
Let us consider with somewhat greater care just what is
involved in the construction of an "acquisition model" for
language. A child who is capable of language learning must have
(12) (i) a technique for representing input signals
(ii) a way of representing structural information about these
signals
(iii) some initial delimitation of a class of possible hypotheses
about language structure
(iv) a method for determining what each such hypothesis im-
plies with respect to each sentence
(v) a method for selecting one of the (presumably, infinitely
many) hypotheses that are allowed by (iii) and are com-
patible with the given primary linguistic data
§ 6. DESCRIPTIVE AND EXPLANATORY THEORIES g1

Correspondingly, a theory of linguistic structure that aims for

explanatory adequacy must contain
(13) (i) a universal phonetic theory that defines the notion "possi-
ble sentence"
(ii) a definition of "structural description"
(iii) a definition of "generative grammar"
(iv) a method for determining the structural description of a
a sentence, given a grammar
(v) a way of evaluating alternative proposed grammars
Putting the same requirements in somewhat different terms, we
must require of such a linguistic theory that it provide for
(14) (i) an enumeration of the class slt s2, ••• of possible sentences
(ii) an enumeration of the class SDl7 SD2, ••• of possible
structural descriptions
(iii) an enumeration of the class Glt G2, •••of possible genera-
tive grammars
(iv) specification of a function / such that SD/(ii) is the struc-
tural description assigned to sentence st by grammar Gj,
for arbitrary i,jls
(v) specification of a function m such that m(i) is an integer
associated with the grammar G4 as its value (with, let us
say, lower value indicated by higher number)
Conditions of at least this strength are entailed by the decision
to aim for explanatory adequacy.
A theory meeting these conditions would attempt to account
for language learning in the following way. Consider first the
nature of primary linguistic data. This consists of a finite amount
of information about sentences, which, furthermore, must be
rather restricted in scope, considering the time limitations that
are in effect, and fairly degenerate in quality (cf. note 14). For
example, certain signals might be accepted as properly formed
sentences, while others are classed as nonsentences, as a result of
correction of the learner's attempts on the part of the linguistic
community. Furthermore, the conditions of use might be such
32 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

as to require that structural descriptions be assigned to these

objects in certain ways. That the latter is a prerequisite for
language acquisition seems to follow from the widely accepted
(but, for the moment, quite unsupported) view that there must
be a partially semantic basis for the acquisition of syntax or for
the justification of hypotheses about the syntactic component of
a grammar. Incidentally, it is often not realized how strong a
claim this is about the innate concept-forming abilities of the
child and the system of linguistic universals that these abilities
imply. Thus what is maintained, presumably, is that the child
has an innate theory of potential structural descriptions that is
sufficiently rich and fully developed so that he is able to deter-
mine, from a real situation in which a signal occurs, which struc-
tural descriptions may be appropriate to this signal, and also
that he is able to do this in part in advance of any assumption
as to the linguistic structure of this signal. To say that the
assumption about innate capacity is extremely strong is, of
course, not to say that it is incorrect. Let us, in any event, assume
tentatively that the primary linguistic data consist of signals
classified as sentences and nonsentences, and a partial and tenta-
tive pairing of signals with structural descriptions.
A language-acquisition device that meets conditions (i)-(iv) is
capable of utilizing such primary linguistic data as the empirical
basis for language learning. This device must search through
the set of possible hypotheses G\, G2, •••, which are available to
it by virtue of condition (iii), and must select grammars that are
compatible with the primary linguistic data, represented in
terms of (i) and (ii). It is possible to test compatibility by virtue
of the fact that the device meets condition (iv). The device would
then select one of these potential grammars by the evaluation
measure guaranteed by (v).19 The selected grammar now pro-
vides the device with a method for interpreting an arbitrary
sentence, by virtue of (ii) and (iv). That is to say, the device has
now constructed a theory of the language of which the primary
linguistic data are a sample. The theory that the device has now
selected and internally represented specifies its tacit competence,
its knowledge of the language. The child who acquires a language
§ 6. DESCRIPTIVE AND EXPLANATORY THEORIES 33

in this way of course knows a great deal more than he has

"learned." His knowledge of the language, as this is determined
by his internalized grammar, goes far beyond the presented
primary linguistic data and is in no sense an "inductive gen-
eralization" from these data.
This account of language learning can, obviously, be para-
phrased directly as a description of how the linguist whose work
is guided by a linguistic theory meeting conditions (i)-(v) would
justify a grammar that he constructs for a language on the basis
of given primary linguistic data.20
Notice, incidentally, that care must be taken to distinguish
several different ways in which primary linguistic data may be
necessary for language learning. In part, such data determine
to which of the possible languages (that is, the languages pro-
vided with grammars in accordance with the a priori constraint
(iii)) the language learner is being exposed, and it is this function
of the primary linguistic data that we are considering here. But
such data may play an entirely different role as well; namely,
certain kinds of data and experience may be required in order
to set the language-acquisition device into operation, although
they may not affect the manner of its functioning in the least.
Thus it has been found that semantic reference may greatly
facilitate performance in a syntax-learning experiment, even
though it does not, apparently, affect the manner in which
acquisition of syntax proceeds; that is, it plays no role in deter-
mining which hypotheses are selected by the learner (Miller and
Norman, 1964). Similarly, it would not be at all surprising to
find that normal language learning requires use of language in
real-life situations, in some way. But this, if true, would not
be sufficient to show that information regarding situational
context (in particular, a pairing of signals with structural descrip-
tions that is at least in part prior to assumptions about syntactic
structure) plays any role in determining how language is
acquired, once the mechanism is put to work and the task of
language learning is undertaken by the child. This distinction is
quite familiar outside of the domain of language acquisition.
For example, Richard Held has shown in numerous experiments
34 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

that under certain circumstances reafferent stimulation (that is,

stimulation resulting from voluntary activity) is a prerequisite
to the development of a concept of visual space, although it may
not determine the character of this concept (cf. Held and Hein,
1963; Held and Freedman, 1963, and references cited there). Or,
to take one of innumerable examples from studies of animal
learning, it has been observed (Lemmon and Patterson, 1964)
that depth perception in lambs is considerably facilitated by
mother-neonate contact, although again there is no reason to
suppose that the nature of the lamb's "theory of visual space"
depends on this contact.
In studying the actual character of learning, linguistic or
otherwise, it is of course necessary to distinguish carefully be-
tween these two functions of external data — the function of
initiating or facilitating the operation of innate mechanisms and
the function of determining in part the direction that learning
will take.1'1
Returning now to the main theme, we shall call a theory of
linguistic structure that meets conditions (i)-(v) an explanatory
theory, and a theory that meets conditions (i)-(iv) a descriptive
theory. In fact, a linguistic theory that is concerned only with
descriptive adequacy will limit its attention to topics (i)-(iv).
Such a theory must, in other words, make available a class of
generative grammars containing, for each language, a descrip-
tively adequate grammar of this language — a grammar that
(by means of (iv)) assigns structural descriptions to sentences in
accordance with the linguistic competence of the native speaker.
A theory of language is empirically significant only to the extent
that it meets conditions (i)-(iv). The further question of explana-
tory adequacy arises only in connection with a theory that also
meets condition (v) (but see p. 36). In other words, it arises only
to the extent that the theory provides a principled basis for
selecting a descriptively adequate grammar on the basis of
primary linguistic data by the use of a well-defined evaluation
measure.
This account is misleading in one important respect. It sug-
gests that to raise a descriptively adequate theory to the level
§ 6. DESCRIPTIVE AND EXPLANATORY THEORIES 35

of explanatory adequacy one needs only to define an appropriate

evaluation measure. This is incorrect, however. A theory may be
descriptively adequate, in the sense just defined, and yet provide
such a wide range of potential grammars that there is no possi-
bility of discovering a formal property distinguishing the de-
scriptively adequate grammars, in general, from among the mass
of grammars compatible with whatever data are available. In
fact, the real problem is almost always to restrict the range of
possible hypotheses by adding additional structure to the notion
"generative grammar." For the construction of a reasonable
acquisition model, it is necessary to reduce the class of attain-
able-2 grammars compatible with given primary linguistic data
to the point where selection among them can be made by a
formal evaluation measure. This requires a precise and narrow
delimitation of the notion "generative grammar" — a restrictive
and rich hypothesis concerning the universal properties that
determine the form of language, in the traditional sense of this
term.
The same point can be put in a somewhat different way.
Given a variety of descriptively adequate grammars for natural
languages, we are interested in determining to what extent they
are unique and to what extent there are deep underlying similari-
ties among them that are attributable to the form of language as
such. Real progress in linguistics consists in the discovery that
certain features of given languages can be reduced to universal
properties of language, and explained in terms of these deeper
aspects of linguistic form. Thus the major endeavor of the
linguist must be to enrich the theory of linguistic form by for-
mulating more specific constraints and conditions on the notion
"generative grammar." Where this can be done, particular gram-
mars can be simplified by eliminating from them descriptive
statements that are attributable to the general theory of grammar
(cf. § 5). For example, if we conclude that the transformational
cycle23 is a universal feature of the phonological component, it
is unnecessary, in the grammar of English, to describe the man-
ner of functioning of those phonological rules that involve
syntactic structure. This description will now have been ab-
36 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

stracted from the grammar of English and stated as a formal

linguistic universal, as part of the theory of generative grammar.
Obviously, this conclusion, if justified, would represent an im-
portant advance in the theory of language, since it would then
have been shown that what appears to be a peculiarity of English
is actually explicable in terms of a general and deep empirical
assumption about the nature of language, an assumption that can
be refuted, if false, by study of descriptively adequate grammars
of other languages.
In short, the most serious problem that arises in the attempt
to achieve explanatory adequacy is that of characterizing the
notion "generative grammar" in a sufficiently rich, detailed, and
highly structured way. A theory of grammar may be descriptively
adequate and yet leave unexpressed major features that are
defining properties of natural language and that distinguish
natural languages from arbitrary symbolic systems. It is for just
this reason that the attempt to achieve explanatory adequacy
— the attempt to discover linguistic universals — is so crucial at
every stage of understanding of linguistic structure, despite the
fact that even descriptive adequacy on a broad scale may be an
unrealized goal. It is not necessary to achieve descriptive ade-
quacy before raising questions of explanatory adequacy. On the
contrary, the crucial questions, the questions that have the
greatest bearing on our concept of language and on descriptive
practice as well, are almost always those involving explanatory
adequacy with respect to particular aspects of language structure.
To acquire language, a child must devise a hypothesis compa-
tible with presented data — he must select from the store of
potential grammars a specific one that is appropriate to the data
available to him. It is logically possible that the data might be
sufficiently rich and the class of potential grammars sufficiently
limited so that no more than a single permitted grammar will
be compatible with the available data at the moment of success-
ful language acquisition, in our idealized "instantaneous" model
(cf. notes ig and 22). In this case, no evaluation procedure will
be necessary as a part of linguistic theory — that is, as an innate
property of an organism or a device capable of language acquisi-
§ 7- ON EVALUATION PROCEDURES 9<1

tion. It is rather difficult to imagine how in detail this logical

possibility might be realized, and all concrete attempts to
formulate an empirically adequate linguistic theory certainly
leave ample room for mutually inconsistent grammars, all com-
patible with primary data of any conceivable sort. All such
theories therefore require supplementation by an evaluation
measure if language acquisition is to be accounted for and selec-
tion of specific grammars is to be justified; and I shall continue
to assume tentatively, as heretofore, that this is an empirical fact
about the innate human faculte de langage and consequently
about general linguistic theory as well.

§7. ON EVALUATION PROCEDURES

The status of an evaluation procedure for grammars (see condi-
tion (v) of (i2)-(i4)) has often been misconstrued. It must first of
all be kept clearly in mind that such a measure is not given a
priori, in some manner. Rather, any proposal concerning such a
measure is an empirical hypothesis about the nature of language.
This is evident from the preceding discussion. Suppose that we
have a descriptive theory, meeting conditions (i)-(iv) of (i2)-(i4)
in some fixed way. Given primarily linguistic data D, different
choices of an evaluation measure will assign quite different ranks
to alternative hypotheses (alternative grammars) as to the lan-
guage of which D is a sample, and will therefore lead to entirely
different predictions as to how a person who learns a language
on the basis of D will interpret new sentences not in D. Con-
sequently, choice of an evaluation measure is an empirical matter,
and particular proposals are correct or incorrect.
Perhaps confusion about this matter can be traced to the use
of the term "simplicity measure" for particular proposed evalua-
tion measures, it being assumed that "simplicity" is a general
notion somehow understood in advance outside of linguistic
theory. This is a misconception, however. In the context of this
discussion, "simplicity" (that is, the evaluation measure m of
(v)) is a notion to be defined within linguistic theory along with
"grammar," "phoneme," etc. Choice of a simplicity measure is
38 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

rather like determination of the value of a physical constant.

We are given, in part, an empirical pairing of certain kinds
of primary linguistic data with certain grammars that are in
fact constructed by people presented with such data. A pro-
posed simplicity measure constitutes part of the attempt to deter-
mine precisely the nature of this association. If a particular
formulation of (i)-(iv) is assumed, and if pairs (Di,Gi),
(D2,G2), •••of primary linguistic data and descriptively adequate
grammars are given, the problem of defining "simplicity" is just
the problem of discovering how G( is determined by D{, for each i.
Suppose, in other words, that we regard an acquisition model for
language as an input-output device that determines a particular
generative grammar as "output," given certain primary linguistic
data as input. A proposed simplicity measure, taken together with
a specification of (i)-(iv), constitutes a hypothesis concerning the
nature of such a device. Choice of a simplicity measure is there-
fore an empirical matter with empirical consequences.
All of this has been said before. I repeat it at such length be-
cause it has been so grossly misunderstood.
It is also apparent that evaluation measures of the kinds that
have been discussed in the literature on generative grammar
cannot be used to compare different theories of grammar;
comparison of a grammar from one class of proposed grammars
with a grammar from another class, by such a measure, is utterly
without sense. Rather, an evaluation measure of this kind is an
essential part of a particular theory of grammar that aims at
explanatory adequacy. It is true that there is a sense in which
alternative theories of language (or alternative theories in other
domains) can be compared as to simplicity and elegance. What
we have been discussing here, however, is not this general ques-
tion but rather the problem of comparing two theories of a
language — two grammars of this language — in terms of a
particular general linguistic theory. This is, then, a matter of
formulating an explanatory theory of language; it is not to be
confused with the problem of choosing among competing
theories of language. Choice among competing theories of
language is of course a fundamental question and should also be
§ 7- ON EVALUATION PROCEDURES 3g

settled, insofar as possible, on empirical grounds of descriptive

and explanatory adequacy. But it is not the question involved
in the use of an evaluation measure in the attempt to achieve
explanatory adequacy.
As a concrete illustration, consider the question of whether the
rules of a grammar should be unordered (let us call this the
linguistic theory Tv) or ordered in some specific way (the theory
T0). A priori, there is no way to decide which of the two is
correct. There is no known absolute sense of "simplicity" or
"elegance," developed within linguistic theory or general epis-
temology, in accordance with which Tv and Tn can be compared.
It is quite meaningless, therefore, to maintain that in some
absolute sense Tv is "simpler" than T0 or conversely. One can
easily invent a general concept of "simplicity" that will prefer
Tv to T0, or T0 to Tv; in neither case will this concept have
any known justification. Certain measures of evaluation have
been proposed and in part empirically justified within linguistics
— for example, minimization of feature specification (as discussed
in Halle, 1959a, 1961, 1962a, 1964) or the measure based on
abbreviatory notations (discussed on pp. 42L). These measures do
not apply, because they are internal to a specific linguistic theory
and their empirical justification relies essentially on this fact. To
choose between Tv and T0, we must proceed in an entirely
different way. We must ask whether Tv or T0 provides descrip-
tively adequate grammars for natural languages, or leads to
explanatory adequacy. This is a perfectly meaningful empirical
question if the theories in question are stated with sufficient
care. For example, if Tna is the familiar theory of phrase struc-
ture grammar and T0S is the same theory, with the further condi-
tion that the rules are linearly ordered and apply cyclically,
with at least one rule A •* X being obligatory for each category
A, so as to guarantee that each cycle is nonvacuous, then it can
be shown that Tns and T0S are incomparable in descriptive
power (in "strong generative capacity" — see § 9; see Chomsky,
1955, Chapters 6 and 7, and Chomsky, 1956, for some discus-
sion of such systems). Consequently, we might ask whether
natural languages in fact fall under Tna or T08, these being non-
40 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

equivalent and empirically distinguishable theories. Or, sup-

posing Tvp and T0P to be theories of the phonological component
(where Tvp holds phonological rules to be unordered and T0P
holds them to be partially ordered), it is easy to invent hypo-
thetical "languages" for which significant generalizations are
expressible in terms of T0P but not Tvp, or conversely. We can
therefore try to determine whether there are significant gen-
eralizations that are expressible in terms of one but not the other
theory in the case of empirically given languages. In principle,
either result is possible; it is an entirely factual question, having
to do with the properties of natural languages. We shall see later
that T08 is rather well motivated as a theory of the base, and
strong arguments have been offered to show that T0p is correct
and Tvp is wrong, as a theory of phonological processes (cf.
Chomsky, 1951, 1964; Halle, 1959a, 1959 b. 1962a, 1964). In both
cases, the argument turns on the factual question of expressibility
of linguistically significant generalizations in terms of one or the
other theory, not on any presumed absolute sense of "simplicity"
that might rank Tn and T0 relative to one another. Failure to
appreciate this fact has led to a great deal of vacuous and
pointless discussion.
Confusion about these questions may also have been engen-
dered by the fact that there are several different senses in which
one can talk of "justifying" a grammar, as noted on pp. 26-27.
To repeat the major point: on the one hand, the grammar can
be justified on external grounds of descriptive adequacy — we
may ask whether it states the facts about the language cor-
rectly, whether it predicts correctly how the idealized native
speaker would understand arbitrary sentences and gives a correct
account of the basis for this achievement; on the other hand, a
grammar can be justified on internal grounds if, given an ex-
planatory linguistic theory, it can be shown that this grammar is
the highest-valued grammar permitted by the theory and com-
patible with given primary linguistic data. In the latter case, a
principled basis is presented for the construction of this grammar,
and it is therefore justified on much deeper empirical grounds.
Both kinds of justification are of course necessary; it is im-
§ 7- ON EVALUATION PROCEDURES 41

portant, however, not to confuse them. In the case of a linguistic

theory that is merely descriptive, only one kind of justification
can be given — namely, we can show that it permits grammars
that meet the external condition of descriptive adequacy.24 It is
only when all of the conditions (i)-(v) of (i2)-(i4) are met that
the deeper question of internal justification can be raised.
It is also apparent that the discussion as to whether an
evaluation measure is a "necessary" part of linguistic theory is
quite without substance (see, however, pp. 36-37). If the linguist
is content to formulate descriptions one way or another with
little concern for justification, and if he does not intend to
proceed from the study of facts about particular languages to an
investigation of the characteristic properties of natural language
as such, then construction of an evaluation procedure and the
associated concerns that relate to explanatory adequacy need not
concern him. In this case, since interest in justification has been
abandoned, neither evidence nor argument (beyond minimal
requirements of consistency) has any bearing on what the linguist
presents as a linguistic description. On the other hand, if he
wishes to achieve descriptive adequacy in his account of language
structure, he must concern himself with the problem of develop-
ing an explanatory theory of the form of grammar, since this
provides one of the main tools for arriving at a descriptively
adequate grammar in any particular case. In other words, choice
of a grammar for a particular language L will always be much
underdetermined by the data drawn from L alone. Moreover,
other relevant data (namely, successful grammars for other
languages or successful fragments for other subparts of L) will
be available to the linguist only if he possesses an explanatory
theory. Such a theory limits the choice of grammar by the dual
method of imposing formal conditions on grammar and providing
an evaluation procedure to be applied for the language L with
which he is now concerned. Both the formal conditions and the
evaluation procedure can be empirically justified by their success
in other cases. Hence, any far-reaching concern for descriptive
adequacy must lead to an attempt to develop an explanatory
theory that fulfills these dual functions, and concern with ex-
42 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

planatory adequacy surely requires an investigation of evaluation

procedures.
The major problem in constructing an evaluation measure for
grammars is that of determining which generalizations about a
language are significant ones; an evaluation measure must be
selected in such a way as to favor these. We have a generalization
when a set of rules about distinct items can be replaced by a
single rule (or, more generally, partially identical rules) about
the whole set, or when it can be shown that a "natural class" of
items undergoes a certain process or set of similar processes.
Thus, choice of an evaluation measure constitutes a decision as
to what are "similar processes" and "natural classes" — in short,
what are significant generalizations. The problem is to devise a
procedure that will assign a numerical measure of valuation
to a grammar in terms of the degree of linguistically significant
generalization that this grammar achieves. The obvious numerical
measure to be applied to a grammar is length, in terms of
number of symbols. But if this is to be a meaningful measure, it is
necessary to devise notations and to restrict the form of rules in
such a way that significant considerations of complexity and gen-
erality are converted into considerations of length, so that real
generalizations shorten the grammar and spurious ones do not.
Thus it is the notational conventions used in presenting a
grammar that define "significant generalization," if the evalua-
tion measure is taken as length.
This is, in fact, the rationale behind the conventions for use
of parentheses, brackets, etc., that have been adopted in explicit
(that is, generative) grammars. For a detailed discussion of these,
see Chomsky (1951, 1955), Postal (1962a), and Matthews (1964).
To take just one example, consider the analysis of the English
Verbal Auxiliary. The facts are that such a phrase must contain
Tense (which is, furthermore, Past or Present), and then may or
may not contain a Modal and either the Perfect or Progressive
Aspect (or both), where the elements must appear in the order
just given. Using familiar notational conventions, we can state
this rule in the following form:
§ 7- ON EVALUATION PROCEDURES 43

(15) Aux •» Tense (Modal)(Per/ec<)(ProgreM»fe)

(omitting details that are not relevant here). Rule (15) is an
abbreviation for eight rules that analyze the element Aux into
its eight possible forms. Stated in full, these eight rules would
involve twenty symbols, whereas rule (15) involves four (not
counting Aux, in both cases). The parenthesis notation, in this
case, has the following meaning. It asserts that the difference
between four and twenty symbols is a measure of the degree of
linguistically significant generalization achieved in a language
that has the forms given in list (16), for the Auxiliary Phrase, as
compared with a language that has, for example, the forms
given in list (17) as the representatives of this category:
(16) Tense, Tense^Modal, Tense^Perfect, Teme^Progressive,
Tense^Modal^Perfect, Tense^Modal^Progressive, Tense
^Perfect^Progressive, Tense^Modal^Perfect^Progressivc
(17) Tense^Modal^Perfecf^Progressive, Modal^Perfect^Pro-
gressive^Tense, Perfecf^Progressive^Tense^Modal, Pro-
gressive^Tense^Modzd'^Perfect, Tense^Per/ec<, Modal'"""
Progressive
In the case of both list (16) and list (17), twenty symbols are
involved. List (16) abbreviates to rule (15) by the notational
convention; list (17) cannot be abbreviated by this convention.
Hence, adoption of the familiar notational conventions involving
the use of parentheses amounts to a claim that there is a
linguistically significant generalization underlying the set of
forms in list (16) but not the set of forms in list (17). It amounts
to the empirical hypothesis that regularities of the type ex-
emplified in (16) are those found in natural languages, and are
of the type that children learning a language will expect;
whereas cyclic regularities of the type exemplified in (17), though
perfectly genuine, abstractly, are not characteristic of natural
language, are not of the type for which children will intuitively
search in language materials, and are much more difficult for
the language-learner to construct on the basis of scattered data
44 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

or to use. What is claimed, then, is that when given scattered

examples from (16), the language learner will construct the rule
(15) generating the full set with their semantic interpretations,
whereas when given scattered examples that could be subsumed
under a cyclic rule, he will not incorporate this "generalization"
in his grammar — he will not, for example, conclude from the
existence of "yesterday John arrived" and "John arrived
yesterday" that there is a third form "arrived yesterday John,"
or from the existence of "is John here" and "here is John"
that there is a third form "John here is," etc. One might
easily propose a different notational convention that would
abbreviate list (17) to a shorter rule than list (16), thus
making a different empirical assumption about what constitutes
a linguistically significant generalization. There is no a priori
reason for preferring the usual convention; it simply embodies
a factual claim about the structure of natural language and the
predisposition of the child to search for certain types of regularity
in natural language.
The illustrative examples of the preceding paragraph must be
regarded with some caution. It is the full set of notational con-
ventions that constitute an evaluation procedure, in the manner
outlined earlier. The factual content of an explanatory theory
lies in its claim that the most highly valued grammar of the
permitted form will be selected, on the basis of given data.
Hence, descriptions of particular subsystems of the grammar
must be evaluated in terms of their effect on the entire system of
rules. The extent to which particular parts of the grammar
can be selected independently of others is an empirical matter
about which very little is known, at present. Although alternatives
can be clearly formulated, deeper studies of particular languages
than are presently available are needed to settle the questions
that immediately arise when these extremely important issues are
raised. To my knowledge, the only attempt to evaluate a fairly
full and complex subsystem of a grammar is in Chomsky (1951),
but even here all that is shown is that the value of the system is
a "local maximum" in the sense that interchange of adjacent
rules decreases value. The effect of modifications on a larger
§ 7- ON EVALUATION PROCEDURES 45

scale is not investigated. Certain aspects of the general question,

relating to lexical and phonological structure, are discussed in
Halle and Chomsky (forthcoming).
One special case of this general approach to evaluation that
has been worked out in a particularly convincing way is the
condition of minimization of distinctive feature specifications
in the phonological component of the grammar. A very plausible
argument can be given to the effect that this convention defines
the notions of "natural class" and "significant generalization"
that have been relied on implicitly in descriptive and com-
parative-historical phonological investigations, and that determine
the intuitively given distinction between "phonologically pos-
sible" and "phonologically impossible" nonsense forms. For
discussion, see Halle (1959a, 1959b, 1961, 1962a, 1964), Halle and
Chomsky (forthcoming). It is important to observe that the
effectiveness of this particular evaluation measure is completely
dependent on a strong assumption about the form of grammar,
namely, the assumption that only feature notation is per-
mitted. If phonemic notation is allowed in addition to feature
notation, the measure gives absurd consequences, as Halle shows.
It is clear, then, that choice of notations and other conventions
is not an arbitrary or "merely technical" matter, if length is to
be taken as the measure of valuation for a grammar. It is, rather,
a matter that has immediate and perhaps quite drastic empirical
consequences. When particular notational devices are in-
corporated into a linguistic theory of the sort we are discussing,
a certain empirical claim is made, implicitly, concerning natural
language. It is implied that a person learning a language will
attempt to formulate generalizations that can easily be expressed
(that is, with few symbols) in terms of the notations available in
this theory, and that he will select grammars containing these
generalizations over other grammars that are also compatible
with the given data but that contain different sorts of generaliza-
tion, different concepts of "natural class," and so on. These may
be very strong claims, and need by no means be true on any a
priori grounds.
To avoid any possible lingering confusion on this matter,
46 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

let me repeat once more that this discussion of language learning

in terms of formulation of rules, hypotheses, etc., does not
refer to conscious formulation and expression of these but rather
to the process of arriving at an internal representation of a gen-
erative system, which can be appropriately described in these
terms.
In brief, it is clear that no present-day theory of language can
hope to attain explanatory adequacy beyond very restricted
domains. In other words, we are very far from being able to
present a system of formal and substantive linguistic universals
that will be sufficiently rich and detailed to account for the facts
of language learning. To advance linguistic theory in the
direction of explanatory adequacy, we can attempt to refine the
evaluation measure for grammars or to tighten the formal con-
straints on grammars so that it becomes more difficult to find a
highly valued hypothesis compatible with primary linguistic
data. There can be no doubt that present theories of grammar
require modification in both of these ways, the latter, in general,
being the more promising. Thus the most crucial problem for
linguistic theory seems to be to abstract statements and gen-
eralizations from particular descriptively adequate grammars
and, wherever possible, to attribute them to the general theory
of linguistic structure, thus enriching this theory and imposing
more structure on the schema for grammatical description.
Whenever this is done, an assertion about a particular language
is replaced by a corresponding assertion, from which the first
follows, about language in general. If this formulation of a
deeper hypothesis is incorrect, this fact should become evident
when its effect on the description of other aspects of the language
or the description of other languages is ascertained. In short, I am
making the obvious comment that, wherever possible, general
assumptions about the nature of language should be formulated
from which particular features of the grammars of individual
languages can be deduced. In this way, linguistic theory may
move toward explanatory adequacy and contribute to the study
of human mental processes and intellectual capacity — more
specifically, to the determination of the abilities that make
§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 47

language learning possible under the empirically given limita-

tions of time and data.

§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING

In the preceding discussion, certain problems of linguistic
theory have been formulated as questions about the construction
of a hypothetical language-acquisition device. This seems a use-
ful and suggestive framework within which to pose and consider
these problems. We may think of the theorist as given an
empirical pairing of collections of primary linguistic data as-
sociated with grammars that are constructed by the device on the
basis of such data. Much information can be obtained about
both the primary data that constitute the input and the grammar
that is the "output" of such a device, and the theorist has the
problem of determining the intrinsic properties of a device
capable of mediating this input-output relation.
It may be of some interest to set this discussion in a somewhat
more general and traditional framework. Historically, we can
distinguish two general lines of approach to the problem of
acquisition of knowledge, of which the problem of acquisition of
language is a special and particularly informative case. The
empiricist approach has assumed that the structure of the acquisi-
tion device is limited to certain elementary "peripheral proc-
essing mechanisms" — for example, in recent versions, an innate
"quality space" with an innate "distance" defined on it (Quine,
i960, pp. 83L),25 a set of primitive unconditioned reflexes (Hull,
1943), or, in the case of language, the set of all "aurally distin-
guishable components" of the full "auditory impression" (Bloch,
1950). Beyond this, it assumes that the device has certain
analytical data-processing mechanisms or inductive principles
of a very elementary sort, for example, certain principles of
association, weak principles of "generalization" involving gradi-
ents along the dimensions of the given quality space, or, in our
case, taxonomic principles of segmentation and classification
such as those that have been developed with some care in
modern linguistics, in accordance with the Saussurian emphasis
48 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

on the fundamental character of such principles. It is then

assumed that a preliminary analysis of experience is provided by
the peripheral processing mechanisms, and that one's concepts
and knowledge, beyond this, are acquired by application of the
available inductive principles to this initially analyzed ex-
perience.28 Such views can be formulated clearly in one way or
another as empirical hypotheses about the nature of mind.
A rather different approach to the problem of acquisition of
knowledge has been characteristic of rationalist speculation
about mental processes. The rationalist approach holds that
beyond the peripheral processing mechanisms,27 there are innate
ideas and principles of various kinds that determine the form of
the acquired knowledge in what may be a rather restricted and
highly organized way. A condition for innate mechanisms to
become activated is that appropriate stimulation be presented.
Thus for Descartes (1647), the innate ideas are those arising
from the faculty of thinking rather than from external objects:

. . . nothing reaches our mind from external objects through the organs
of sense beyond certain corporeal movements . . . but even these move-
ments, and the figures which arise from diem, are not conceived by us
in the shape they assume in the organs of sense. . . . Hence it follows
that the ideas of the movements and figures are themselves innate in us.
So much the more must the ideas of pain, colour, sound and the like
be innate, that our mind may, on occasion of certain corporeal move-
ments, envisage these ideas, for they have no likeness to the corporeal
movements ... [p. 443]-

Similarly, such notions as that things equal to the same thing

are equal to each other are innate, since they cannot arise as
necessary principles from "particular movements." In general,

sight . . . presents nothing beyond pictures, and hearing nothing be-

yond voices or sounds, so that all these things that we think of, beyond
these voices or pictures, as being symbolized by them, are presented to
us by means of ideas which come from no other source than our faculty
of thinking, and are accordingly together with that faculty innate in
us, that is, always existing in us potentially; for existence in any faculty
is not actual but merely potential existence, since the very word "fac-
ulty" designates nothing more or less than a potentiality. . . . [Thus
§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 49

ideas are innate in the sense that] in some families generosity is innate,
in others certain diseases like gout or gravel, not diat on this account
the babes of these families suffer from these diseases in their mother's
womb, but because they are born with a certain disposition or propen-
sity for contracting them ... [p. 442].
Still earlier, Lord Herbert (1624) maintains that innate ideas
and principles "remain latent when their corresponding objects
are not present, and even disappear and give no sign of their
existence"; they "must be deemed not so much the outcome of
experience as principles without which we should have no ex-
perience at all . . . [p. 132]." Without these principles, "we could
have no experience at all nor be capable of observations"; "we
should never come to distinguish between things, or to grasp
any general nature ... [p. 105]." These notions are extensively
developed throughout seventeenth-century rationalist philosophy.
To mention just one example, Cudworth (1731) gives an extensive
argument in support of his view that "there are many ideas of
the mind, which though the cogitations of them be often oc-
casionally invited from the motion or appulse of sensible objects
without made upon our bodies; yet notwithstanding the ideas
themselves could not possibly be stamped or impressed upon the
soul from them, because sense takes no cognizance at all of any
such things in those corporeal objects, and therefore they must
needs arise from the innate vigour and activity of the mind itself
. . . [Book IV]." Even in Locke one finds essentially the same
conception, as was pointed out by Leibniz and many com-
mentators since.
In the Port-Royal Logic (Arnauld, 1662), the same point of
view is expressed in the following way:
It is false, therefore, that all our ideas come through sense. On the con-
trary, it may be affirmed that no idea which we have in our minds has
taken its rise from sense, except on occasion of those movements which
are made in the brain through sense, the impulse from sense giving oc-
casion to the mind to form different ideas which it would not have
formed without it, though these ideas have very rarely any resemblance
to what takes place in the sense and in the brain; and there are at least
a very great number of ideas which, having no connection with any
50 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

bodily image, cannot, without manifest absurdity, be referred to sense

. . . [Chapter 1].

In the same vein, Leibniz refuses to accept a sharp distinction

between innate and learned:

I agree that we learn ideas and innate truths either in considering their
source or in verifying them through experience. . . . And I cannot
admit this proposition: all that one learns is not innate. The truths of
numbers are in us, yet nonetheless one learns them,28 either by drawing
them from their source when we learn them through demonstrative
proof (which shows that they are innate), or by testing them in exam-
ples, as do ordinary arithmeticians . . . [New Essays, p. 75]. [Thus] all
arithmetic and all geometry are in us virtually, so that we can find them
there if we consider attentively and set in order what we already have
in the mind ... [p. 78]. [In general,] we have an infinite amount of
knowledge of which we are not always conscious, not even when we
need it [p. 77]. The senses, although necessary for all our actual knowl-
edge, are not sufficient to give it all to us, since the senses never give us
anything but examples, i.e., particular or individual truths. Now all the
examples which confirm a general truth, whatever their number, do not
suffice to establish the universal necessity of that same truth . . .
[pp. 42-43]. Necessary truths . . . must have principles whose proof does
not depend on examples, nor consequently upon the testimony of the
senses, although without the senses it would never have occurred to us
to think of them. ... It is true that we must not imagine that these
eternal laws of the reason can be read in the soul as in an open book
. . . but it is sufficient that they can be discovered in us by dint of at-
tention, for which the senses furnish occasions, and successful experience
serves to confirm reason ... [p. 44]. [There are innate general princi-
ples that] enter into our thoughts, of which they form the soul and the
connection. They are as necessary thereto as the muscles and sinews are
for walking, although we do not at all think of them. The mind leans
upon these principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to
distinguish them and to represent them distinctly and separately, be-
cause that demands great attention to its acts. . . . Thus it is that one
possesses many things without knowing it . . . [p. 74].

(as, for example, the Chinese possess articulate sounds, and

therefore the basis for alphabetic writing, although they have
not invented this).
§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 51

Notice, incidentally, that throughout these classical discussions

of the interplay between sense and mind in the formation of
ideas, no sharp distinction is made between perception and
acquisition, although there would be no inconsistency in the
assumption that latent innate mental structures, once "activated,"
are then available for interpretation of the data of sense in a way
in which they were not previously.
Applying this rationalist view to the special case of language
learning, Humboldt (1836) concludes that one cannot really teach
language but can only present the conditions under which it will
develop spontaneously in the mind in its own way. Thus the
form of a language, the schema for its grammar, is to a large ex-
tent given, though it will not be available for use without ap-
propriate experience to set the language-forming processes into
operation. Like Leibniz, he reiterates the Platonistic view that,
for the individual, learning is largely a matter of Wiederer-
zeugung, that is, of drawing out what is innate in the mind.29
This view contrasts sharply with the empiricist notion (the
prevailing modern view) that language is essentially an ad-
ventitious construct, taught by "conditioning" (as would be
maintained, for example, by Skinner or Quine) or by drill and
explicit explanation (as was claimed by Wittgenstein), or built
up by elementary "data-processing" procedures (as modern
linguistics typically maintains), but, in any event, relatively
independent in its structure of any innate mental faculties.
In short, empiricist speculation has characteristically assumed
that only the procedures and mechanisms for the acquisition of
knowledge constitute an innate property of the mind. Thus for
Hume, the method of "experimental reasoning" is a basic instinct
in animals and humans, on a par with the instinct "which teaches
a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation, and the whole
economy and order of its nursery" — it is derived "from the
original hand of nature" (Hume, 1748, § IX). The form of
knowledge, however, is otherwise quite free. On the other hand,
rationalist speculation has assumed that the general form of a
system of knowledge is fixed in advance as a disposition of the
mind, and the function of experience is to cause this general
52 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

schematic structure to be realized and more fully differentiated.

To follow Leibniz's enlightening analogy, we may make

. . . the comparison of a block of marble which has veins, rather than a

block of marble wholly even, or of blank tablets, i.e., of what is called
among philosophers a tabula rasa. For if the soul resembled these blank
tablets, truths would be in us as the figure of Hercules is in the marble,
when the marble is wholly indifferent to the reception of this figure or
some other. But if there were veins in the block which should indicate
the figure of Hercules rather than other figures, this block would be
more determined thereto, and Hercules would be in it as in some sense
innate, although it would be needful to labor to discover these veins,
to clear them by polishing, and by cutting away what prevents them
from appearing. Thus it is that ideas and truths are for us innate, as
inclinations, dispositions, habits, or natural potentialities, and not as
actions; although these potentialities are always accompanied by some
actions, often insensible, which correspond to them [Leibniz, Nezv Es-
says, pp. 45-46].

It is not, of course, necessary to assume that empiricist and

rationalist views can always be sharply distinguished and that
these currents cannot cross. Nevertheless, it is historically ac-
curate as well as heuristically valuable to distinguish these two
very different approaches to the problem of acquisition of
knowledge. Particular empiricist and rationalist views can be
made quite precise and can then be presented as explicit
hypotheses about acquisition of knowledge, in particular, about
the innate structure of a language-acquisition device. In fact,
it would not be inaccurate to describe the taxonomic, data-
processing approach of modern linguistics as an empiricist view
that contrasts with the essentially rationalist alternative proposed
in recent theories of transformational grammar. Taxonomic
linguistics is empiricist in its assumption that general linguistic
theory consists only of a body of procedures for determining the
grammar of a language from a corpus of data, the form of
language being unspecified except insofar as restrictions on
possible grammars are determined by this set of procedures. If
we interpret taxonomic linguistics as making an empirical claim,30
§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 53

this claim must be that the grammars that result from application
of the postulated procedures to a sufficiently rich selection of
data will be descriptively adequate — in other words, that the
set of procedures can be regarded as constituting a hypothesis
about the innate language-acquisition system. In contrast, the
discussion of language acquisition in preceding sections was
rationalistic in its assumption that various formal and sub-
stantive universals are intrinsic properties of the language-acqui-
sition system, these providing a schema that is applied to data
and that determines in a highly restricted way the general form
and, in part, even the substantive features of the grammar that
may emerge upon presentation of appropriate data. A general
linguistic theory of the sort roughly described earlier, and
elaborated in more detail in the following chapters and in other
studies of transformational grammar, must therefore be regarded
as a specific hypothesis, of an essentially rationalist cast, as to
the nature of mental structures and processes. See Chomsky
(19596, 19626, 1964) and Katz (forthcoming) for some further
discussion of this point.
When such constrasting views are clearly formulated, we may
ask, as an empirical question, which (if either) is correct. There
is no a priori way to settle this issue. Where empiricist and
rationalist views have been presented with sufficient care so
that the question of correctness can be seriously raised, it
cannot, for example, be maintained that in any clear sense one
is "simpler" than the other in terms of its potential physical
realization,31 and even if this could be shown, one way or the
other, it would have no bearing on what is completely a factual
issue. This factual question can be approached in several ways.
In particular, restricting ourselves now to the question of
language acquisition, we must bear in mind that any concrete
empiricist proposal does impose certain conditions on the form
of the grammars that can result from application of its inductive
principles to primary data. We may therefore ask whether the
grammars that these principles can provide, in principle, are at
all close to those which we in fact discover when we investigate
54 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

real languages. The same question can be asked about a concrete

rationalist proposal. This has, in the past, proved to be a useful
way to subject such hypotheses to one sort of empirical test.
If the answer to this question of adequacy-in-principle is
positive, in either case, we can then turn to the question of
feasibility: can the inductive procedures (in the empiricist case)
or the mechanisms of elaboration and realization of innate
schemata (in the rationalist case) succeed in producing grammars
within the given constraints of time and access, and within the
range of observed uniformity of output? In fact, the second
question has rarely been raised in any serious way in connection
with empiricist views (but cf. Miller, Galanter, and Pribram,
i960, pp. 145-148, and Miller and Chomsky, 1963, p. 430, for
some comments), since study of the first question has been
sufficient to rule out whatever explicit proposals of an essentially
empiricist character have emerged in modern discussions of
language acquisition. The only proposals that are explicit enough
to support serious study are those that have been developed within
taxonomic linguistics. It seems to have been demonstrated beyond
any reasonable doubt that, quite apart from any question of
feasibility, methods of the sort that have been studied in
taxonomic linguistics are intrinsically incapable of yielding the
systems of grammatical knowledge that must be attributed to
the speaker of a language (cf. Chomsky, 1956, 1957, 1964; Postal,
19626, 1964a, 1964c; Katz and Postal, 1964, § 5.5, and many other
publications for discussion of these questions that seems un-
answerable and is, for the moment, not challenged). In general,
then, it seems to me correct to say that empiricist theories about
language acquisition are refutable wherever they are clear, and
that further empiricist speculations have been quite empty and
uninformative. On the other hand, the rationalist approach ex-
emplified by recent work in the theory of transformational
grammar seems to have proved fairly productive, to be fully in
accord with what is known about language, and to offer at
least some hope of providing a hypothesis about the intrinsic
structure of a language-acquisition system that will meet the
condition of adequacy-in-principle and do so in a sufficiently
§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 55

narrow and interesting way so that the question of feasibility can,

for the first time, be seriously raised.
One might seek other ways of testing particular hypotheses
about a language-acquisition device. A theory that attributes
possession of certain linguistic universals to a language-acquisition
system, as a property to be realized under appropriate external
conditions, implies that only certain kinds of symbolic systems
can be acquired and used as languages by this device. Others
should be beyond its language-acquisition capacity. Systems can
certainly be invented that fail the conditions, formal and sub-
stantive, that have been proposed as tentative linguistic uni-
versals in, for example, Jakobsonian distinctive-feature theory or
the theory of transformational grammar. In principle, one might
try to determine whether invented systems that fail these condi-
tions do pose inordinately difficult problems for language learn-
ing, and do fall beyond the domain for which the language-
acquisition system is designed. As a concrete example, consider
the fact that, according to the theory of transformational
grammar, only certain kinds of formal operations on strings can
appear in grammars — operations that, furthermore, have no a
priori justification. For example, the permitted operations cannot
be shown in any sense to be the most "simple" or "elementary"
ones that might be invented. In fact, what might in general be
considered "elementary operations" on strings do not qualify as
grammatical transformations at all, while many of the operations
that do qualify are far from elementary, in any general sense.
Specifically, grammatical transformations are necessarily "struc-
ture-dependent" in that they manipulate substrings only in terms
of their assignment to categories. Thus it is possible to formulate
a transformation that can insert all or part of the Auxiliary Verb
to the left of a Noun Phrase that precedes it, independently of
what the length or internal complexity of the strings belonging
to these categories may be. It is impossible, however, to formulate
as a transformation such a simple operation as reflection of an
arbitrary string (that is, replacement of any string ax---an, where
each at is a single symbol, by a,,---^), or interchange of the
(2n — i)th word with the anth word throughout a string of
56 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

arbitrary length, or insertion of a symbol in the middle of a string

of even length. Similarly, if the structural analyses that define
transformations are restricted to Boolean conditions on Ana-
lyzability, as suggested later, it will be impossible to formulate
many "structure-dependent" operations as transformations — for
example, an operation that will iterate a symbol that is the left-
most member of a category (impossible, short of listing all
categories of the grammar in the structural analysis), or an
operation that will iterate a symbol that belongs to as many
rightmost as leftmost categories). Hence, one who proposes this
theory would have to predict that although a language might
form interrogatives, for example, by interchanging the order
of certain categories (as in English), it could not form inter-
rogatives by reflection, or interchange of odd and even words, or
insertion of a marker in the middle of the sentence. Many other
such predictions, none of them at all obvious in any a priori
sense, can be deduced from any sufficiently explicit theory of
linguistic universals that is attributed to a language-acquisition
device as an intrinsic property. For some initial approaches to
the very difficult but tantalizing problem of investigating ques-
tions of this sort, see Miller and Stein (1963), Miller and Norman
(1964).
Notice that when we maintain that a system is not learnable
by a language-acquisition device that mirrors human capacities,
we do not imply that this system cannot be mastered by a
human in some other way, if treated as a puzzle or intellectual
exercise of some sort. The language-acquisition device is only
one component of the total system of intellectual structures
that can be applied to problem solving and concept formation;
in other words, the faculte de langage is only one of the faculties
of the mind. What one would expect, however, is that there
should be a qualitative difference in the way in which an organism
with a functional language-acquisition system32 will approach
and deal with systems that are languagelike and others that
are not.
The problem of mapping the intrinsic cognitive capacities of
§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 57

an organism and identifying the systems of belief and the

organization of behavior that it can readily attain should be
central to experimental psychology. However, the field has not
developed in this way. Learning theory has, for the most part,
concentrated on what seems a much more marginal topic, namely
the question of species-independent regularities in acquisition
of items of a "behavioral repertoire" under experimentally
manipulable conditions. Consequently, it has necessarily directed
its attention to tasks that are extrinsic to an organism's cognitive
capacities — tasks that must be approached in a devious, indirect,
and piecemeal fashion. In the course of this work, some incidental
information has been obtained about the effect of intrinsic
cognitive structure and intrinsic organization of behavior on
what is learned, but this has rarely been the focus of serious
attention (outside of ethology). The sporadic exceptions to this
observation (see, for example, the discussion of "instinctual drift"
in Breland and Breland, 1961) are quite suggestive, as are many
ethological studies of lower organisms. The general question and
its many ramifications, however, remain in a primitive state.
In brief, it seems clear that the present situation with regard
to the study of language learning is essentially as follows. We
have a certain amount of evidence about the character of the
generative grammars that must be the "output" of an acquisition
model for language. This evidence shows clearly that taxonomic
views of linguistic structure are inadequate and that knowledge
of grammatical structure cannot arise by application of step-by-
step inductive operations (segmentation, classification, substitu-
tion procedures, filling of slots in frames, association, etc.) of
any sort that have yet been developed within linguistics, psy-
chology, or philosophy. Further empiricist speculations contribute
nothing that even faintly suggests a way of overcoming the
intrinsic limitations of the methods that have so far been
proposed and elaborated. In particular, such speculations have
not provided any way to account for or even to express the
fundamental fact about the normal use of language, namely the
speaker's ability to produce and understand instantly new
58 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

sentences that are not similar to those previously heard in any

physically defined sense or in terms of any notion of frames or
classes of elements, nor associated with those previously heard by
conditioning, nor obtainable from them by any sort of "gen-
eralization" known to psychology or philosophy. It seems plain
that language acquisition is based on the child's discovery of
what from a formal point of view is a deep and abstract theory —
a generative grammar of his language — many of the concepts
and principles of which are only remotely related to experience
by long and intricate chains of unconscious quasi-inferential
steps. A consideration of the character of the grammar that is
acquired, the degenerate quality and narrowly limited extent
of the available data, the striking uniformity of the resulting
grammars, and their independence of intelligence, motivation,
and emotional state, over wide ranges of variation, leave little
hope that much of the structure of the language can be learned
by an organism initially uninformed as to its general character.
It is, for the present, impossible to formulate an assumption
about initial, innate structure rich enough to account for the fact
that grammatical knowledge is attained on the basis of the
evidence available to the learner. Consequently, the empiricist
effort to show how the assumptions about a language-acquisition
device can be reduced to a conceptual minimum33 is quite mis-
placed. The real problem is that of developing a hypothesis about
initial structure that is sufficiently rich to account for acquisition
of language, yet not so rich as to be inconsistent with the known
diversity of language. It is a matter of no concern and of only
historical interest that such a hypothesis will evidently not
satisfy the preconceptions about learning that derive from
centuries of empiricist doctrine. These preconceptions are not
only quite implausible, to begin with, but are without factual
support and are hardly consistent with what little is known
about how animals or humans construct a "theory of the external
world."
It is clear why the view that all knowledge derives solely from
the senses by elementary operations of association and "gen-
§ 8. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 59

eralization" should have had much appeal in the context of

eighteenth-century struggles for scientific naturalism. However,
there is surely no reason today for taking seriously a position that
attributes a complex human achievement entirely to months (or
at most years) of experience, rather than to millions of years of
evolution or to principles of neural organization that may be
even more deeply grounded in physical law — a position that
would, furthermore, yield the conclusion that man is, apparently,
unique among animals in the way in which he acquires knowl-
edge. Such a position is particularly implausible with regard to
language, an aspect of the child's world that is a human creation
and would naturally be expected to reflect intrinsic human
capacity in its internal organization.
In short, the structure of particular languages may very well be
largely determined by factors over which the individual has no
conscious control and concerning which society may have little
choice or freedom. On the basis of the best information now
available, it seems reasonable to suppose that a child cannot
help constructing a particular sort of transformational grammar
to account for the data presented to him, any more than he can
control his perception of solid objects or his attention to line and
angle. Thus it may well be that the general features of language
structure reflect, not so much the course of one's experience, but
rather the general character of one's capacity to acquire knowl-
edge—in the traditional sense, one's innate ideas and innate
principles. It seems to me that the problem of clarifying this
issue and sharpening our understanding of its many facets
provides the most interesting and important reason for the study
of descriptively adequate grammars and, beyond this, the
formulation and justification of a general linguistic theory that
meets the condition of explanatory adequacy. By pursuing this
investigation, one may hope to give some real substance to the
traditional belief that "the principles of grammar form an im-
portant, and very curious, part of the philosophy of the human
mind" (Beattie, 1788).
60 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

§ p. GENERATIVE CAPACITY AND ITS LINGUISTIC

RELEVANCE

It may be useful to make one additional methodological obser-

vation in connection with the topics discussed in the last few sec-
tions. Given a descriptive theory of language structure,34 we can
distinguish its weak generative capacity from its strong genera-
tive capacity in the following way. Let us say that a grammar
weakly generates a set of sentences and that it strongly generates
a set of structural descriptions (recall that each structural de-
scription uniquely specifies a sentence, but not necessarily con-
versely), where both weak and strong generation are determined
by the procedure / of (i2iv) = (131V) = (141V). Suppose that the
linguistic theory T provides the class of grammars GlP G2,--,
where Gt weakly generates the language L{ and strongly generates
the system of structural descriptions 2(. Then the class {Lx,
Z.2,---} constitutes the weak generative capacity of T and the
class {Slf 22»'"} constitutes the strong generative capacity of T.8B
The study of strong generative capacity is related to the study
of descriptive adequacy, in the sense defined. A grammar is de-
scriptively adequate if it strongly generates the correct set of
structural descriptions. A theory is descriptively adequate if its
strong generative capacity includes the system of structural
descriptions for each natural language; otherwise, it is descrip-
tively inadequate. Thus inadequacy of strong generative capacity,
on empirical grounds, shows that a theory of language is seriously
defective. As we have observed, however, a theory of language
that appears to be empirically adequate in terms of strong genera-
tive capacity is not necessarily of any particular theoretical in-
terest, since the crucial question of explanatory adequacy goes
beyond any consideration of strong generative capacity.
The study of weak generative capacity is of rather marginal
linguistic interest. It is important only in those cases where some
proposed theory fails even in weak generative capacity — that is,
where there is some natural language even the sentences of
which cannot be enumerated by any grammar permitted by this
theory. In fact, it has been shown that certain fairly elementary
§ g- GENERATIVE CAPACITY AND ITS LINGUISTIC RELEVANCE 6l

theories (in particular, the theory of context-free phrase-structure

grammar and the even weaker theory of finite-state grammar) do
not have the weak generative capacity required for the descrip-
tion of natural language, and thus fail empirical tests of ade-
quacy in a particularly surprising way.38 From this observation
we must conclude that as linguistic theory progresses to a more
adequate conception of grammatical structure, it will have to
permit devices with a weak generative capacity that differs, in
certain respects, from that of these severely defective systems.
It is important to note, however, that the fundamental defect
of these systems is not their limitation in weak generative capacity
but rather their many inadequacies in strong generative capacity.
Postal's demonstration that the theory of context-free grammar
(simple phrase-structure grammar) fails in weak generative
capacity was preceded by over a half-dozen years of discussion of
the strong generative capacity of this theory, which showed con-
clusively that it cannot achieve descriptive adequacy. Further-
more, these limitations in strong generative capacity carry over
to the theory of context-sensitive phrase-structure grammar,
which probably does not fail in weak generative capacity.
Presumably, discussion of weak generative capacity marks only
a very early and primitive stage of the study of generative gram-
mar. Questions of real linguistic interest arise only when strong
generative capacity (descriptive adequacy) and, more important,
explanatory adequacy become the focus of discussion.
As observed earlier, the critical factor in the development of a
fully adequate theory is the limitation of the class of possible
grammars. Clearly, this limitation must be such as to meet
empirical conditions on strong (and, a fortiori, weak) generative
capacity, and, furthermore, such as to permit the condition of
explanatory adequacy to be met when an appropriate evaluation
measure is developed. But beyond this, the problem is to impose
sufficient structure on the schema that defines "generative gram-
mar" so that relatively few hypotheses will have to be tested by
the evaluation measure, given primary linguistic data. We want
the hypotheses compatible with fixed data to be "scattered" in
value, so that choice among them can be made relatively easily.
62 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

This requirement of "feasibility" is the major empirical con-

straint on a theory, once the conditions of descriptive and ex-
planatory adequacy are met. It is important to keep the require-
ments of explanatory adequacy and feasibility in mind when
weak and strong generative capacities of theories are studied as
mathematical questions. Thus one can construct hierarchies of
grammatical theories in terms of weak and strong generative
capacity, but it is important to bear in mind that these hierarchies
do not necessarily correspond to what is probably the empirically
most significant dimension of increasing power of linguistic
theory. This dimension is presumably to be defined in terms of
the scattering in value of grammars compatible with fixed data.
Along this empirically significant dimension, we should like to
accept the least "powerful" theory that is empirically adequate.
It might conceivably turn out that this theory is extremely
powerful (perhaps even universal, that is, equivalent in genera-
tive capacity to the theory of Turing machines)37 along the
dimension of weak generative capacity, and even along the
dimension of strong generative capacity. It will not necessarily
follow that it is very powerful (and hence to be discounted) in
the dimension which is ultimately of real empirical significance.
In brief, mathematical study of formal properties of grammars
is, very likely, an area of linguistics of great potential. It has
already provided some insight into questions of empirical interest
and will perhaps some day provide much deeper insights. But it
is important to realize that the questions presently being studied
are primarily determined by feasibility of mathematical study,
and it is important not to confuse this with the question of
empirical significance.
Categories and Relations
in Syntactic Theory

§ /. THE SCOPE OF THE BASE

WE now return to the problem of refining and elaborating
the sketch (in Chapter i, § 3) of how a generative grammar is
organized. Putting off to the next chapter any question as to the
adequacy of earlier accounts of grammatical transformations, we
shall consider here only the formal properties of the base of the
syntactic component. We are therefore concerned primarily with
extremely simple sentences.
The investigation of generative grammar can profitably begin
with a careful analysis of the kind of information presented in
traditional grammars. Adopting this as a heuristic procedure,
let us consider what a traditional grammar has to say about a
simple English sentence such as the following:
(1) sincerity may frighten the boy
Concerning this sentence, a traditional grammar might provide
information of the following sort:
(2) (i) the string (1) is a Sentence (S); frighten the boy is a Verb
Phrase (VP) consisting of the Verb (V) frighten and the
Noun Phrase (NP) the boy; sincerity is also an NP; the
NP the boy consists of the Determiner (Det) the, followed
by a Noun (N); the NP sincerity consists of just an N;
the is, furthermore, an Article (Art); may is a Verbal
Auxiliary (Aux) and, furthermore, a Modal (M).

63
64 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

(ii) the NP sincerity functions as the Subject of the sentence

(1), whereas the VP frighten the boy functions as the Pred-
icate of this sentence; the NP the boy functions as the
Object of the VP, and the V frighten as its Main Verb;
the grammatical relation Subject-Verb holds of the pair
(sincerity, frighten), and the grammatical relation Verb-
Object holds of the pair (frighten, the boy).1
(iii) the N boy is a Count Noun (as distinct from the Mass
Noun butter and the Abstract Noun sincerity) and a
Common Noun (as distinct from the Proper Noun John
and the Pronoun it); it is, furthermore, an Animate Noun
(as distinct from book) and a Human Noun (as distinct
from bee); frighten is a Transitive Verb (as distinct from
occur), and one that does not freely permit Object dele-
tion (as distinct from read, eat); it takes Progressive Aspect
freely (as distinct from know, own); it allows Abstract
Subjects (as distinct from eat, admire) and Human Ob-
jects (as distinct from read, wear).

It seems to me that the information presented in (2) is, with-

out question, substantially correct and is essential to any account
of how the language is used or acquired. The main topic I should
like to consider is how information of this sort can be formally
presented in a structural description, and how such structural
descriptions can be generated by a system of explicit rules. The
next three subsections (§§ 2.1, 2.2, 2.3) discuss these questions in
connection with (2i), (aii), and (2111), respectively.

§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE

§ 2.1. Categorization
The remarks given in (2i) concern the subdivision of the
string (1) into continuous substrings, each of which is assigned to
a certain category. Information of this sort can be represented
by a labeled bracketing of (1), or, equivalently, by a tree-diagram
such as (3). The interpretation of such a diagram is transparent,
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 65

(s) S

NP Aux VP

N M V NP
I. I I /X
sincerity may frighten Det N
I I
the boy
and has been discussed frequently elsewhere. If one assumes
now that (1) is a basic string, the structure represented as (3) can
be taken as a first approximation to its (base) Phrase-marker.
A grammar that generates simple Phrase-markers such as (3)
may be based on a vocabulary of symbols that includes both
formatives (the, boy, etc.) and category symbols (S, NP, V, etc.).
The formatives, furthermore, can be subdivided into lexical
items (sincerity, boy) and grammatical items (Perfect, Possessive,
etc.; except possibly for the, none of these are represented in the
simplified example given).
A question arises at once as to the choice of symbols in Phrase-
markers. That is, we must ask whether the formatives and
category symbols used in Phrase-markers have some language-
independent characterization, or whether they are just con-
venient mnemonic tags, specific to a particular grammar.
In the case of the lexical formatives, the theory of phonetic
distinctive features taken together with the full set of conditions
on phonological representation does, in fact, give a language-
independent significance to the choice of symbols, though it is
by no means a trivial problem to establish this fact (or to select
the proper universal set of substantive phonetic features). I shall
assume, henceforth, that an appropriate phonological theory of
this sort is established and that, consequently, the lexical forma-
tives are selected in a well-defined way from a fixed universal set.
The question of substantive representation in the case of the
grammatical formatives and the category symbols is, in effect, the
traditional question of universal grammar. I shall assume that
66 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

these elements too are selected from a fixed, universal vocabulary,

although this assumption will actually have no significant effect
on any of the descriptive material to be presented. There is no
reason to doubt the importance or reasonableness of the study
of this question. It is generally held to involve extrasyntactic
considerations of a sort that are at present only dimly perceived.
This may very well be true. However, I shall later suggest several
general definitions that appear to be correct for English and for
other cases with which I am acquainted.2
The natural mechanism for generating Phrase-markers such
as (3) is a system of rewriting rules. A rewriting rule is a rule of
the form
(4) A -> Z/X — Y
where X and Y are (possibly null) strings of symbols, A is a single
category symbol, and Z is a nonnull string of symbols. This rule
is interpreted as asserting that the category A is realized as the
string Z when it is in the environment consisting of X to the left
and Y to the right. Application of the rewriting rule (4) to a
string ••• XAY ••• converts this to the string ••• XZY •••. Given
a grammar, we say that a sequence of strings is a W-derivation
of V if W is the first and V the last string in the sequence, and
each string of the sequence is derived from the one preceding it
by application of one of the rewriting rules (with an ordering
condition to be added later). Where V is a string of formatives,
we say that a W-derivation of V is terminated. We call V a
terminal string if there is an #S#-derivation of #F#, where S is
the designated initial symbol of the grammar (representing the
category "Sentence"), and # is the boundary symbol (regarded as
a grammatical formative). Thus we construct a derivation of a
terminal string by successively applying the rewriting rules of
the grammar, beginning with the string #S#, until the final string
of the derivation consists only of formatives and therefore no
further rewriting is possible. If several other conditions are
imposed on the system of rewriting rules,3 it is easy to provide a
simple method for assigning a unique and appropriate Phrase-
marker to a terminal string, given its derivation. Thus a system
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 67

of rewriting rules, appropriately constrained, can serve as a part

of a generative grammar.
An unordered set of rewriting rules, applied in the manner
described loosely here (and precisely elsewhere), is called a
constituent structure grammar (or phrase structure grammar).
The grammar is, furthermore, called context-free (or simple) if
in each rule of the form (4), X and Y are null, so that the rules
apply independently of context. As noted earlier (pp. 60 f., 208),
the formal properties of constituent structure grammars have
been studied fairly intensively during the past few years; and
it has also been shown that almost all of the nontransformational
syntactic theories that have been developed within modern lin-
guistics, pure or applied, fall within this framework. In fact,
such a system is apparently what is implicit in modern taxonomic
("structuralist") grammars, if these are reformulated as explicit
systems for presenting grammatical information (but see note 30,
Chapter 1). The inadequacy of such systems as grammars for
natural languages seems to me to have been established beyond
any reasonable doubt,4 and I shall not discuss the issue here.
It seems clear that certain kinds of grammatical information
are presented in the most natural way by a system of rewriting
rules, and we may therefore conclude that rewriting rules consti-
tute part of the base of the syntactic component. Furthermore,
we shall assume that these rules are arranged in a linear sequence,
and shall define a sequential derivation as a derivation formed
by a series of rule applications that preserves this ordering. Thus,
suppose that the grammar consists of the sequence of rules
Ru •••, Rn and that the sequence *S*, *X1*, •••, *Xm# is a
derivation of the terminal string Xm. For this to be a sequential
derivation, it must be the case that if rule Rt was used to form
line *Xf* from the line that precedes it, then no rule Rk (for
k > i) can have been used to form a line *XX* (for I < f) from
#X(.!#. We stipulate now that only sequential derivations are
generated by the sequence of rules constituting this part of
the base.8
To provide a Phrase-marker such as (3), the base component
might contain the following sequence of rewriting rules:
68 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

(5) (I) S^ NP^Aux^VP

VP -» V^NP
NP -* Det^N
NP -» N
Det •» the
Aux -> M
(II) M -> may
N -> sincerity
N -» boy
V -» frighten
Notice that the rules (5), although they do suffice to generate
(3), will also generate such deviant strings as boy may frighten
the sincerity. This is a problem to which we shall turn in § 2.3.
There is a natural distinction in (5) between rules that in-
troduce lexical formatives (class (II)) and the others. In fact, we
shall see in § 2.3 that it is necessary to distinguish these sets and
to assign the lexical rules to a distinct subpart of the base of the
syntactic component.
In the case of the information in (2i), then, we see quite clearly
how it is to be formally represented, and what sorts of rules are
required to generate these representations.
§ 2.2. Functional notions
Turning now to (211), we can immediately see that the notions
in question have an entirely different status. The notion "Sub-
ject," as distinct from the notion "NP," designates a grammatical
function rather than a grammatical category. It is, in other words,
an inherently relational notion. We say, in traditional terms, that
in (i) sincerity is an NP (not that it is the NP of the sentence),
and that it is (functions as) the Subject-of the sentence (not that
it is a Subject). Functional notions like "Subject," "Predicate"
are to be sharply distinguished from categorial notions such as
"Noun Phrase," "Verb," a distinction that is not to be obscured
by the occasional use of the same term for notions of both kinds.
Thus it would merely confuse the issue to attempt to represent
the information presented in (2ii) formally by extending the
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 6g

(6) S

Subject Aux Predicate

NP
I
N
I
sincerity

frighten Det
I
the boy
Phrase-marker (3) to (6), adding the necessary rewriting rules
to (5I). This approach is mistaken in two ways. For one thing, it
confuses categorial and functional notions by assigning categorial
status to both, and thus fails to express the relational character
of the functional notions. For another, it fails to observe that
both (6) and the grammar on which it is based are redundant,
since the notions Subject, Predicate, Main-Verb, and Object,
being relational, are already represented in the Phrase-marker
(3), and no new rewriting rules are required to introduce them.
It is necessary only to make explicit the relational character of
these notions by denning "Subject-of," for English, as the
relation holding between the NP of a sentence of the form
NP^Aux^VP and the whole sentence,6 "Object-of" as the
relation between the NP of a VP of the form V^NP and the
whole VP, etc. More generally, we can regard any rewriting rule
as defining a set of grammatical functions, in this way, only some
of which (namely, those that involve the "higher-level," more
abstract grammatical categories) have been provided, tradi-
tionally, with explicit names.
The fundamental error of regarding functional notions as
categorial is somewhat masked in such examples as (6), in which
there is only a single Subject, a single Object, and a single Main-
Verb. In this case, the relational information can be supplied.
70 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

intuitively, by the reader. But consider such sentences as (7), in

which many grammatical functions are realized, several by the
same phrase:
(7) (a) John was persuaded by Bill to leave
(b) John was persuaded by Bill to be examined
(c) what disturbed John was being regarded as incompetent
In (7a), John is simultaneously Object-of persuade (to leave) and
Subject-of leave; in (7b), John is simultaneously Object-of per-
suade (to be examined) and Object-of examine; in (7c), John is
simultaneously Object-of disturb, Object-of regard (as incom-
petent), and Subject-of the predication as incompetent. In both
(7a) and (jb), Bill is the ("logical") Subject-of the Sentence,
rather than John, which is the so-called "grammatical" Subject-
of the Sentence, that is, the Subject with respect to the surface
structure (cf. note 32). In such cases as these, the impossibility of
a categorial interpretation of functional notions becomes at
once apparent; correspondingly, the deep structure in which the
significant grammatical functions are represented will be very
different from the surface structure. Examples of this sort, of
course, provide the primary motivation and empirical justifica-
tion for the theory of transformational grammar. That is, each
sentence of (7) will have a basis consisting of a sequence of base
Phrase-markers, each of which represents some of the semanti-
cally relevant information concerning grammatical function.
Returning now to the main question, let us consider the
problem of presenting information about grammatical function
in an explicit and adequate way, restricting ourselves now to base
Phrase-markers. To develop a uniform approach to this ques-
tion, we may proceed as follows. Suppose that we have a sequence
of rewriting rules, such as (5), including in particular the rule
(8) A ->X
Associated with this rule is each grammatical function
(9) [B, A]
where B is a category and X = YBZ, for some Y, Z (possibly
null).7 Given a Phrase-marker of the terminal string W, we say
 ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 7'
that the substring U of W bears the grammatical relation [B, A]
to the substring V of W if V is dominated by a node labeled A
which directly dominates YBZ, and U is dominated by this
occurrence of B.8 Thus the Phrase-marker in question contains
the subconfiguration (10). In particular, given the Phrase-marker

(10)

YBZ

W=
A A A
U

(3) generated by the rules (5), we should have the result that
sincerity bears the relation [NP, S] to sincerity may frighten the
boy, frighten the boy bears the relation [VP, S] to sincerity may
frighten the boy, the boy bears the relation [NP, VP] to frighten
the boy, and frighten bears the relation [V, VP] to frighten the
boy.
Suppose further that we propose the following general defini-
tions:
(11) (i) Subject-of: [NP, S]
(ii) Predicate-of: [VP, S]
(iii) Direct-Object-of: [NP, VP]
(iv) Main-Verb-of: [V, VP]
In this case, we can now say that with respect to the Phrase-
marker (3) generated by the rules (5), sincerity is the Subject-of
the sentence sincerity may frighten the boy and frighten the boy
is its Predicate; and the boy is the Direct-Object-of the Verb
Phrase frighten the boy and frighten is its Main-Verb. With
these definitions, the information presented in the redundant
representation (6) is derivable directly from (3), that is, from the
grammar (5) itself. These definitions must be thought of as
72 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

belonging to general linguistic theory; in other words, they form

part of the general procedure for assigning a full structural
description to a sentence, given a grammar (the procedure / of
(i2iv), (i3iv), (i4iv) in § 6, Chapter 1).
In such examples as (7), the grammatical functions will also be
given directly by the system of rewriting rules that generate the
base Phrase-markers that underlie these sentences, though these
grammatical functions are not represented in the configurations
of the surface structures in these cases. For example (details
aside), the basis for (7a) will contain base Phrase-markers for the
strings Bill persuaded John Sentence, John left, and these base
Phrase-markers present the semantically relevant functional in-
formation exactly as in the case of (3).
Notice that the same grammatical function may be defined by
several different rewriting rules of the base. Thus suppose that
a grammar were to contain the rewriting rules
(12) (i) S •* Adverbial^NP^ (Naturally, John will leave)
Aux^VP
(ii) S -> Np-^Aux^VP (John will leave)
(iii) VP •» V~NP (examine Bill)
(iv) VP -> V (leave)
(v) VP •» V-^NP^Sentence (persuade Bill that John left)
(vi) VP •» Copula""Predicate (be President)
(vii) Predicate •> N (President)
Then Subject-of is defined by both (i) and (ii), so that John is
Subject-of the sentences accompanying both (i) and (ii); Object-
of is defined by both (iii) and (v), so that Bill is the Object-of the
Verb Phrases given as examples to both (iii) and (v); Main-Verb-
of is defined by (iii), (iv), and (v), so that examine, leave, per-
suade are the Main-Verbs of the accompanying examples. But
notice that "President" is not the Object-of John is President, if
the rules are as in (12). It is definitions of this sort that were
presupposed in the discussion of persuade and expect in Chap-
ter 1, § 4.
Notice that the general significance of the definitions (11)
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 73

depends on the assumption that the symbols S, NP, VP, N, and V

have been characterized as grammatical universals. We shall re-
turn to this question later. Quite apart from this, it is likely that
these definitions are too restricted to serve as general explications
for the traditionally designated grammatical functions in that
they assume too narrow a substantive specification of the form
of grammar. They can be generalized in various ways, but I do
not, at the moment, see any strong empirical motivation for one
or another specific extension or refinement (but see § 2.3.4).
In any event, these questions aside, it is clear that information
concerning grammatical functions of the sort exemplified in
(aii) can be extracted directly from the rewriting rules of the
base, without any necessity for ad hoc extensions and elabora-
tions of these rules to provide specific mention of grammatical
function. Such extensions, aside from their redundancy, have the
defect of failing to express properly the relational character of
the functional notions and are thus useless in all but the simplest
cases.
However, we have not yet exhausted the information presented
in (aii). Thus it is still necessary to define grammatical relations
of the sort that hold between sincerity and frighten (Subject-
Verb) and between frighten and the boy (Verb-Object) in (t).
Such relations can be defined derivatively in terms of the func-
tional notions suggested earlier. Thus Subject-Verb can be de-
fined as the relation between the Subject-of a Sentence and
Main-Verb-of the Predicate-of the Sentence, where Subject-of,
Main-Verb-of, and Predicate-of are the notions of (11); and
Verb-Object can be defined as the relation between the Main-
Verb-of and the Direct-Object-of a VP. However, there is still
something missing in this account. Thus we have no basis, as yet,
for distinguishing the legitimate and traditionally recognized
grammatical relation Subject-Verb, as just defined, from the
irrelevant pseudorelation Subject-Object, which is definable just
as easily in the same terms. Traditional grammar seems to define
such relations where there are selectional restrictions governing
the paired categories. Thus the choice of Main-Verb is deter-
74 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

mined by the choice of Subject and Object, though Subject and

Object are in general chosen independently of one another and,
correspondingly, have no grammatical relation of the sort in
question holding between them. I shall defer the discussion of
selectional relations until § 4.2, and at that point we can return
to the question of grammatical relations. But in any event, it is
fairly clear that nothing essentially new is involved here beyond
the rules that generate strings and Phrase-markers.
In summary, then, it seems unnecessary to extend the system of
rewriting rules in order to accommodate information of the
sort presented in (aii). With appropriate general definitions of
the relational notions involved, this information can be extracted
directly from Phrase-markers that are generated by simple re-
writing rules such as (5) and (12). This information is already
contained, implicitly, in the system of elementary rewriting
rules. Representations such as (6) and new or elaborated rewrit-
ing rules to generate them are unnecessary, as well as mislead-
ing and inappropriate.
Finally, I should like to call attention, once again, to the fact
that various modifications and extensions of these functional
notions are possible, and that it is important to find empirical
motivation for such improvements. For example, the char-
acterization might be sharpened somewhat in terms of several
notions that will be useful later on. Suppose again that we have
a base grammar consisting of a sequence of rewriting rules, and
that (as in (5)) we have distinguished lexical rules (such as (5II)),
which introduce lexical formatives, from the others. We shall see
later that this distinction is formally quite clearly marked. A
category that appears on the left in a lexical rule we shall call a
lexical category; a lexical category or a category that dominates a
string •X--, where X is a lexical category, we shall call a
major category. Thus in the grammar (5), the categories N, V,
and M are lexical categories,9 and all categories except Det (and
possibly M and Aux — see note 9) are major categories. It would,
then, be in accord with traditional usage to limit the functional
notions to major categories. We shall consider a further refine-
ment in the final paragraph of § 2.3.4.
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 75

§ 2.5. Syntactic features

§ 2.3.7. The problem. Information of the sort presented in
(2iii) raises several difficult and rather vexing questions. First, it
is not obvious to what extent this information should be pro-
vided by the syntactic component at all. Second, it is an inter-
esting question whether or to what extent semantic considera-
tions are relevant in determining such subcategorizations as
those involved in (2iii). These are distinct questions, though
they are often confused. They are connected only in that if the
basis for making the distinctions is purely syntactic, then surely
the information must be presented in the syntactic component
of the grammar. We might call these the questions of presenta-
tion and justification, respectively.
As far as the question of justification is concerned, a linguist
with a serious interest in semantics will presumably attempt to
deepen and extend syntactic analysis to the point where it can
provide the information concerning subcategorization, instead
of relegating this to unanalyzed semantic intuition, there being,
for the moment, no other available proposal as to a semantic
basis for making the necessary distinctions. Of course, it is an
open question whether this attempt can succeed, even in part.
I shall be concerned here only with the question of presenta-
tion of information of the sort given in (aiii). I am assuming
throughout that the semantic component of a generative gram-
mar, like the phonological component, is purely interpretive. It
follows that all information utilized in semantic interpretation
must be presented in the syntactic component of the grammar
(but cf. Chapter 4, § 1.2). Some of the problems involved in
presenting this information will be explored later.
Although the question of justification of subcategorizations
such as those of (2iii) is beyond the scope of the present discus-
sion, it may nevertheless be useful to touch on it briefly. What is
at stake, essentially, is the status of such expressions as

(13) (i) the boy may frighten sincerity

(ii) sincerity may admire the boy
(iii) John amazed the injustice of that decision
/6 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

(iv) the boy elapsed

(v) the boy was abundant
(vi) the harvest was clever to agree
(vii) John is owning a house
(viii) the dog looks barking
(ix) John solved the pipe
(x) the book dispersed
It is obvious to anyone who knows English that these expressions
have an entirely different status from such sentences as
(14) (i) sincerity may frighten the boy (=(1))
(ii) the boy may admire sincerity
(iii) the injustice of that decision amazed John
(iv) a week elapsed
(v) the harvest was abundant
(vi) the boy was clever to agree
(vii) John owns a house
(viii) the dog looks terrifying
(ix) John solved the problem
(x) the boys dispersed

The distinction between (13) and (14) is not at issue, and clearly
must be accounted for somehow by an adequate theory of sen-
tence interpretation (a descriptively adequate grammar). The
expressions of (13) deviate in some manner (not necessarily all in
the same manner) from the rules of English.10 If interpretable
at all, they are surely not interpretable in the manner of the
corresponding sentences of (14). Rather, it seems that inter-
pretations are imposed on them by virtue of analogies that they
bear to nondeviant sentences.
There are fairly clear-cut cases of violation of purely syntactic
rules, for example,
(15) (i) sincerity frighten may boy the
(ii) boy the frighten may sincerity
and standard examples of purely semantic (or "pragmatic")
incongruity, for example,
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 77

(16) (i) oculists are generally better trained than eye-doctors

(ii) both of John's parents are married to aunts of mine
(iii) I'm memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to com-
pose some day
(iv) that ice cube that you finally managed to melt just
shattered
(v) I knew you would come, but I was wrong

The examples of (13), however, have a borderline character, and

it is much less clear how their aberrant status is to be explained.
In other words, we must face the problem of determining to
what extent the results and methods of syntactic or of semantic
analysis can be extended to account for the deviance and inter-
pretation of these expressions. It goes without saying that the
same answer may not be appropriate in all of these cases, and
that purely semantic or purely syntactic considerations may not
provide the answer in some particular case. In fact, it should
not be taken for granted, necessarily, that syntactic and semantic
considerations can be sharply distinguished.
Several suggestions have been made as to how syntactic con-
siderations can provide a subclassification of the appropriate
sort. These involve the notion of "degree of grammaticalness,"
along various dimensions, and concrete proposals involve tech-
niques of subclassifying based on distributional similarities. Al-
though these notions have been advanced only very tentatively,
it seems to me that they have some plausibility.11 The only sug-
gestion as to possible semantic grounds for these distinctions has
been that they are based on language-independent semantic
absolutes — that in each case, the deviance is attributable to
violation of some linguistic universal that constrains the form
of the semantic component of any generative grammar. It is
possible that this is the right answer; furthermore, there is no
reason why some combination of these two extreme approaches
should not be attempted.
In any case, what is needed is a systematic account of how
application of the devices and methods appropriate to unequiv-
ocal cases can be extended and deepened to provide a basis for
78 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

explaining the status of such expressions as those of (13), and an

account of how an ideal listener might assign an interpretation
to such sentences, where possible, presumably on the basis of
analogy to nondeviant cases. These are real and important ques-
tions. A descriptively adequate grammar must account for such
phenomena in terms of the structural descriptions provided by
its syntactic and semantic components, and a general linguistic
theory that aims for explanatory adequacy must show how such
a grammar can develop on the basis of data available to the
language learner. Vague and unsupported assertions about the
"semantic basis for syntax" make no contribution to the under-
standing of these questions.
Proceeding now from the question of justification to the ques-
tion of presentation, we must determine how a grammar can
provide structural descriptions that will account for such phe-
nomena as those exemplified. A priori there is no way to decide
whether the burden of presentation should fall on the syntactic
or semantic component of the generative grammar. If the former,
we must design the syntactic component so that it does not pro-
vide for the sentences of (13) directly, but assigns them Phrase-
markers only by virtue of their structural similarities to such
perfectly well-formed sentences as those of (14), perhaps in the
manner described in the references in note 11. Thus the syntactic
component will operate in terms of selectional restrictions in-
volving such categories as animateness and abstractness, and will
characterize (13!), for example, as a string generated only by
relaxing certain of these restrictions. Alternatively, if we conclude
that the semantic component should carry the burden of
accounting for these facts, we can allow the syntactic component
to generate the sentences of (14) as well as those of (13), with no
distinction of grammaticalness, but with lexical items specified in
such a way that rules of the semantic component will determine
the incongruity of the sentences of (13) and the manner in
which they can be interpreted (if at all). Either way, we face a
well-defined problem, and it is reasonably clear how to proceed to
examine it. I shall, for the present, accept the position of the
references of note 11, assuming that the notion "scale of gram-
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 7g

maticalness" will be relevant to semantic interpretation, that a

distinction should be made between (13) and (14) by rules of
the syntactic component, and that the sentences of (13) are as-
signed Phrase-markers only by relaxation of certain syntactic
conditions. Later on, I shall try to indicate the precise point at
which this decision affects the form of the syntactic component,
and shall discuss briefly some possible alternatives.

§ 2.5.2. Some formal similarities between syntax and phonol-

ogy. Consider now how information of the sort given in (2iii) can
be presented in explicit rules. Note that this information con-
cerns subcategorization rather than "branching" (that is, analysis
of a category into a sequence of categories, as when S is analyzed
into NP^Aux^VP, or NP into Det^N). Furthermore, it seems
that the only categories involved are those containing lexical
formatives as members. Hence, we are dealing with a rather
restricted part of grammatical structure, and it is important to
bear this in mind in exploring appropriate means for presenting
these facts.
The obvious suggestion is to deal with subcategorization by
rewriting rules of the type described in § 2.2, and this was the
assumption made in the first attempts to formalize generative
grammars (cf. Chomsky, 1951,12 1955. 1957)- However, G. H.
Matthews, in the course of his work on a generative grammar of
German in 1957-1958, pointed out that this assumption was in-
correct and that rewriting rules are not the appropriate device to
effect subcategorization of lexical categories.13 The difficulty is
that this subcategorization is typically not strictly hierarchic,
but involves rather cross classification. Thus, for example, Nouns
in English are either Proper (John, Egypt) or Common (boy,
book) and either Human (John, boy) or non-Human (Egypt,
book). Certain rules (for example, some involving Determiners)
apply to the Proper/Common distinction; others (for example,
rules involving choice of Relative Pronoun) to the Human/non-
Human distinction. But if the subcategorization is given by re-
writing rules, then one or the other of these distinctions will have
to dominate, and the other will be unstatable in the natural
80 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

way. Thus if we decide to take Proper/Common as the major

distinction, we have such rules as
(17) N -> Proper
N •* Common
Proper •* Pr-Human
Proper •> Pr-nHuman
Common •» C-Human
Common •» C-nHuman
where the symbols "Pr-Human," "Pr-nHuman," "C-Human," and
"C-nHuman" are entirely unrelated, as distinct from one
another as the symbols "Noun," "Verb," "Adjective," and
"Modal." In this system, although we can easily state a rule that
applies only to Proper Nouns or only to Common Nouns, a rule
that applies to Human Nouns must be stated in terms of the
unrelated categories Pr-Human and C-Human. This obviously
indicates that a generalization is being missed, since this rule
would now be no simpler or better motivated than, for example,
a rule applying to the unrelated categories Pr-Human and
Abstract Nouns. As the depth of the analysis increases, problems
of this sort mount to the point where they indicate a serious
inadequacy in a grammar that consists only of rewriting rules.
Nor is this particular difficulty overcome, as many others are,
when we add transformational rules to the grammar.
Formally, this problem is identical to one that is familiar on
the level of phonology. Thus phonological units are also cross-
classified, with respect to phonological rules. There are, for
example, rules that apply to voiced consonants [b], [z], but not to
unvoiced consonants [p], [s], and there are other rules that apply
to continuants [s], [z], but not to stops [p], [b], and so on.
For this reason it is necessary to regard each phonological unit
as a set of features, and to design the phonological component
in such a way that each rule applies to all segments containing a
certain feature or constellation of features. The same solution
suggests itself in the case of the syntactic problem that we are
now facing, and it is this method of dealing with the problem
that I shall elaborate here.
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 8l

Before we turn to the use of features on the syntactic level,

let us review briefly the operation of the phonological com-
ponent (cf. Halle, 1959a, 1959b, 1962a, 1964, for discussion of
this question). Each lexical formative is represented as a sequence
of segments, each segment being a set of features. In other words,
each lexical formative is represented by a distinctive-feature
matrix in which the columns stand for successive segments, and
the rows for particular features. An entry in the ith column and ;th
row of such a matrix indicates how the itb segment is specified
with respect to the ;th feature. A particular entry may indicate
that the segment in question is unspecified with respect to the
feature in question, or that it is positively specified with respect
to this feature, or that it is negatively specified with respect to
this feature. We say that two segments are distinct just in case
one is positively specified with respect to a feature with respect to
which the other is negatively specified, and, more generally, that
two matrices with the same number of columns are distinct if
the Jth segment of one is distinct in this sense from the fth segment
of the other, for some i.
Suppose that

(18) A -> z/x — y

is a phonological rule, where A, Z, X, and Y are matrices, and A

and Z are, furthermore, segments (matrices with just a single
column). This is the typical form of a phonological rule. We
shall say that the rule (18) is applicable to any string WX'A'Y'V,
where X', A', Y' are matrices with the same number of columns
as X, A, Y, respectively, and X'A'Y' is not distinct from XAY
(actually, qualifications are necessary that do not concern us here
— cf. Halle and Chomsky, forthcoming, for discussion). The rule
(18) converts the string WX'A'Y'V to the string WX'Z'Y'V,
where Z' is the segment consisting of the feature specifications of
Z together with all feature specifications of A' for features with
respect to which Z is unspecified.
As an illustration of some of these notions, consider this
phonological rule:
82 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

(19) [+continuant] •> [+voiced]/— [-(-voiced]

This will convert [sm] into [zm], [fd] into [vd], [8g] into [zg], etc.,
but it will not affect [st] or [pd], for example.14 These conventions
(which can be simplified and generalized in ways that do not
concern us here) allow us to apply rules to any class of segments
specified by a given combination of features, and thus to make
use of the cross classification of segments provided by the feature
representation.
These notions can be adapted without essential change to the
representation of lexical categories and their members, providing
a very natural solution to the cross-classification problem and,
at the same time, contributing to the general unity of gram-
matical theory. Each lexical formative will have associated with
it a set of syntactic features (thus boy will have the syntactic
features [+Common], [+Human], etc.). Furthermore, the symbols
representing lexical categories (N, V, etc.) will be analyzed by
the rules into complex symbols, each complex symbol being a
set of specified syntactic features, just as each phonological seg-
ment is a set of specified phonological features. For example, we
might have the following grammatical rules:
(20) (i) N •* [+N, ±Common]
(ii) [+Common] -» [±Count]
(iii) [+Count] •* [±Animate]
(iv) [—Common] •* [±Animate]
(v) [+Animate] -» [±Human]
(vi) [-Count] •» [±Abstract]

We interpret rule (2oi) as asserting that the symbol N in a line of

a derivation is to be replaced by one of the two complex symbols
[+N, -fCommon] or [+N, —Common]. The rules (2oii-2ovi)
operate under the conventions for phonological rules. Thus rule
(2oii) asserts that any complex symbol Q that is already specified
as [-fCommon] is to be replaced by the complex symbol con-
taining all of the features of Q along with either the feature
specification f+Count] or [—Count]. The same is true of the other
rules that operate on complex symbols.
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 83

The total effect of the rules (20) can be represented by the

branching diagram (21). In this representation, each node is

(gi) Common

Animate
+
Abstract
+Human E
gypl

Human
w /\- book virtue dirt
/v
John Fido

boy dog

labeled by a feature, and the lines are labeled + or —. Each

maximal path corresponds to a category of lexical items; an
element of this category has the feature [aF] (a = + or —) if and
only if one of the lines constituting this path is labeled a and
descends from a node labeled F. Typical members of the cate-
gories defined by (20) are given at the terminal points of (21).
A system of complex symbol rules need not be representable
by a branching diagram of this sort. For example, the categories
defined by the rules (20) are also denned by the rules (22), but
in this case there is no representing branching diagram.

(22) (i) N •* [+N, ±Animate, ±Common]

(ii) [+Common] •> [±Count]
..... r _ , TiAbstract '
(111)
v [-Countl
L J ->
' I —Animate
(iv) [+Animate] •* [±Human
If we were to require representability in a branching diagram as
a formal condition on these rules, then (22) would be excluded.
In this case, the rules could just as well be presented in the form
(21) as the form (20). In any event, with rules of this sort that
introduce and elaborate complex symbols, we can develop the
full set of lexical categories.
84 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

§ 2.5.5. General structure of the base component. We now

modify the description of the base subcomponent that was
presented earlier, and exemplified by (5), in the following way.
In addition to rewriting rules that apply to category symbols
and that generally involve branching, there are rewriting rules
such as (20) that apply to symbols for lexical categories and that
introduce or operate on complex symbols (sets of specified
syntactic features). The grammar will now contain no rules such
as those of (5II) that introduce the formatives belonging to
lexical categories. Instead, the base of the grammar will con-
tain a lexicon, which is simply an unordered list of all lexical
formatives. More precisely, the lexicon is a set of lexical entries,
each lexical entry being a pair (D, C), where D is a phonological
distinctive feature matrix "spelling" a certain lexical formative
and C is a collection of specified syntactic features (a complex
symbol).15
The system of rewriting rules will now generate derivations
terminating with strings that consist of grammatical formatives
and complex symbols. Such a string we call a pretcrminal string.
A terminal string is formed from a preterminal string by insertion
of a lexical formative in accordance with the following lexical
rule:
If Q is a complex symbol of a preterminal string and (D, C)
is a lexical entry, where C is not distinct from Q, then Q can
be replaced by D.
We now extend the fundamental notion is a that relates strings
to categories (for example, the boy is an NP in (3)) in the follow-
ing way. We say that in the terminal string formed by replacing
the complex symbol Q by the formative D of the lexical entry
(D, C), the formative D is an [aF] (equivalently, is dominated by
[aF]) if [<xF] is part of the complex symbol Q or the complex
symbol C, where a is either + or — and F is a feature (but cf.
note 15). We also extend the general notion "Phrase-marker" in
such a way that the Phrase-marker of a terminal string also con-
tains the new information. With this extension, a Phrase-maker
can naturally no longer be represented by a tree-diagram, as
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 85

before, since it has an additional "dimension" at the level of

subcategorization.
As a concrete example, consider again the sentence sincerity
may frighten the boy (=(i)). Instead of the grammar (5) we now
have a grammar containing the branching rules (5I), which I
repeat here as (23), along with the subcategorization rules (20),
repeated as (24), and containing a lexicon with the entries (25).
It is to be understood, here and later on, that the italicized items
stand for phonological distinctive feature matrices, that is,
"spellings" of formatives.
(23) S -» NP^Aux^VP
VP •» V^NP
NP * Det~N
NP-» N
Det * the
Aux •* M
(24) (i) N -> [+N, ±Common]
(ii) [+Common] •* [±Count]
(iii) [+Count] * [±Animate]
(iv) [—Common] •> [±Animate]
(v) [+Animate] •» [±Human]
(vi) [-Count] -> [±Abstract]
(25) (sincerity, [+N, —Count, +Abstract])
(boy, [+N, —Count, +Common, +Animate, +Human])
(may, [+M])
We shall have more to say about these rules and lexical entries
later, and they will still undergo significant revision.
These rules allow us to generate the preterminal string
(26) [+N, -Count, +AbstractpM~Q~i/je~[+N, +Count,
+Animate, +Human],
where Q is the complex symbol into which V is analyzed by
rules that we shall discuss directly. The lexical rule (which, since
it is perfectly general, need not be stated in any grammar — in
other words, it constitutes part of the definition of "derivation")
8(5 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

now allows us to insert sincerity for the first complex symbol and
boy for the last complex symbol of (26) and, as we shall see, to in-
sert frighten for Q (and may for M — cf. note 9). Except for the
case of frighten, the information about the sentence (1) that is
given in (2) is now explicitly provided in full by the Phrase-
marker generated by the grammar consisting of the rules (23),
(24), and the lexicon (25). We might represent this Phrase-
marker in the form shown in (27). If the lexicon includes ad-

M V NP
I
-Count][+Coramon may y Det N
I
[+Abstracl frighten the [+Count][+Common]
I
sincerity [+Ani

[+H11

ditional specific information about the lexical items that appear

in (26), this information will also appear in the Phrase-marker,
represented in terms of features that appear in the Phrase-
marker in a position dominated by the lexical categories N and
V and dominating the formative in question.
Given this Phrase-maker, we can derive all of the information
(2i) and (2iii), which concerns assignment of substrings to
categories, in terms of the relation is a; and the functional in-
formation (2ii) is derivable from the Phrase-marker in the
manner described in § 2.2.
We shall return in Chapter 4, § 2 to questions concerning the
proper formulation of lexical entries. However, we can see im-
mediately that separating the lexicon from the system of re-
writing rules has quite a number of advantages. For one thing,
many of the grammatical properties of formatives can now be
specified directly in the lexicon, by association of syntactic
features with lexical formatives, and thus need not be represented
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 87

in the rewriting rules at all. In particular, morphological prop-

erties of various kinds can be treated in this way — for example,
membership of lexical items in derivational classes (declensional
classes, strong or weak verbs, nominalizable adjectives, etc.).
Since many such properties are entirely irrelevant to the
functioning of the rules of the base and are, furthermore, highly
idiosyncratic, the grammar can be significantly simplified if
they are excluded from the rewriting rules and listed in lexical
entries, where they most naturally belong. Or, returning to
(2iii), notice that it is now unnecessary to use rewriting rules
to classify Transitive Verbs into those that do and those that do
not normally permit Object deletion. Instead, the lexical entries
for read, eat, on the one hand, and frighten, keep, on the other,
will differ in specification for the particular syntactic feature of
Object deletion, which is not mentioned in the rewriting rules
at all. The transformational rule that deletes Objects will now
be applicable only to those words positively specified with respect
to this feature, this information now being contained in the
Phrase-marker of the strings in which these words appear. Any
attempt to construct a careful grammar will quickly reveal that
many formatives have unique or almost unique grammatical
characteristics, so that the simplification of the grammar that
can be effected in these ways will certainly be substantial.
In general, all properties of a formative that are essentially
idiosyncratic will be specified in the lexicon.18 In particular, the
lexical entry must specify: (a) aspects of phonetic structure that
are not predictable by general rule (for example, in the case
of bee, the phonological matrix of the lexical entry will specify
that the first segment is a voiced labial stop and the second an
acute vowel, but it will not specify the degree of aspiration of the
stop or the fact that the vowel is voiced, tense, and unrounded);17
(b) properties relevant to the functioning of transformational
rules (as the example of the preceding paragraph, and many
others); (c) properties of the formative that are relevant for
semantic interpretation (that is, components of the dictionary
definition); (d) lexical features indicating the positions in which
a lexical formative can be inserted (by the lexical rule) in a
88 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

preterminal string. In short, it contains information that is re-

quired by the phonological and semantic components of the
grammar and by the transformational part of the syntactic com-
ponent of the grammar, as well as information that determines
the proper placement of lexical entries in sentences, and hence,
by implication, the degree and manner of deviation of strings that
are not directly generated (see § 2.3.1 and Chapter 4, § 1.1).
Notice, incidentally, that the purely semantic lexical features
constitute a well-defined set, in a given grammar. A feature
belongs to this set just in case it is not referred to by any rule
of the phonological or syntactic component. This may be im-
portant for the theory of semantic interpretation. See Katz
(19646).
It is important to observe that the base system no longer is,
strictly speaking, a phrase structure (constituent structure) gram-
mar. As described informally in § 2.3.1 and more carefully in the
references cited there, a phrase structure grammar consists of an
unordered set of rewriting rules, and assigns a structural de-
scription that can be represented as a tree-diagram with nodes
labeled by symbols of the vocabulary. This theory formalizes a
conception of linguistic structure that is substantive and interest-
ing, and that has been quite influential for at least half a century,
namely the "taxonomic" view that syntactic structure is deter-
mined exclusively by operations of segmentations and classifica-
tion (see § 2.3.1; Postal, 1964a; and Chomsky, 1964). Of course,
we have already departed from this theory by assuming that the
rewriting rules apply in a prescribed sequence to generate a
restricted set of (base) strings, rather than freely to generate the
full set of actual sentences. This modification restricted the role
of the phrase structure grammar. But introduction of complex
symbols constitutes another radical departure from this theory,
and the separate treatment of the lexicon just suggested is again
an essential revision. These modifications affect the strong gen-
erative capacity of the theory. It is no longer true that a Phrase-
marker can be represented as a labeled tree-diagram, where
each label stands for a category of strings. Furthermore, the con-
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 89

ventions for the use of complex symbols in effect allow the use
of quasi-transformational rules in the base component.
To see why this is so, notice that a derivation involving only
phrase structure rules (rewriting rules) has a strict "Markovian"
character. That is, in a derivation consisting of the successive
lines <TU ••• , a-„ (o~i = #S#; <rn = #ax ••• ak#, where each at is a
terminal or nonterminal symbol of the vocabulary on which the
grammar is based), the rules that can be applied to form the
next line crn+i are independent of cr\, •••, o~„_i and depend com-
pletely on the string ov A grammatical transformation, on the
other hand, typically applies to a string with a particular struc-
tural description. Thus application of such a rule to the last line
of a derivation depends in part on earlier lines. A grammatical
transformation is, in other words, a rule that applies to Phrase-
markers rather than to strings in the terminal and nonterminal
vocabularly of the grammar.
Suppose, however, that we were to include labeled brackets
in the strings that constitute a derivation and were to allow the
"rewriting rules" to refer to these symbols. We should now have
a kind of transformational grammar, and we should have entirely
lost the intuition about language structure that motivated the
development of phrase structure grammar. In fact, incorporation
of brackets into strings provides the most appropriate notation
for the transformational rules of the phonological component
(see Halle and Chomsky, i960, forthcoming; Chomsky and
Miller, 1963, § 6), though not for the transformational rules of
the syntactic component, which are not "local transformations"
of the sort that appear, exclusively, in the transformational
cycle in phonology.18 But with the availability of complex
symbols, aspects of the earlier steps of a derivation can also be
carried along to later steps, just as in the case of the notation for
transformational rules that involves carrying along labeled
brackets in lines of a derivation; and, to some extent, global
operations on strings can be coded into complex category
symbols and carried along in derivations until the point of
"application" of these operations. Consequently, rules applying
go CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

to complex symbols are, in effect, transformational rules, and a

grammar using complex symbols is a kind of transformational
grammar rather than a phrase structure grammar. Notice,
incidentally, that the conventions established for the use of
complex symbols do not provide systems with greater xueak
generative capacity than phrase structure grammars (even if
appropriate conventions are established to permit complex
symbols to appear at any point in a derivation, rather than only
in lexical categories — see note 4). This fact, of course, has no
bearing on the observation that such a theory is no longer a
version of the theory of phrase structure grammar.
§ 2.5.4. Context-sensitive subcategorization rules. We have not
yet considered how the category V is analyzed into a complex
symbol. Thus suppose that we have the grammar (23)-(25). We
must still give rules to determine whether a V may or may not
be transitive, and so on, and must add to the lexicon ap-
propriate entries for individual verbal formatives. It would not
do simply to add to the grammar the rule (28), analogous to
(24):
(28) V •> [+V, ±Progressive, ±Transitive, ±Abstract-Subject,
± Animate-Object]
The problem is that an occurrence of the category symbol V
can be replaced by a complex symbol containing the feature
[+Transitive] just in case it is in the environment — NP.
Similarly, the Verb can be positively specified for the feature
[Abstract-Subject] just in case it is the environment [+Abstract]
• • • — ; and it can be positively specified for the feature [Animate-
Object] just in case it is in the environment— ••• [+Animate];
and so on, in the case of all of those lexical features that are in-
volved in the statement of contextual restrictions. Hence, the
features [Transitive], [Abstract-Subject], [Animate-Object] must
be introduced by rewriting rules that are restricted with respect
to context, as distinct from the context-free rules (22) that sub-
categorize Nouns.19
As a first approximation, we might consider rules of the
following sort, for the analysis of V:
§ 2- ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 9'

(29) (i) V •* [+V, +Transitive]/ — NP

(ii) V •» [+V, -Transitive]/ — #
(3°) 0) [+VJ * [+[+Abstract]-Subject]/[+N, +Abstract] Aux —
(ii) [+V] •» [+[—Abstract]-Subject]/[+N, -Abstract] Aux —
(iii) [+V] -» [+[+Animate]-Object]/ — Det [+N, +Animate]
(iv) [+V] •* [+[—Animatej-Object]/ — Det [+N, -Animate]
We can now introduce the standard conventions for ex-
pressing generalizations in the case of context-sensitive rewriting
rules such as (4), (29), (30) (cf., for example, Chomsky, 1957,
Appendix; cf. § 7, Chapter 1, for discussion of the role of these
conventions in linguistic theory), in particular, the convention
that
f X1 — Yl

(30 A+ZI •

X„-Yn
is an abbreviation for the sequence of rules
(32) <j)A*Z/X1-Y1

(n)A*ZIXn — Yn
and other familiar related conventions. These allow us to restate
(29) and (30) as (33) and (34), respectively.
(33) 0 V^r+V f+Transitive]/-NPl
[t
(ii) ' "[-Transitive]/ —# }
(34) (i) [+[+Abstract]-Subject]/
[+N, +Abstract] Aux —
(ii) [+[-Abstract]-Subject]/
[+N, —Abstract] Aux —
[+V\ -> [+ [+Animate] -Object]/
(iii)
— Det [+N, +Animate]
(iv) [+ [—Animate] -Object]/
— Det [+N, —Animate].
g2 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

It is immediately apparent that the rules (33) and (34), though

formally adequate, are extremely clumsy and leave important
generalizations unexpressed. This becomes still more obvious
when we observe that alongside of (34) there are many other
rules of the same kind; and that alongside of (33) there are rules
specifying various other choices of subcategories of Verbs, for
example, in such environments as: — Adjective [e.g., grow (old),
feel (sad)], — Predicate-Nominal [become (president)], — like^
Predicate-Nominal [look (like a nice person), act (like a fool)],
— S' [think (that he will come), believe (it to be unlikely)], where
S' is a variant of a sentence, — NP"S' [persuade (John that it is
unlikely)] (omitting certain refinements).
In other words, the schema for grammatical description that
we have so far developed still does not permit us to state the
actual processes at work in determining the form of sentences. In
the present case, there is a large set of rules (of which (34) men-
tions just four) that, in effect, assign features of the Subject and
Object to the Verb, somewhat in the manner of ordinary rules
of agreement in many languages; and there are also many rules
(of which (33) presents just two) that impose a subclassification
on the category Verb in terms of the set of frames in which this
category appears at the stage of a derivation where it is to be
subcategorized. These generalizations are not expressible in
terms of the schema for grammatical description so far developed,
an inadequacy that reveals itself in the redundancy and clumsi-
ness of the systems of rules of which (33) and (34) are samples.
Our present difficulty can be seen clearly by comparing the
rules (34) with the hypothetical set (35):

(35) (0 [+F1]/[+N, -1-Abstract] Aux —

(«) [+-FY|/[+N, -Abstract] Aux —
(iii)
[+V\ [+F1]/ — Det [+N, + Animate]
(iv) [-F2V — Det [+N, -Animate]
where F^ and F2 are certain syntactic features. Rules such as
(34) systematically select the Verb in terms of the choice of Sub-
ject and Object, whereas the rules (35) determine the sub-
categorization of Verbs in some essentially haphazard way in
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 93

terms of choice of Subject and Object. However, the system (34)

is not, in our present terms, more highly valued than (35); in fact,
the opposite would be true in this case if the familiar notational
conventions are applied to evaluate these systems. In other words,
the linguistically significant generalization underlying (34) is
not expressible within our present framework, which is therefore
shown to be inadequate (in this case, at the level of explanatory
adequacy).
Let us consider how a more natural and revealing expression
of these processes can be developed. Observe that the feature
specification [+Transitive] can be regarded as merely a notation
indicating occurrence in the environment — NP. A more ex-
pressive notation would be simply the symbol " — NP" itself.20
Generalizing, let us allow certain features to be designated in
the form [X — Y], where X and Y are strings (perhaps null) of
symbols. We shall henceforth call these contextual features. Let
us regard Transitive Verbs as positively specified for the con-
textual feature [ — NP], pre-Adjectival Verbs such as grow, feel,
as positively specified for the contextual feature [ — Adjective],
and so on. We then have a general rule of subcategorization to
the effect that a Verb is positively specified with respect to the
contextual feature associated with the context in which it occurs.
We thus introduce the notation
(36) A -> X-^CS-~-Y/Z — W
as an abbreviation for the rewriting rule
(37) A -> X~[+A, +Z — W]~Y/Z — W,
where "CS" stands for "complex symbol." Utilizing the bracket
conventions, we can now have
Z1 — W1

(38) A -> X-CS-T/ .

z —w
as an abbreviation for the sequence of rules
94 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

(39) A -> X~[+A, +Z, — W^Y/Z, — Wt

A + X~[+A, +zn-Wn]~Y/Zn—Wn

The notation introduced in (35) allows us to express the fact that

a set of frames in which the symbol A occurs imposes a cor-
responding subclassification on A, with one subdivision cor-
responding to each listed context. Thus in the case of Verb
subclassification, we shall have, instead of (33), the rule (40), as a
better approximation:
NP
#
Adjective
Predicate-Nominal
(40) V ^ CS/ — like^Predicate-Nominal]
Prepositional-Phrase
that^S'
NP (of~Det~N) S'
etc.
The lexicon might now contain the items
(41) eat, [+V, + — NP]
elapse, [+V, + — #]
grow, [+V, H NP, -I #, H Adjective]
become, [+V, -\ Adjective, H Predicate-Nominal]
seem, [+V, -\ Adjective, -\ h'Ae'^Predicate-Nominal]
look, [+V, H (Prepositional-Phrase) #, H Adjective,
-I /j&eTredicate-Nominal]
believe, [+V, H NP, H thaf^S']
persuade, [+V, H NP (o/-~TJet~N) S']

and so on.22 The rules (40) supplemented by the lexicon (41) will
permit such expressions as John eats food, a week elapsed, John
grew a beard, John grew, John grew sad, John became sad, John
became president, John seems sad, John seems like a nice fellow,
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 95

John looked, John looked at Bill, John looks sad, John looks
like a nice fellow, John believes me, John believes that it is un-
likely, John persuaded Bill that we should leave, John persuaded
Bill of the necessity for us to leave.
We see that with a slight extension of conventional notations the
systematic use of complex symbols permits a fairly simple and
informative statement of one of the basic processes of sub-
classification.
We can use the same notational device to express the kinds of
selectional restriction expressed in such rules as (34), which
assign features of the Subject and Object to the Verb. Thus we
can replace (34) by the rules

(42) (i) [-(-Abstract] Aux —

(") [—Abstract] Aux —
(iii)
[+V] -» cs/
— Det [+Animate]
(iv) — Det [—Animate]
where now [[+Abstract] Aux — ] is the feature denoted in (34) as
[[+Abstract]-Subject], etc. The notational convention (36)—(37)
shows in what respect a system of rules such as (34), but not (35),
expresses a linguistically significant generalization.
The rules of (40) and (42) analyze a category into a complex
symbol in terms of the frame in which this category appears. The
rules differ in that in the case of (40) the frame is stated in terms
of category symbols, whereas in the case of (42) the frame is stated
in terms of syntactic features. Rules such as (40), which analyze a
symbol in terms of its categorial context, I shall henceforth call
strict subcategorization rules. Rules such as (42), which analyze a
symbol (generally, a complex symbol) in terms of syntactic
features of the frames in which it appears, I shall call selectional
rules. The latter express what are usually called "selectional
restrictions" or "restrictions of cooccurrence." We shall see
later that there are important syntactic and semantic differences
between strict subcategorization rules and selectional rules with
respect to both their form and function, and that consequently
this distinction may be an important one.
In the case of both the strict subcategorization rules (40) and
g6 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

the selectional rules (42), there are still deeper generalizations

that are not yet expressed. Consider first the case of (40). This set
of rules imposes a categorization on the symbol V in terms of a
certain set of frames in which V occurs. It fails to express the
fact that every frame in which V appears, in the VP, is relevant
to the strict subcategorization of V, and the further fact that
no frame which is not part of the VP is relevant to the strict
subcategorization of V. Thus the symbol VP will dominate such
strings as the following, in derivations generated by rewriting
rules of the base:
(43) (i) V (elapse)
(ii) V NP (bring the book)
(iii) V NP that-S (persuade John that
there was no hope)
(iv) V Prep-Phrase (decide on a new course
of action)
(v) V Prep-Phrase Prep-Phrase (argue with John about
the plan)
(vi) V Adj (grow sad)
(vii) V like Predicate-Nominal (feel like a new man)
(viii) V NP Prep-Phrase (save the book for John)
(ix) V NP Prep-Phrase Prep-Phrase (trade the bicycle to
John for a tennis
racket)
and so on. Corresponding to each such string dominated by
VP, there is a strict subcategorization of Verbs. On the other
hand, Verbs are not strictly subcategorized in terms of types of
Subject NP's or type of Auxiliary, apparently.23 This observa-
tion suggests that at a certain point in the sequence of base
rewriting rules, we introduce the rule that strictly subcategorizes
Verbs in the following form:
(44) V -> CS/ — a, where a is a string such that Va is a VP
The rule schema (44) expresses the actual generalization that
determines strict categorization of Verbs in terms of the set of
syntactic frames in which V appears.
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 97

We have now discussed the problem of formulating the gen-

eralizations that actually underlie the strict subcategorization
rules (40), and have presented informally a device that would
accomplish this result. It remains to consider the selectional
rules, of which (42) presents a sample. Here too it is evident that
there are linguistically significant generalizations that are not
expressed in the rules as given in this form. Thus the rules (42)
do not make use of the fact that every syntactic feature of the
Subject and Object imposes a corresponding classification on the
Verb,24 not just certain arbitrarily chosen features. Once again,
a certain extension of the notational devices for formulating
rules is called for so that the evaluation measure will operate
correctly. In this case, the most natural way to formulate the
underlying generalization would be by such rule schemata as

(45) [+V] -> CS/ {^0^" 1 - where a is an N,

a being a variable ranging over specified features. We interpret

these schemata as abbreviating the sequence of all rules derived
from (45) by replacing a by a symbol meeting the stated condi-
tion, namely dominance by N (with some ordering that is ap-
parently inconsequential). The rules abbreviated by the schemata
(45) assert, simply, that each feature of the preceding and follow-
ing Noun is assigned to the Verb and determines an appropriate
selectional subclassification of it. Thus if the rule (45) appears in
the sequence of base rules after the rules (20), then each of the
lexical features that was introduced by the rules of (20) would
determine a corresponding subclassification of the complex sym-
bol [+V].
The rule schemata (44) and (45) deal with a situation in which
an element (in this case, the Verb) is subcategorized in terms of
the contexts in which this element appears, where these contexts
all meet some syntactic condition. In all cases, an important
generalization would be missed if the relevant contexts were
merely listed. The theory of grammar would fail to express the
fact that a grammar is obviously more highly valued if sub-
categorization is determined by a set of contexts that is syntacti-
g8 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

cally definable. The appropriate sense of "syntactically definable"

is suggested by the examples just given. A precise account of
"syntactically definable" can be given quite readily within the
framework of transformational grammar.
At the conclusion of § 2.3.3 we pointed out that a system of
rewriting rules that makes use of complex symbols is no longer
a phrase structure grammar (though it does not differ from such
a grammar in weak generative capacity), but rather is more
properly regarded as a kind of transformational grammar. The
rule schemata (44) and (45) take on the character of transforma-
tional rules even more clearly. Rules of this type are essentially
of the form
(46) A -» CS/X — Y, where XA Y is analyzable as Zlt • • -, Zn,
where the expression "X is analyzable as Yv •••, Yn" means that
X can be segmented into X = Xx ••• Xn in such a way that
X4 is dominated by Yt, in the Phrase-marker of the derivation
under construction. Analyzability, in this sense, is the basic
predicate in terms of which the theory of transformational gram-
mar is developed (see Chomsky, 1955, 1956, and many other
references). Thus, for example, we can often restate the rules in
question with the use of labeled brackets (regarding these as
carried along in the course of a derivation), or by allowing
complex symbols to appear at arbitrary points of a derivation,
with certain features being carried over to certain of the "de-
scendants" of a particular category symbol in the manner of
Matthews's system referred to in note 13, or in various other
similar ways.25
Along with a lexicon, then, the base component of the gram-
mar contains: (i) rewriting rules that typically involve branching
and that utilize only categorial (noncomplex) symbols and (ii)
rule schemata that involve only lexical categories, except in the
statement of context, and that utilize complex symbols. The
rules (i) are ordinary phrase structure rules, but the rules (ii) are
transformational rules of an elementary sort. One might, in fact,
suggest that even the rules (i) must be replaced, in part, by
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 99

rule schemata that go beyond the range of phrase structure rules

in strong generative capacity (cf., for example, Chomsky and
Miller, 1963, p. 298, Chomsky and Schiitzenberger, 1963, p. 133,
where such operations as conjunction are discussed in terms of
a framework of this sort), or by local transformations (cf. note 18).
In short, it has become clear that it was a mistake, in the first
place, to suppose that the base component of a transformational
grammar should be strictly limited to a system of phrase struc-
ture rules, although such a system does play a fundamental role
as a subpart of the base component. In fact, its role is that of
defining the grammatical relations that are expressed in the
deep structure and that therefore determine the semantic inter-
pretation of a sentence.
The descriptive power of the base component is greatly en-
riched by permitting transformational rules; consequently, it is
important to see what limitations can be imposed on their
use — that is, to see to what extent freedom to use such devices
is actually empirically motivated. From the examples just given,
it seems that there are indeed heavy restrictions. Thus the strict
subcategorization of V involves only frames that are dominated
by the symbol VP, and there are also obvious restrictions (to
which we return in § 4.2) involved in the use of selectional rules.
Putting these aside for the moment, let us continue with the
investigation of strict subcategorization rules.
The symbol V is introduced by rules of the form: VP •> V •••,
and it is frames dominated by VP that determine strict sub-
categorization of Verbs. This suggests that we impose the follow-
ing general condition on strict subcategorization rules: each such
rule must be of the form
(47) A •> CS/a — /3, where aA(3 is a cr,
where, furthermore, cr is the category symbol that appears on
the left in the rule cr -» ••• A ••• that introduces A. Thus (47),
reformulated within the framework of the theory of grammatical
transformations, would be what we have called a "local trans-
formation." Cf. note 18. The italicized condition guarantees that
100 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

the transformation is, furthermore, "strictly local" in the sense

of note 18. If this condition of strict local subcategorization is
adopted as a general condition on the form of grammar, then the
strict subcategorization rules can simply be given in the form
(48) A -* CS
the rest being supplied automatically by a convention. In other
words, the only characteristic of these rules that must be explicitly
indicated in the grammar is their position in the sequence of
rules. This position fixes the set of frames that determine sub-
categorization.
Suppose that the rule that introduces Nouns into the grammar
is, essentially, the following:
(49) NP -» (Det) N(S')
In this case, we should expect strict subcategorization of Nouns
into the categories [Det — S'], [Det — ], [ — S'], and [ — ] (con-
tinuing with the notational conventions for features introduced
earlier). The category [Det — S'] is the category of Nouns with
sentential Complements (such as "the idea that he might suc-
ceed," "the fact that he was guilty," "the opportunity for him
to leave," "the habit of working hard" — the latter involving a
sentential Complement with an obligatorily deleted Subject).
The category [Det — ] is simply the category of Common Nouns.
The category [ — ] is the category of Proper Nouns, that is,
Nouns with no Determiner (or, as in the case of "The Hague,"
"The Nile," with a fixed Determiner that may just as well be
taken as part of the Noun itself, rather than as part of a freely
and independently selected Determiner system).26 If this is cor-
rect, then the Proper/Common distinction is strict subcategorial,
and does not fall together with the other features introduced in
(20). The category [ — S'] is not realized in so obvious a way as
the others. Perhaps one should utilize this category to account
for "quotes contexts" and, more importantly, for the impersonal
it of such sentences as "it strikes me that he had no choice," "it
surprised me that he left," "it is obvious that the attempt must
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE lOl

fail," which derive from underlying strings with NP's of the

form: ('^Sentence (the Sentence Complement either being sep-
arated from it by a transformation, as in the examples cited, or
substituting for it by a strictly local transformation in the man-
ner described in note 18).
Returning, once again, to Verb subcategorization, we note one
further consequence of accepting the general condition sug-
gested in connection with (47). It is well known that in Verb-
Prepositional-Phrase constructions one can distinguish various
degrees of "cohesion" between the Verb and the accompanying
Prepositional-Phrase. The point can be illustrated clearly by
such ambiguous constructions as

(50) he decided on the boat

which may mean "he chose the boat" or "he made his decision
while on the boat." Both kinds of phrase appear in

(51) he decided on the boat on the train

that is, "he chose the boat while on the train." Clearly, the
second Prepositional-Phrase in (51) is simply a Place Adverbial,
which, like a Time Adverbial, has no particular connection with
the Verb, but in fact modifies the entire Verb Phrase or perhaps
the entire sentence. It can, in fact, be optionally preposed to the
sentence, although the first Prepositional-Phrase of (51), which is
in close construction to the Verb, cannot — that is, the sen-
tence "on the train, he decided" is unambiguous. There are
many other examples of the same kind (for example, "he worked
at the office" versus "he worked at the job"; "he laughed at ten
o'clock" versus "he laughed at the clown"; "he ran after dinner"
versus "he ran after John"). Clearly, Time and Place Adverbials
can occur quite freely with various types of Verb Phrase, on the
one hand, whereas many types of Prepositional-Phrase appear in
much closer construction to Verbs. This observation suggests
that we modify slightly the first several rules of the base, replac-
ing them by
102 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

(52) (i) S -» NP^Predicate-Phrase

(ii) Predicate-Phrase •* Aux^VP (Place) (Time)
be Predicate
(NP) (Prep-Phrase) (Prep-Phrase) (Manner]
(iii) VP -* \ Adj
S'
(like) Predicate-Nominal
Direction
Duration
(iv) Prep-Phrase Place
Frequency
etc.
(v) V -* CS
The conventions governing complex symbols will interpret (v)
as strictly subcategorizing Verbs with respect to all contexts intro-
duced in the second part of rule (iii) and in rule (iv).
It will follow, then, that Verbs are subcategorized with respect
to the Prepositional-Phrases introduced by (5oiii) but not with
respect to those introduced by (5oii) — namely, the Place and Time
Adverbials that are associated with the full Predicate-Phrase, and
that might, in fact, be in part more closely associated with the
Auxiliary (cf. note 23) or with Sentence Adverbials which form a
"pre-Sentence" unit in the underlying structure. Thus Verbs
will be subcategorized with respect to Verbal Complements, but
not with respect to Verb Phrase Complements. That this is
essentially the case is clear from the examples given. To illustrate,
once again, in connection with the four types of Adverbials
listed in (52iv), we have such phrases as (53), but not (54):27
(53) dash — into the room (V — Direction)
last — for three hours (V — Duration)
remain — in England (V — Place)
win — three times a week (V — Frequency)
(54) dash — in England
last — three times a week
remain — into the room
win — for three hours
 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE 103

Similarly, the italicized phrases in "he argued with John (about

politics)," "he aimed (the gun) at John," "he talked about
Greece," "he ran after John," "he decided on a new course of
action," and so on, are of types that induce a subcategorization
of Verbs, whereas the italicized phrases in "John died in Eng-
land," "John played Othello in England," "John always runs
after dinner," and so on, do not play a role in Verb sub-
categorization, since they are introduced by a rule (namely (52H))
the left-hand symbol of which does not directly dominate V.
Similarly, the other contexts introduced in (52m) will play a
role in strict subcategorization of Verbs. In particular, the
Manner Adverbial participates in Verb subcategorization. Thus
Verbs generally take Manner Adverbials freely, but there are
some that do not — for example: resemble, have, marry (in the
sense of "John married Mary," not "the preacher married John
and Mary," which does take Manner Adverbials freely); fit (in
the sense of "the suit fits me," not "the tailor fitted me," which
does take Manner Adverbials freely); cost, weigh (in the sense of
"the car weighed two tons," not "John weighed the letter,"
which does take Manner Adverbials freely); and so on. The
Verbs that do not take Manner Adverbials freely Lees has called
"middle Verbs" (Lees, tg6oa, p. 8), and he has also observed that
these are, characteristically, the Verbs with following NP's that
do not undergo the passive transformation. Thus we do not have
"John is resembled by Bill," "a good book is had by John,"
"John was married by Mary," "I am fitted by the suit," "ten
dollars is cost by this book," "two tons is weighed by this car," and
so on (although of course "John was married by Mary" is accept-
able in the sense of "John was married by the preacher," and we
can have "I was fitted by the tailor," "the letter was weighed by
John," etc.).28
These observations suggest that the Manner Adverbial should
have as one of its realizations a "dummy element" signifing that
the passive transformation must obligatorily apply. That is,
we may have the rule (55) as a rewriting rule of the base and
may formulate the passive transformation so as to apply to strings
of the form (56), with an elementary transformation that sub-
104 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

stitutes the first NP for the dummy element passive and places
the second NP in the position of the first NP:

(55) Manner •» by^passive

(56) NP — Aux — V — • • • — NP — • • • — by^passive — • • •

(where the leftmost ••• in (56) requires further specification —

e.g., it cannot contain an NP).
This formulation has several advantages over that presented
in earlier work on transformational grammar (such as Chomsky,
1957). First of all, it accounts automatically for the restriction of
passivization to Verbs that take Manner Adverbials freely. That
is, a Verb will appear in the frame (56) and thus undergo the
passive transformation only if it is positively specified, in the
lexicon, for the strict subcategorization feature [— NP^Manner],
in which case it will also take Manner Adverbials freely. Second,
with this formulation it is possible to account for the derived
Phrase-marker of the passive by the rules for substitution trans-
formations. This makes it possible to dispense entirely with an
ad hoc rule of derived constituent structure that, in fact, was
motivated solely by the passive construction (cf. Chomsky, 1957,
pp. 73-74). Third, it is now possible to account for "pseudo-
passives," such as "the proposal was vehemently argued against,"
"the new course of action was agreed on," "John is looked up to
by everyone," by a slight generalization of the ordinary passive
transformation. In fact, the schema (56) already permits these
passives. Thus "everyone looks up to John by passive" meets
the condition (56), with John as the second NP, and it will be
converted into "John is looked up to by everyone" by the same
elementary transformation that forms "John was seen by every-
one" from "everyone saw John." In the earlier formulation (cf.
Chomsky, 1955, Chapter IX), it was necessary to treat pseudo-
passives by a new transformation. The reason was that V of (56)
had to be limited to transitive Verbs, for the ordinary passive
transformation, so as to exclude the "middle" Verbs have,
resemble, etc. But if passivization is determined by a Manner
Adverbial, as just suggested, then V in (56) can be quite free, and
§ 2. ASPECTS OF DEEP STRUCTURE IO5

can be an intransitive as well as a transitive Verb. Thus "John is

looked up to" and "John was seen" are formed by the same rule
despite the fact that only in the latter case is John the Direct-
Object of the deep structure.
Notice, however, that the Adverbial introduced by (52ii) is not
subject to the passive transformation as defined by (56), since it
will follow the Adverbial by^passive. This accounts for the fact
that we can have "this job is being worked at quite seriously"
from "Unspecified-Subject is working at this job quite seriously,"
where "at this job" is a Verb-Complement introduced by (52m),
but not "the office is being worked at" from "Unspecified-Subject
is working at the office," where the phrase "at the office" is a
VP-Complement introduced by (52a) and therefore follows the
Manner Adverbial. Similarly, we can have "the boat was decided
on" in the sense of "he chose the boat," but not in the sense of
"he decided while on the boat." Thus the passive sentence
corresponding to (50) is unambiguous, though (50) itself is
ambiguous. Many other facts can be explained in the same way.
The fact that we are able, in this way, to account for the
nonambiguity of "the boat was decided on by John" as con-
trasted with the ambiguity of "John decided on the boat," along
with many similar examples, provides an indirect justification
for the proposal (cf. p. 99) that strict subcategorization rules be
limited to strictly local transformations. It is perhaps worth
while to trace through the argument again to see why this is so.
By the "strictly local subcategorization" principle we know that
certain categories must be internal to the VP and others must be
external to it. One of the elements that must be internal to the
VP, in accordance with this principle, is the marker for passiviza-
tion, since it plays a role in strict subcategorization of the Verb.
Furthermore, the marker for passivization is associated with the
presence of the Manner Adverbial, which is internal to the VP by
the strictly local subcategorization principle. Since the passive
transformation must be formulated with the structure index (56),
it follows that NP's in VP-Complements are not subject to
"pseudopassivization" while NP's in V-Complements may be
subject to this operation. In particular, where "on the boat" is a
106 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

V-Complement in "John decided on the boat" (meaning "John

chose the boat"), it is subject to pseudopassivization by the
passive transformation; but where "on the boat" is a VP-
Complement in "John decided on the boat" (meaning "John
decided while he was on the boat," equivalently, "on the boat,
John decided"), it is not subject to pseudopassivization since it
does not meet the condition (56). Therefore, observing that "the
boat was decided on by John" is unambiguous and means only
that John chose the boat, we conclude that the premise of this
argument — namely the assumption that strict subcategoriza-
tion is limited to strictly local transformations — has empirical
support.
The reanalysis (52) requires that the definitions of functional
notions proposed in § 2.2 (cf. (11)) be slightly altered. Thus we
might perhaps define the notion "Predicate-of" as [Predicate-
Phrase, S] rather than as [VP, S]. This revised formulation of
the rules, incidentally, illustrates another property of the tradi-
tional functional notions. We observed in § 2.2 that these notions
are defined only for what we called "major categories." Further-
more, it seems that they are defined only for those major cate-
gories A that appear in rules of the form X -» •••A---B--- or
X •* •••B---A---, where B is also a major category. This seems
quite natural, considering the relational character of these
notions.
§ 3. AN ILLUSTRA TIVE FRAGMENT OF THE BASE
COMPONENT
Let us now summarize this discussion by returning to the
original problem, posed in § 1, of presenting structural informa-
tion of the sort illustrated in (2) of § 1 in a set of rules that are
designed to express precisely the basic linguistic processes
involed.
We may now consider a generative grammar with a base
component containing, among many others, the rules and rule
schemata (57) and the lexicon (58):
(57) 0) s "*• NP^Predicate-Phrase
(ii) Predicate-Phrase •* Aux""VP (Place) (Time)
 AN
§ 3- ILLUSTRATIVE FRAGMENT OF THE BASE COMPONENT 107

Copula^Predicate
(NP) (Prep-Phrase) (Prep-Phrase) (Mariner)
(iii) VP V
S'
[Predicate
„ . _ ,. [Adjective
J
(IV) Predicate -> '
(like) Predicate-Nominal J
(v) Prep-Phrase •* Direction, Duration, Place, Frequency, etc.
(vi) V -» CS
(vii) NP -» (Det) N (S')
(viii) N -» CS
(ix) [+Det —] •* [±Count]
(x) [+Count] •* [±Animate]
(xi) [+N, H ] -» [±Animate]
(xii) [+Animate] •* [±Human]
(xiii) [-Count] •* [± Abstract]
(xiv) [+V] •* CS/a"Aux — (Det^) ) , where a is an N and
(xv) Adjective •* CS/a (3 is an N
(xvi) Aux •* Tense (M) (Aspect)
(xvii) Det •* (pre-Article^o/) Article (post-Article)
(xviii) Article -> [±Definite]
(58) (sincerity, [+N, +Det —, — Count, +Abstract, • • •])
(boy, [+N, -t-Det —, -fCount, 4-Animate, +Human, •••])
(frighten, [+V, H NP, +[+Abstract] Aux — Det
[+Animate], -[-Object-deletion, •••])
(may, [+M, •••])
This system of rules will generate the Phrase-marker (59).
Adding the rules that realize Definite as the and non-Definite
as null before a following non-Count Noun, we derive the sen-
tence "sincerity may frighten the boy" of § 1, with the Phrase-
marker (59). Notice that this fragment of the base is "sequential"
in the sense of § 2.1.
We have only sketched the procedure for constructing a
Phrase-marker of the required sort from a derivation. However,
this is a relatively minor matter of appropriate formalization
and involves nothing of principle. In particular, (59) represents
not only all information involving the relation "is a," holding
§ 3- AN ILLUSTRATIVE FRAGMENT OF THE BASE COMPONENT 109

I*. I
II II S« fM
Tl i a
±±
II II • •
H
£ ±
11 11
*3?

1£
w
V

>9
•~ 1
** 1
3
S 0
2<
Hf
II g "9
»—1«
eu J= 0
"JET
1 .+. n
+ +. +
0 -
0 0

c
0
a
§
0
u
II ^7
rr-ir^1
>-.
L 5
s Ji
<r.
<u 0
QU <
±L +
1

11 11 • • II
*V ^
HO CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

between strings and the categories (many of them now repre-

sented by features) to which they belong but also the hierarchic
relation among these categories that is provided by the rules and
mirrored precisely in the derivation.
The Phrase-marker (59) provides directly all information of
the sort specified in (21) and (2iii); and, as we have observed,
functional information of the sort specified in (aii) is derivable
from this Phrase-marker as well. If the analysis that we have
given is correct, then it is devices of the sort just exhibited that
are implicit in the informal statements of traditional grammar
summarized in (2), with one exception, to which we shall turn
in the next section.
Notice that neither the lexicon (58) nor the Phrase-marker
(59) is fully specified. There are clearly other syntactic features
that must be indicated, and we have given no semantic features
in either (58) or (59). In part, it is clear how these gaps can be
filled, but it would be a serious mistake, in this case, to suppose
that this is in general merely a question of added detail.
One final comment is necessary in connection with the lexicon
(58). Given a lexical entry (D,C), where D is a phonological
feature matrix and C a complex symbol, the lexical rule (cf.
p. 84) permits substitution of D for any complex symbol K that
is not distinct from C. Consequently, lexical entries must be
specified negatively for features corresponding to contexts in
which they may not occur. Thus in (58), for example, boy must
be specified as [—V], so as to exclude it from the position of
frighten in "sincerity may frighten the boy," and not only must
frighten be specified as [— N], to exclude it from the position of
boy in this sentence, but it must also be specified negatively for
the feature [ — Adjective], so as to exclude it from the position
of turn in "his hair turned gray," and so on. These negative
specifications were not actually given in (58).
We can deal with this matter by adopting several additional
conventions governing the base component. First of all, we may
assume that a base rule that analyzes the lexical category A into
a complex symbol automatically includes the feature [+A] as
one of the elements of this complex symbol (see (20), § 2.3.2).
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES 111

Second, we may assume that each lexical entry automatically,

by convention, contains the feature [—A] for every lexical cate-
gory A, unless it is explicitly provided with the feature [+A].
Thus in (58), the entry for boy contains [—V], [—Adjective],
[—M] (cf. note g).29 Third, in the case of features introduced by
strict subcategorization or selectional rules (what we have called
the "contextual features"), we may adopt one of the following
conventions:
(i) list in the lexicon only the features corresponding to frames
in which the item in question cannot appear (rather than, as in
(58), those corresponding to features in which it can appear)
(ii) list only the features corresponding to frames in which the
item can appear, as in (58) (in case (i) or case (ii) we add the
further convention that an item is specified in the opposite way
for every contextual feature not mentioned in its lexical entry)
(iii) adopt (i) for the strict subcategorization features and (ii)
for the selectional features
(iv) adopt (ii) for the strict subcategorization features and (i)
for the selectional features. In any case, the distinctness require-
ment of the lexical rule will now exclude items from certain
contexts, and permit them in others.
These conventions embody alternative empirical hypotheses
concerning valuation of grammar. Thus (i) is correct if the
most highly valued grammar is that in which the distribution of
items is least constrained, and (ii) is correct if the most highly
valued grammar is that in which the distribution of items is
most constrained (similarly, (iii) and (iv)). For the time being, I
have no strong examples to support one or another of these
assumptions, and thus prefer to leave the question open. We
shall return briefly to the problem in Chapter 4.
§ 4. TYPES OF BASE RULES
§ 4.1. Summary
The fragment presented in § 3 illustrates the kinds of rules
that apparently are to be found in the base component. There
is a fundamental distinction between the rewriting rules (57) and
112 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

the lexicon (58). The lexical rule need not be stated in the
grammar since it is universal and hence part of the theory of gram-
mar. Its status is just like that of the principles that define
"derivation" in terms of a system of rewriting rules, for example.
It thus has the status of a convention determining the interpreta-
tion of the grammar, rather than the status of a rule of the
grammar. In terms of the framework of § 6, Chapter 1, we may
say that the lexical rule in fact constitutes part of the general,
language-independent definition of the function / of (14W), § 6,
Chapter 1.
Among the rewriting rules of the base component we can
distinguish branching rules, such as (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vii),
(xvi), (xvii), from subcategorization rules, such as all others of
(57). All rewriting rules are of the form
(60) A * Z/X — W
The branching rules are those rules of the form (60) in which
neither A nor Z involves any complex symbols. Thus a branching
rule analyzes a category symbol A into a string of (one or more)
symbols each of which is either a terminal symbol or a non-
terminal category symbol. A subcategorization rule, on the other
hand, introduces syntactic features, and thus forms or extends a
complex symbol. We have, so far, restricted the subcategorization
rules to lexical categories. In particular, we have not permitted
rules of the form (60) in which A is a complex symbol and Z a
terminal or category symbol or a string of more than one symbol.
This restriction may be a bit too severe, and we must apparently
weaken it slightly. See Chapter 4, § 2. Notice that these two sets
of rules (branching and subcategorization) are not ordered with
respect to one another, although once a subcategorization rule
has been applied to a certain category symbol o~ no branching
rule can be applied to any of the symbols that are derived from cr.
Branching rules and subcategorization rules may be context-
free (such as all of the branching rules of (57) and (x), (xi), (xii),
(xiii), (xviii)) or context-sensitive (such as (vi), (viii), (xiv), (xv)).
Notice that (57) contains no context-sensitive branching rules.
Moreover, the subcategorization rules that are context-sensitive
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES 115J

are, in effect, strictly local transformational rules (cf. p. 99). These

are important facts, to which we return in Chapter 3.
Among the context-sensitive subcategorization rules we have,
furthermore, distinguished two important subtypes, namely strict
subcategorization rules (such as (57V1) and (57viii)), which sub-
categorize a lexical category in terms of the frame of category
symbols in which it appears, and selectional rules (such as (57XW),
(57XV)), which subcategorize a lexical category in terms of
syntactic features that appear in specified positions in the
sentence.
We noted that subcategorization rules may follow branching
rules in the sequence of rules constituting the base, but that
once a subcategorization rule has applied to form a complex
symbol 2, no branching rule can later apply to 2 (but cf.
Chapter 4, § 2). The same relation apparently holds between
strict subcategorization rules and selectional rules. That is, these
may be interspersed in the base, but once a selectional rule has
applied to form the complex symbol 2, no strict subcategoriza-
tion rule applies later to develop 2 further. So, at least, it appears
from the examples that I have considered. Perhaps this should
be imposed as a general, additional condition on the base.
§ 4.2. Selectional rules and grammatical relations
We shall say that a selectional rule, such as (57xiv), (57XV),
defines a selectional relation between two positions in a sentence
— for example, in the case of (57xiv), the position of the Verb
and that of the immediately preceding or immediately following
Noun. Such selectional relations determine grammatical rela-
tions, in one of the senses of this traditional term. We observed
earlier that the notion of grammatical function defined in § 2.2
did not yet account for the assignment of the Subject-Verb rela-
tion to the pair sincerity, frighten and the Verb-Object relation
to frighten, boy in sincerity may frighten the boy (=(1)). The
suggested definition of grammatical relation would account for
these assertions, given the grammar (57), (58). The same notion
of grammatical relation could, in fact, have been defined in
terms of the heads of major categories (cf. § 2.2), but the defini-
114 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

tion in terms of selectional relations seems somewhat more

natural and avoids the problem noted on pp. 73-74. With this
notion now defined, we have completed the analysis of the in-
formal grammatical statement (2) of § 1.30
Consider now the selectional rules (57xiv), (57XV), which con-
strain the choice of Verb and Adjective in terms of a free choice
of certain features of the Noun (in this case, the Subject and
Object). Suppose, instead, that we were to subcategorize the
Verb by a context-free rule, and then to use a selectional rule to
determine the subcategorization of the Subject and Object. We
might have, for the Verb, such a rule as
(61) V •» [+V, +[+Abstract]-Subject, +[+Animate]-Object]31
Thus we might in particular form the complex symbol
(62) [+V, -f [+Abstract]-Subject, +[+Animate]-Object]
which can be replaced by a lexical item such as frighten, lexically
marked as allowing an Abstract Subject and an Animate Object.
We must now give a context-sensitive selectional rule to deter-
mine the choice of Subject and Object, just as in (57) we gave
such a rule to determine the choice of Verb in terms of Subject
and Object. Thus we would have such rules as

[ — Aux + a I
(63) N->CS/ a + Det_ .where a is a V

These rules would assign features of the Verb to the Subject and
Object, just as (57xiv) assigned features of the Subject and Ob-
ject to the Verb. For example, if the Verb is (62), the Subject
would be specified as having the features
(64) [pre-+[-|-Abstract]-Subject, pre—|-[+Animate]-Object]
Similarly, the Object would have the features
(65) [post-+[+Abstract]-Subject, post-+[-f-Animate]-Object]
But, clearly, the feature [pre-+[+Animate]-Object] is irrelevant
to choice of Subject Noun, and the feature [post-+[+Abstract]-
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES 115

Subject] is irrelevant to choice of Object Noun. Much more

serious than this, however, is the fact that a Noun must be
marked in the lexicon for the feature [pre-X-Subject] if and
only if it is marked for the feature [post-X-Object], where
X is any feature. That is, the choice of elements for the posi-
tion "Subject of a Verb with Animate Subject" is the same as
the choice of elements for the position "Object of a Verb
with Animate Object." Animate Nouns appear in both posi-
tions. But the feature [Animate] is no longer available for
Nouns, only the features [pre-f [+Animate]-Subject] and [post-
+[+Animate]-Object]. Consequently, a mass of perfectly ad
hoc rules must be added to the grammar to assign to Nouns
with the feature [pre-X-Subject] also the feature [post-X-Object],
for each feature X, and conversely. Moreover, the features
[pre-X-Subject], [post-X-Object], for each X, are single symbols,
and the fact that X occurs in both of them cannot be referred to
by a rule of the grammar (unless we complicate the mechanism
further by allowing features to have a feature composition them-
selves).
In short, the decision to choose the complex symbol analysis of
Verbs independently and to select Nouns by a selectional rule
in terms of Verbs leads to a quite considerable complication of
the grammar. The problems are magnified when we bring into
account the independent Noun-Adjective selectional rules. In
much the same way we can rule out the possibility of allowing
Subject to select Verb but Verb to select Object.
We see, then, that within the framework so far developed,
there is no alternative to selecting Verbs in terms of Nouns
(and, by a similar argument, Adjectives in terms of Nouns),
rather than conversely. Furthermore, this framework seems to
be optimal, in that it involves no more mechanism than is
actually forced by the linguistic facts. One would imagine that a
similar argument can be given for any language. If this is true,
it is possible to take another significant step toward a general
characterization of the categories Noun, Verb, Adjective, etc.
(see §§ 2.1, 2.2).
In § 2.2, I defined "lexical category" and "major category,"
I l6 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

the latter being a lexical category or a category dominating a

string containing a lexical category. Suppose that among the
lexical categories, we label as Noun the one that is selectionally
dominant in the sense that its feature composition is determined
by a context-free subcategorization rule, its features being car-
ried over by selectional rules to other lexical categories. Among
the major categories introduced in the analysis of Sentence, we
now designate as NP the one that is analyzed as • • • N • • • .A
major category that directly dominates • • • NP • • • we can des-
ignate VP, and one that directly dominates VP, we can des-
ignate Predicate-Phrase. We can define V in various ways —
for example, as the lexical category X that appears in a string
•••X--NP-- or •••NP-- X••• directly dominated by VP (assum-
ing that there can be only one such X) or as the lexical category
that may obtain its features from selectional rules involving two
or more N's (if transitivity is a category that is universally
realized). One might now go on to attempt to characterize other
lexical, major, and nonmajor categories in general terms. To the
extent that we can do this, we shall have succeeded also in giving
a substantive specification to the functional notions discussed
in § 2.2.
It will be obvious to the reader that this characterization is not
intended as definitive in any sense. The reason has already been
indicated in note 2. There is no problem in principle of
sharpening or generalizing these definitions in one way or an-
other, and there are many formal features of the grammar that
can be brought into consideration in doing so. The problem is
merely that for the moment there is no strong empirical motiva-
tion for one or another suggestion that might be made in these
directions. This is a consequence of the fact that there are so
few grammars that attempt to give an explicit characterization
of the range of sentences and structural descriptions (that is, so
few generative grammars), even in a partial sketch. As explicit
grammatical descriptions with this goal accumulate, it will no
doubt be possible to give empirical justification for various re-
finements and revisions of such loosely sketched proposals as
these, and perhaps to give a substantive characterization to the
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES 117

universal vocabulary from which grammatical descriptions are

constructed. However, there is no reason to rule out, a priori,
the traditional view that such substantive characterizations must
ultimately refer to semantic concepts of one sort or another.
Once again, as in §§ 2.1-2.2, it is clear that this attempt to
characterize universal categories depends essentially on the fact
that the base of the syntactic component does not, in itself,
explicitly characterize the full range of sentences, but only a
highly restricted set of elementary structures from which actual
sentences are constructed by transformational rules.32 The base
Phrase-markers may be regarded as the elementary content ele-
ments from which the semantic interpretations of actual sen-
tences are constructed.33 Therefore the observation that the
semantically significant functional notions (grammatical rela-
tions) are directly represented in base structures, and only in
these, should come as no surprise; and it is, furthermore, quite
natural to suppose that formal properties of the base will pro-
vide the framework for the characterization of universal cate-
gories.
To say that formal properties of the base will provide the
framework for the characterization of universal categories is to
assume that much of the structure of the base is common to all
languages. This is a way of stating a traditional view, whose
origins can again be traced back at least to the Grammaire
ginirale et raisonnee (Lancelot et ah, 1660). To the extent that
relevant evidence is available today, it seems not unlikely that
it is true. Insofar as aspects of the base structure are not specific
to a particular language, they need not be stated in the grammar
of this language. Instead, they are to be stated only in general
linguistic theory, as part of the definition of the notion "human
language" itself. In traditional terms, they pertain to the form
of language in general rather than to the form of particular
languages, and thus presumably reflect what the mind brings to
the task of language acquisition rather than what it discovers
(or invents) in the course of carrying out this task. Thus to some
extent the account of the base rules suggested here may not be-
long to the grammar of English any more than the definition of
Il8 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

"derivation" or of "transformation" belongs to the grammar

of English. Cf., §§ 6 and 8, Chapter i.
It is commonly held that modern linguistic and anthro-
pological investigations have conclusively refuted the doctrines
of classical universal grammar, but this claim seems to me very
much exaggerated. Modern work has, indeed, shown a great
diversity in the surface structures of languages. However, since
the study of deep structure has not been its concern, it has not
attempted to show a corresponding diversity of underlying
structures, and, in fact, the evidence that has been accumulated
in modern study of language does not appear to suggest anything
of this sort. The fact that languages may differ from one an-
other quite significantly in surface structure would hardly have
come as a surprise to the scholars who developed traditional
universal grammar. Since the origins of this work in the Gram-
maire generate et raisonnee, it has been emphasized that the deep
structures for which universality is claimed may be quite distinct
from the surface structures of sentences as they actually appear.
Consequently, there is no reason to expect uniformity of surface
structures, and the findings of modern linguistics are thus not
inconsistent with the hypotheses of universal grammarians.
Insofar as attention is restricted to surface structures, the most
that can be expected is the discovery of statistical tendencies, such
as those presented by Greenberg (1963).
In connection with the selectional rule (57XW), we have now
conclusively ruled out one possibility, namely that the Subject or
Object may be selected in terms of an independent, or partially
independent, choice of Verb. Not quite so simple is the question
of whether this rule, which I now repeat in less abbreviated form
as (66), should be preferred to the alternative (67).

(66)(i)l[+V].cs/ja;Aux-^
(11) j L J
[or^Aux —

(67)(i)l [+VJ
r+vi->cs/
CV j<*~
Aux
—
(ii)[ ^ |-Den3
In terms of evaluation measures that have so far been proposed
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES lig

(see, for example, Chomsky, 1955, Chapter 3), there is no way of

choosing between these. In accordance with the usual conventions
for obligatory application of rewriting rules (cf. ibid.), (661)
assigns certain features to Transitive Verbs and (66ii) to In-
transitive Verbs. On the other hand, (d'ji) assigns a feature of
Subject selection to all Verbs, and (6711) assigns a feature of
Object selection to Transitive Verbs. If we choose (66), the lexical
entry for frighten will be positively specified for the feature
[[+Abstract] Aux — Det [+Animate]]; if we select (67), it will be
positively specified for the two features [[+Abstract] Aux — ] and
[— Det [-(-Animate]]. It may appear at first that this is little more
than a terminological question, but, as in many such cases, this
is not at all obvious. Thus consider the following contexts:
(68) (i) he the platoon
(ii) his decision to resign his commission the platoon
(iii) his decision to resign his commission our respect
In (68i) we can have the Verb command (I neglect, for simplicity
of exposition, questions of choice of Auxiliary). In (68iii) we can
also have command, but in a different though not totally un-
related sense. In (68ii) we cannot have command, but we can
have, for example, baffle, which can also appear in (68i) but not
(68iii). If we select the alternative (67), the Verb command will
be positively marked for the features [[+Animate] Aux — ],
[ — Det [+Animate]], [[+Abstract] Aux — ], and [ — Det [+Ab-
stract]]. That is, it will be marked in such a way as to permit it
to have either an Animate or an Abstract Noun as Subject or
Object. But this specification fails to indicate the dependency
between Subject and Object illustrated by the deviance of (68ii),
when command appears in this context. If we select the alter-
native (66), command will be positively marked for the features
[[+Animate] Aux — Det [-(-Animate]] and [[-fAbstract] Aux —
Det [+Abstract]], but not [[-(-Abstract] Aux — Det [+Animate]].
Thus command would be excluded from the context (66ii), as
required. It is for such reasons that I selected the alternative (66)
in the grammatical sketch. It should be noted, however, that
the grounds for this decision are very weak, since a crucial question
180 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

— namely, how to enter lexical items with a range of distinct but

related syntactic and semantic features — is far from settled. I
have so far not been able to find stronger examples.
It seems at first as though a certain redundancy results from
the decision to select (66) over (67), in the case of Verbs for
which choice of Subject and Object is independent. However, the
same number of features must be indicated in the lexicon, even
in this case. With the choice of (66), the features seem more
"complicated," in some sense, but this is a misinterpretation of
the notational system. Recall that the notation [+Animate] Aux
— Det [+Abstract], for example, is a single symbol designating
a particular lexical feature, in our framework.
Clearly, this comment does not exhaust the question, by any
means. For some further related discussion, see Chapters 3 and 4.

§ 4.3. Further remarks on subcategorization rules

We have distinguished, in the base, between branching rules

and subcategorization rules and between context-free and context-
sensitive rules. The context-sensitive subcategorization rules
are further subdivided into strict subcategorization rules and
selectional rules. These rules introduce contextual features,
whereas the context-free subcategorization rules introduce in-
herent features. One might propose, alternatively, that the sub-
categorization rules be eliminated from the system of rewriting
rules entirely and be assigned, in effect, to the lexicon. In fact,
this is a perfectly feasible suggestion.
Suppose, then, that the base is divided into two parts, a
categorial component and a lexicon. The categorial component
consists solely of branching rules, which are possibly all context-
free (see Chapter 3). In particular, the branching rules of (57)
would constitute the categorial component of the base of this
fragment of English grammar. The primary role of the categorial
component is to define implicitly the basic grammatical relations
that function in the deep structures of the language. It may well
be that to a large extent the form of the categorial component
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES 121

is determined by the universal conditions that define "human

language."
The subcategorization rules can be assigned to the lexical
component of the base in the following way. First of all, the
context-free subcategorization rules, such as (57ix-xiii), can be
regarded as syntactic redundancy rules, and hence assigned to
the lexicon. Consider, then, the rules that introduce contextual
features. These rules select certain frames in which a symbol
appears, and they assign corresponding contextual features. A
lexical entry may be substituted in these positions if its con-
textual features match those of the symbol for which it is sub-
stituted. Obviously, the contextual features must appear in
lexical items. But the rules that introduce contexual features
into complex symbols can be eliminated by an appropriate
reformulation of the lexical rule, that is, the rule that introduces
lexical items into derivations (cf. p. 84). Instead of formulating
this as a context-free rule that operates by matching of complex
symbols, we can convert it to a context-sensitive rule by con-
ventions of the following sort. Suppose that we have a lexical
entry (D, C) where D is a phonological feature matrix and C is
a complex symbol containing the feature [+X — Y], We stipu-
lated previously that the lexical rule permits D to replace the
symbol Q of the preterminal string <pQi]j provided that Q is not
distinct from C. Suppose that we now require, in addition, that
this occurrence of Q actually appear in the frame X — Y. That
is, we require that <pQi|/ equal <pi<psQ$iijl2, where <p2 is dominated
by X and t^ by Y in the Phrase-marker of <pQi|». This convention
can be formulated precisely in terms of the notion "Analyz-
ability" on which the theory of transformations is based. We
now eliminate all context-sensitive subcategorization rules from
the grammar and rely on the formulation of lexical features,
together with the principle just stated, to achieve their effect.
Our earlier conditions on subcategorization rules (cf. § 2.3.4)
become conditions on the kinds of contextual features that may
appear in lexical entries. Thus strict subcategorization features
for an item of the category A must involve frames that, together
122 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

with A, form the single constituent B that immediately dominates

A; and the selectional features must involve the lexical categories
that are the heads of grammatically related phrases, in the sense
outlined earlier.
We now have no subcategorization rules in the categorial com-
ponent of the base. A preterminal string is generated by the
branching rules of the categorial component. Lexical entries sub-
stitute for the lexical categories of a preterminal string by the
principle just stated. This formulation brings out very clearly
the sense in which our utilization of complex symbols was a
device for introducing transformational rules into the base com-
ponent. In fact, suppose that (for uniformity of specification of
transformational rules) we add the convention that in the cate-
gorial component, there is a rule A •» A for each lexical category
A, where A is a fixed "dummy symbol." The rules of the cate-
gorial component will now generate Phrase-markers of strings
consisting of various occurrences of A (marking the positions of
lexical categories) and grammatical formatives. A lexical entry
is of the form (D, C), where D is a phonological matrix and C a
complex symbol. The complex symbol C contains inherent
features and contextual features. We can restate this system of
features C directly as the structure index / for a certain sub-
stitution transformation. This transformation substitutes (D, C)
(now regarded as a complex terminal symbol — see note 15) for
a certain occurrence of A in the Phrase-marker K if K meets the
condition /, which is a Boolean condition in terms of Ana-
lyzability in the usual sense of transformational grammar. Where
strict subcategorization is involved, the substitution transforma-
tion is, furthermore, strictly local in the sense of note 18.
Thus the categorial component may very well be a context-free
constituent structure grammar (simple phrase structure gram-
mar) with a reduced terminal vocabulary (that is, with all lexical
items mapped into the single symbol A). The lexicon consists of
entries associated with certain substitution transformations that
introduce lexical items into strings generated by the categorial
component. All contextual restrictions in the base are provided
by these transformational rules of the lexicon. The function of
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES 12g

the categorial component is to define the system of grammatical

relations and to determine the ordering of elements in deep
structures.
This way of developing the base component is not quite
equivalent to that presented earlier. The earlier proposal was
somewhat more restrictive in certain respects. In both formula-
tions, the contextual features (structure indices of substitution
transformations) that may appear in the lexicon are limited by
the conditions on strict subcategorization and selectional rules
previously discussed. But in the earlier formulation, with sub-
categorization rules given as rewriting rules, there is a further
restriction. The ordering of the rewriting rule A •* CS places an
additional limitation on the class of contextual features that
may be used. Similarly, the issue discussed in § 4.2 regarding
examples (66)-(68) does not arise in the new formulation. Because
of the greater flexibility that it allows, certain Verbs can be
restricted in terms of Subject and Object selection, some in
terms of Subject selection, and some in terms of Object selection.
It is an interesting question whether the greater flexibility
permitted by the approach of this subsection is ever needed. If
so, this must be the preferable formulation of the theory of the
base. If not, then the other formulation, in terms of a lexical rule
based on the distinctness condition, is to be preferred. We shall
return to this question in Chapter 4.

§ J.J. The role of categorial rules

We have defined the categorial component as the system of

rewriting rules of the base — that is, the system of base rules
exclusive of the lexicon and the subcategorization rules that we,
for the present, regard as belonging to the lexicon. The rules
of the categorial component carry out two quite separate func-
tions: they define the system of grammatical relations, and they
determine the ordering of elements in deep structures. At least
the first of these functions appears to be carried out in a very
general and perhaps universal way by these rules. The trans-
formational rules map deep structures into surface structures,
124 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

perhaps reordering elements in various ways in the course of this

operation.
It has been suggested several times that these two functions
of the categorial component be more sharply separated, and that
the second, perhaps, be eliminated completely. Such is the
import of the proposals regarding the nature of syntactic
structure to be found in Curry (1961) and Saumjan and Soboleva
(1963).34 They propose, in essence, that in place of such rules as
(6g), the categorial component should contain the corresponding
rules (70), where the element on the right is a set rather than
a string:

(69) S -» NP^VP
VP -» V~NP

(70) S->{NP,VP}
VP -> {V, NP}
In (70), no order is assigned to the elements on the right-hand
side of the rule; thus {NP, VP} = {VP, NP}, although NP^VP
^ VP^NP. The rules (70) can be used to define grammatical
relations in exactly the way indicated for the rules (69). The
rules (69) convey more information than the corresponding
rules (70), since they not only define an abstract system of gram-
matical relations but also assign an abstract underlying order
to the elements. The Phrase-marker generated by such rules as
(69) will be representable as a tree-diagram with labeled nodes
and labeled lines; the Phrase-marker generated by such rules as
(70) will be representable as a tree-diagram with labeled nodes
and unlabeled lines.
Proponents of set-systems such as (70) have argued that such
systems are more "abstract" than concatenation-systems such as
(69), and can lead to a study of grammatical relations that is
independent of order, this being a phenomenon that belongs
only to surface structure. The greater abstractness of set-systems,
so far as grammatical relations are concerned, is a myth. Thus
the grammatical relations defined by (70) are neither more nor
less "abstract" or "order-independent" than those defined by (69);
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES 125

in fact, the systems of grammatical relations defined in the two

cases are identical. A priori, there is no way of determining which
theory is correct; it is an entirely empirical question, and the
evidence presently available is overwhelmingly in favor of con-
catenation-systems over set-systems, for the theory of the categorial
component. In fact, no proponent of a set-system has given any in-
dication of how the abstract underlying unordered structures
are converted into actual strings with surface structures. Hence,
the problem of giving empirical support to this theory has not
yet been faced.
Presumably, the proposal that the categorial component should
be a set-system entails that in a set of syntactically related struc-
tures with a single network of grammatical relations (for ex-
ample, "for us to please John is difficult," "it is difficult for us to
please John," "to please John is difficult for us," or "John is
difficult for us to please"), each member is directly related to the
underlying abstract representation, and there is no internal
organization — that is, no order of derivation—within the set
of structures. But, in fact, whenever an attempt to account for
such structures has actually been undertaken, it has invariably
been found that there are strong reasons to assign an internal
organization and an inherent order of derivation among the
items constituting such a set. Furthermore, it has invariably
been found that different sets in a single language lead to the
same decision as to the abstract underlying order of elements.
Hence, it seems that a set-system such as (70) must be supple-
mented by two sets of rules. The first set will assign an intrinsic
order to the elements of the underlying unordered Phrase-
markers (that is, it will label the lines of the tree-diagrams
representing these structures). The second set of rules will be
grammatical transformations applying in sequence to generate
surface structures in the familiar way. The first set of rules simply
converts a set-system into a concatenation-system. It provides
the base Phrase-markers required for the application of the
sequences of transformations that ultimately form surface
structures. There is no evidence at all to suggest that either of
these steps can be omitted in the case of natural languages. Con-
126 CATEGORIES AND RELATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY

sequently, there is no reason to consider the set-system, for the

time being, as a possible theory of grammatical structure.
The phenomenon of so-called "free word order" is sometimes
mentioned as relevant to this issue, but, so far as I can see,
it has no bearing on it at all. Suppose that for some language
each permutation of the words of each sentence were to give a
grammatical sentence that, in fact, is a paraphrase of the original.
In this case, the set-system would be much superior for the
categorial component of the grammar of this language. No gram-
matical transformations would be needed, and the rule for
realizing underlying abstract representations would be extremely
simple. But there is no known language that remotely resembles
this description. In every known language the restrictions on
order are quite severe, and therefore rules of realization of
abstract structures are necessary. Until some account of such
rules is suggested, the set-system simply cannot be considered
seriously as a theory of grammar.
Nevertheless, the free word order phenomenon is an interesting
and important one, and much too little attention has been given
to it. First of all, it should be emphasized that grammatical
transformations do not seem to be an appropriate device for
expressing the full range of possibilities for stylistic inversion. It
seems, rather, that there are several underlying generalizations
that determine when such reordering is permissible, and what
its semantic functions are. For one thing, richly inflected
languages tolerate stylistic reordering much more extensively
than languages that are poor in inflection, for obvious reasons.
Second, even richly inflected languages do not seem to tolerate
reordering when it leads to ambiguity. Thus in a German
sentence such as "Die Mutter sieht die Tochter," in which the
inflections do not suffice to indicate grammatical function, it
seems that the interpretation will invariably be that "Die Mutter"
is the Subject (unless it has contrastive Stress, in which case it
may be taken to be the Subject or the Object). The same seems
to be true in other languages as diverse as Russian (cf. Peshkovskii,
1956, p. 42) and Mohawk. In the latter, the Verb contains affixes
designating the Subject and Object, but where the reference is
§ 4- TYPES OF BASE RULES 12^

ambiguous, the initial NP is taken to be the Subject, under

normal intonation (I am indebted to Paul Postal for this in-
formation). If this is universal, it suggests the generalization that
in any language, stylistic inversion of "major constituents" (in
some sense to be defined) is tolerated up to ambiguity — that is,
up to the point where a structure is produced that might have
been generated independently by the grammatical rules. (As a
special case of this, then, it will follow that inflected languages
will tolerate reordering much more freely than uninflected ones.)
Something of this sort seems to be true, and it is not statable in
terms of the theory of transformations.
In general, the rules of stylistic reordering are very different
from the grammatical transformations, which are much more
deeply embedded in the grammatical system.35 It might, in fact,
be argued that the former are not so much rules of grammar as
rules of performance (cf. §§ 1, 2, of Chapter 1). In any event,
though this is surely an interesting phenomenon, it is one that
has no apparent bearing, for the moment, on the theory of
grammatical structure.
3
Deep Structures and
Grammatical Transformations

LET US adopt, tentatively, the theory of the base component

sketched in § 4.3 of Chapter 2, and continue to use the fragment
of § 3, Chapter 2, appropriately modified to exclude sub-
categorization rules from the categorial component of the base,
as an illustrative example of a grammar.
The base will now generate base Phrase-markers. In § 1,
Chapter 1, we defined the basis of a sentence as the sequence of
base Phrase-markers that underlies it. The basis of a sentence is
mapped into the sentence by the transformational rules, which,
furthermore, automatically assign to the sentence a derived
Phrase-marker (ultimately, a surface structure) in the process.
For concreteness, consider a base component which generates
the Phrase-markers (i)-(3)-1 The base Phrase-marker (3), with a
different choice of Auxiliary, would be the basis for the sentence
"John was examined by a specialist." The Phrase-marker (1)
would be the basis for the sentence "the man was fired," were we
to modify it by deleting S' from the Determiner associated with
man. (In this case, the passive transformation is followed by
the deletion of unspecified agent.) As it stands, however, to form
the basis for some sentence, the base Phrase-marker (1) must be
supplemented by another Phrase-marker, a transform of which
will fill the position of S' in (1) and thus serve as a relative clause
qualifying man. Similarly, (2) alone cannot serve as a basis for a
sentence because the S' appearing in the Verbal Complement
128
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 129

(l) #-S-#

fire Det N by passive

/\
the S'
I
man

w #-S-#

V NP Prep-Phrase

persuade N of NP

John N S'
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS igi

We interpret this as follows: First, apply the Passive trans-

formation TP to the base Phrase-marker (3); embed the result
in the base Phrase-marker (2), in place of S', by a generalized
(double-base) substitution transformation TE, giving a Phrase-
marker for "the man persuaded John of A John nom be examined
by a specialist"; to this apply first TD, which deletes the repeated
NP "John," and then Tt0, which replaces "of A nom" by "to,"
giving a Phrase-marker for "the man persuaded John to be
examined by a specialist"; next embed this in the position of
S' in (1), by TB; to this apply the relative transformation TR,
which permutes the embedded sentence with the following N
and replaces the repeated phrase "the man" by "who," giving a
Phrase-marker for "A fired the man who persuaded John to be
examined by a specialist by passive"; to this Phrase-marker apply
the passive transformation and agent deletion (TAD), giving (4).
I have left out of this description quite a few transformations
that are necessary to give the correct form of (4), as well as other
details, but these are, by and large, well known, and introduction
of them changes nothing relevant to this discussion.
The diagram (5) is an informal representation of what we may
call a Transformation-marker. It represents the transforma-
tional structure of the utterance (5) very much in the way a
Phrase-marker represents the phrase structure of a terminal
string. In fact, a Transformation-marker may be formally rep-
resented as a set of strings in an alphabet consisting of base
Phrase-markers and transformations as its elements, just as a
Phrase-marker may be formally represented as a set of strings in
an alphabet consisting of terminal symbols, category symbols, and
with the developments of the preceding sections, specified
features.2
The deep structure of an utterance is given completely by its
Transformation-marker, which contains its basis. The surface
structure of the sentence is the derived Phrase-marker given as
the output of the operations represented in the Transformation-
marker. The basis of the sentence is the sequence of base Phrase-
markers that constitute the terminal points of the tree-diagram
(the left-hand nodes, in (5)). When Transformation-markers are
132 DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

represented as in (5), the branching points correspond to gen-

eralized transformations that embed a constituent sentence (the
lower branch) in a designated position in a matrix sentence (the
upper branch).
A theoretical apparatus of this sort, in its essentials, is what
underlies the work in transformational generative grammar that
has appeared in the last ten years. However, in the course of this
work, several important points have gradually emerged which
suggest that a somewhat more restricted and conceptually
simpler theory of transformations may be adequate.
First, it has been shown that many of the optional singulary
transformations of Chomsky (1955, 1957, 1962) must be re-
formulated as obligatory transformations, whose applicability to
a string is determined by presence or absence of a certain marker
in the string. This was pointed out by Lees (1960a) for the
negation transformation, and by Klima (personal communica-
tion) for the question transformation, at about the same time.
In fact, it is also true for the passive transformation, as noted in
§ 2.3.4 of Chapter 2. Katz and Postal (1964) have extended these
observations and formulated them in terms of a general
principle, namely that the only contribution of transformations
to semantic interpretation is that they interrelate Phrase-markers
(i.e., combine semantic interpretations of already interpreted
Phrase-markers in a fixed way).3 It follows, then, that trans-
formations cannot introduce meaning-bearing elements (nor can
they delete lexical items unrecoverably, by the condition men-
tioned in note 1). Generalizing these remarks to embedding
transformations, they conclude also that a sentence transform
embedded in a matrix sentence 2 must replace a dummy symbol
of 2. (In the foregoing discussion, adopting this suggestion, we
have used S' as the dummy symbol — this assumption is also
implicit in Fillmore, 1963.)
Katz and Postal point out that the principle just stated greatly
simplifies the theory of the semantic component, since semantic
interpretation will now be independent of all aspects of the
Transformation-marker except insofar as this indicates how
base structures are interrelated. They have also succeeded in
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS I33

showing that in a large variety of cases, where this general

principle has not been met in syntactic description, the descrip-
tion was in fact incorrect on internal syntactic grounds. The
principle, then, seems very plausible.
Second, notice that the theory of Transformation-markers
permits a great deal of latitude so far as ordering of transforma-
tions is concerned. Thus the grammar, in this view, must con-
tain rules generating the possible Transformation-markers by
stating conditions that these objects must meet for well-formed-
ness (what Lees, 1960a, calls "traffic rules").4 These rules may
state the ordering of transformations relative to one another, and
may designate certain transformations as obligatory, or obliga-
tory relative to certain contexts, by requiring that they appear in
specified positions in Transformation-markers. However, only
some of the possibilities permitted by this general theory have
been realized convincingly with actual linguistic material. In
particular, there are no known cases of ordering among gen-
eralized embedding transformations although such ordering is
permitted by the theory of Transformation-markers. Further-
more, there are no really convincing cases of singulary trans-
formations that must apply to a matrix sentence before a sen-
tence transform is embedded in it, though this too is a possibility,
according to the theory.5 On the other hand, there are many
examples of ordering of singulary transformations, and many
examples of singulary transformations that must apply to a
constituent sentence before it is embedded or that must apply
to a matrix sentence after embedding of a constituent structure
in it. Thus the diagram (5) is typical of the kind of structure
that has actually been discovered in Transformation-markers.
In brief, presently available descriptive studies suggest the
following restrictions on ordering of transformations. The sin-
gulary transformations are linearly ordered (perhaps only partially
ordered). They may apply to a constituent structure before it is
embedded, or to a matrix structure, and the constituent struc-
ture embedded in it, after this constituent structure is embedded.
There is no reason for imposing an extrinsic order on the
generalized transformations.6
134 DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

These observations suggest a possible simplification of the

theory of transformational grammar. Suppose that we eliminate
the notions "generalized transformation" and "Transformation-
marker" altogether.7 In the rewriting rules of the base (in fact,
in its categorial component) the string #S# is introduced in the
positions where in the illustrative example we introduced the
symbol S'. That is, wherever a base Phrase-marker contains a
position in which a sentence transform is to be introduced, we
fill this position with the string #S#, which initiates derivations.
We now allow the rules of the base to apply cyclically, preserv-
ing their linear order. Thus, for example, after having generated
(1), with #S# in place of S', they reapply to the new occurrence
of #S# in the terminal line of the derivation represented by (1).
From this occurrence of #S# the rules of the base can generate
the derivation represented by (2), with #S# in place of the
occurrence of S' in (2). From the latter occurrence of #S#, the
same base rules can reapply to form the derivation represented
by (3). In this way, the base rules will generate the generalized
Phrase-marker formed from (1), (2), (3) by replacing S' in (1) by
(2) and replacing S' in (2) by (3).
We have thus revised the theory of the base by allowing #S#
to appear on the right in certain branching rules, where pre-
viously the dummy symbol S' had appeared, and by allowing the
rules to reapply (preserving their order) to these newly intro-
duced occurrences of #S#. A generalized Phrase-marker formed
in this way contains all of the base Phrase-markers that constitute
the basis of a sentence, but it contains more information than a
basis in the old sense since it also indicates explicitly how these
base Phrase-markers are embedded in one another. That is, the
generalized Phrase-marker contains all of the information con-
tained in the basis, as well as the information provided by the
generalized embedding transformations.8
In addition to the rules of the base, so modified, the grammar
contains a linear sequence of singulary transformations. These
apply to generalized Phrase-markers cyclically, in the following
manner. First, the sequence of transformational rules applies to
the most deeply embedded base Phrase-marker. (For example,
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 1 35

it applies to (3), in the generalized Phrase-marker formed by

embedding (3) in (2) and the result in (1), as described earlier.)
Having applied to all such base Phrase-markers, the sequence of
rules reapplies to a configuration dominated by S in which these
base Phrase-markers are embedded (to (2), in the same example),
and so on, until finally the sequence of rules applies to the
configuration dominated by the initial symbol S of the entire
generalized Phrase-marker (to (1), in our example). Notice that
in the case of (i)-(3), the effect of this convention is precisely
what is described in the Transformation-marker (5). That is,
singulary transformations are applied to constituent sentences
before they are embedded, and to matrix sentences after embed-
ding has taken place. The embedding itself is now provided by
the branching rules of the base rather than by generalized trans-
formations. We have, in effect, converted the specific properties
of the Transformation-marker (5) into general properties of any
possible transformational derivation.
The grammar now consists of a base and a linear sequence of
singulary transformations. These apply in the manner just de-
scribed. The ordering possibilities that are permitted by the
theory of Transformation-markers but apparently never put to
use are now excluded in principle. The notion of Transforma-
tion-marker disappears, as does the notion of generalized
transformation. The base rules form generalized Phrase-markers
that contain just the information contained in the basis and the
generalized transformations of the earlier version. But observe
that in accordance with the Katz-Postal principle discussed
earlier (p. 132), it is precisely this information that should be
relevant to semantic interpretation. Consequently, we may take
a generalized Phrase-marker, in the sense just defined, to be the
deep structure generated by the syntactic component.
Thus the syntactic component consists of a base that generates
deep structures and a transformational part that maps them into
surface structures. The deep structure of a sentence is submitted
to the semantic component for semantic interpretation, and its
surface structure enters the phonological component and under-
goes phonetic interpretation. The final effect of a grammar, then,
136 DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

is to relate a semantic interpretation to a phonetic representation

— that is, to state how a sentence is interpreted. This relation is
mediated by the syntactic component of the grammar, which
constitutes its sole "creative" part.
The branching rules of the base (that is, its categorial com-
ponent) define grammatical functions and grammatical relations
and determine an abstract underlying order (cf. § 4.4, Chapter 2);
the lexicon characterizes the individual properties of particular
lexical items that are inserted in specified positions in base
Phrase-markers. Thus when we define "deep structures" as
"structures generated by the base component," we are, in effect,
assuming that the semantic interpretation of a sentence depends
only on its lexical items and the grammatical functions and rela-
tions represented in the underlying structures in which they
appear.8 This is the basic idea that has motivated the theory of
transformational grammar since its inception (cf. note 33, Chap-
ter 2). Its first relatively clear formulation is in Katz and Fodor
(1963), and an improved version is given in Katz and Postal
(1964), in terms of the modification of syntactic theory proposed
there and briefly discussed earlier. The formulation just sug-
gested sharpens this idea still further. In fact, it permits a further
simplification of the theory of semantic interpretation presented
in Katz and Postal (1964), since Transformation-markers and
generalized transformations, as well as "projection rules" to deal
with them, need no longer be considered at all. This formula-
tion seems to be a natural extension and summary of the develop-
ments of the past few years that have just been summarized.
Notice that in this view one major function of the transforma-
tional rules is to convert an abstract deep structure that expresses
the content of a sentence into a fairly concrete surface structure
that indicates its form.10 Some possible reasons for such an
organization of grammar, in terms of perceptual mechanisms, are
suggested in Miller and Chomsky (1963, § 2.2). It is interesting
to note, in this connection, that the grammars of the "artificial
languages" of logic or theory of programming are, apparently
without exception, simple phrase structure grammars in most
significant respects.
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 137

Looking more closely at the recursive property of the gram-

mar, we have now suggested the following modification of trans-
formational theory. In the earlier version of the theory, the
recursive property was assigned to the transformational com-
ponent, in particular, to the generalized transformations and the
rules for forming Transformation-markers. Now the recursive
property is a feature of the base component, in particular, of the
rules that introduce the initial symbol S in designated positions
in strings of category symbols. There are, apparently, no other
recursive rules in the base.11 The transformational component is
solely interpretive.
It is worth mentioning that with this formulation of the
theory of transformational grammar, we have returned to a con-
ception of linguistic structure that marked the origins of modern
syntactic theory, namely that presented in the Grammaire ge-
nerate et raisonnee.12
One additional point must be emphasized in connection with
the notion "deep structure." When the base rules generate a
Phrase-marker from an occurrence of S that is embedded in an
already generated Phrase-marker, they cannot take account of
the context in which this occurrence of S appears. For example,
instead of the generalized Phrase-marker M consisting of (i)-(3)
(with (3) embedded in (2) and the result embedded in (1)), we
might just as well have constructed the generalized Phrase-marker
M' formed from (1), K, and (3), where AT is a Phrase-marker
differing from (2) only in that man in (2) is replaced by boy in K.
But now, at the stage of derivation at which the relative clause
transformation (TR of (5)) is applied to K with (3) embedded
within it, we shall have not the string (6) but rather (7):
(6) A fired the man (# the man persuaded John to be examined
by a specialist #) by passive
(7) A fired the man (# the boy persuaded John to be examined
by a specialist #) by passive
The string (6) (with its Phrase-marker) is of the form that per-
mits the relative clause transformation to apply, replacing "the
man" by "who," since the condition of identity of the two Nouns
138 DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

is met and we thus have a recoverable deletion (cf. note 1). But
in the case of (7), the transformation will block. Thus the phrase
"the boy" cannot be deleted from (7) because of the general
condition that only recoverable deletions are permitted — that
is, the identity condition of the transformation is not satisfied.13
This is precisely what we want, for obviously the generalized
Phrase-marker formed from (1), K, (3) does not provide the
semantic interpretation of (4), as it would if application of the
relative clause transformation were permitted in this case. In fact,
the generalized Phrase-marker formed from (i), K, and (3),
although generated by the base rules, is not the deep structure
underlying any surface structure.
We can make this observation precise, in this case, by defining
the relative clause transformation in such a way that it deletes
the boundary symbol # when it applies. Thus if its application
is blocked, this symbol will remain in the string. We can then
establish the convention that a well-formed surface structure
cannot contain internal occurrences of #. Such occurrences will
indicate that certain transformations that should have applied
were blocked. The same (or similar) formal devices can be used
in a variety of other cases.
Putting aside questions of formalization, we can see that not
all generalized Phrase-markers generated by the base will under-
lie actual sentences and thus qualify as deep structures. What,
then, is the test that determines whether a generalized Phrase-
marker is the deep structure of some sentence? The answer is
very simple. The transformational rules provide exactly such a
test, and there is, in general, no simpler test. A generalized
Phrase-marker MD is the deep structure underlying the sentence
S, with the surface structure Ma, just in case the transformational
rules generate Ma from MD. The surface structure Ms of S is well
formed just in case S contains no symbols indicating the blocking
of obligatory transformations. A deep structure is a generalized
Phrase-marker underlying some well-formed surface structure.
Thus the basic notion defined by a transformational grammar
is: deep structure MD underlies well-formed surface structure Ms.
The notion "deep structure" itself is derivative from this. The
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 139

transformational rules act as a "filter" that permits only certain

generalized Phrase-markers to qualify as deep structures.
Notice that this filtering function of the transformational
component is not an entirely new feature specific to the version
of transformational grammar that we are developing now. In
fact, it was also true of the earlier version, though this fact was
never discussed in exposition. Thus a sequence of base Phrase-
markers might have been selected that could not serve as the
basis of any sentence; furthermore, any system of rules for
generating Transformation-markers would certainly permit cer-
tain structures that do not qualify as Transformation-markers
because of inconsistencies and blocks arising in the course of
carrying out the instructions that they represent. In the present
version this filtering function is simply brought out more clearly.
In § 4.3 of Chapter 2 we suggested: (a) that the distributional
restrictions of lexical items be determined by contextual fea-
tures listed in lexical entries, and (b) that these contextual fea-
tures be regarded as defining certain substitution transforma-
tions. Thus strict subcategorial and selectional restrictions of
lexical items are defined by transformational rules associated
with these items. We have now observed that the transforma-
tional rules must also carry the burden of determining the
distributional restrictions on base Phrase-markers. Thus the
categorial rules that generate the infinite set of generalized
Phrase-markers can apparently be context-free, with all distribu-
tional restrictions, whether of base Phrase-markers or lexical
entries, being determined by the (singulary) transformations.
Such a description of the form of the syntactic component
may seem strange if one considers the generative rules as a model
for the actual construction of a sentence by a speaker. Thus it
seems absurd to suppose that the speaker first forms a generalized
Phrase-marker by base rules and then tests it for well-formedness
by applying transformational rules to see if it gives, finally, a
well-formed sentence. But this absurdity is simply a corollary
to the deeper absurdity of regarding the system of generative
rules as a point-by-point model for the actual construction of a
sentence by a speaker. Consider the simpler case of a phrase
140 DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

structure grammar with no transformations (for example, the

grammar of a programming language, or elementary arithmetic,
or some small part of English that might be described in these
terms). It would clearly be absurd to suppose that the "speaker"
of such a language, in formulating an "utterance," first selects
the major categories, then the categories into which these are
analyzed, and so forth, finally, at the end of the process, select-
ing the words or symbols that he is going to use (deciding what
he is going to talk about). To think of a generative grammar in
these terms is to take it to be a model of performance rather than
a model of competence, thus totally misconceiving its nature.
One can study models of performance that incorporate genera-
tive grammars, and some results have been achieved in such
studies.14 But a generative grammar as it stands is no more a
model of the speaker than it is a model of the hearer. Rather,
as has been repeatedly emphasized, it can be regarded only as
a characterization of the intrinsic tacit knowledge or competence
that underlies actual performance.
The base rules and the transformational rules set certain
conditions that must be met for a structure to qualify as the
deep structure expressing the semantic content of some well-
formed sentence. Given a grammar containing a base component
and a transformational component, one can develop innumerable
procedures for actually constructing deep structures. These will
vary in exhaustiveness and efficiency, and in the extent to which
they can be adapted to the problems of producing or under-
standing speech. One such constructive procedure is to run
through the base rules (observing order) so as to form a gen-
eralized Phrase-marker M, and then through the transforma-
tional rules (observing order) so as to form a surface structure
M' from M. If M' is well formed, then M was a deep structure;
otherwise, it was not. All deep structures can be enumerated in
this way, just as they can all be enumerated in many other ways,
given the grammar. As noted earlier, the grammar defines the
relation "the deep structure M underlies the well-formed sur-
face structure M' of the sentence S" and, derivatively, it defines
the notions "M is a deep structure," "M' is a well-formed sur-
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 141

face structure," "S is a well-formed sentence," and many others

(such as "S is structurally ambiguous," "5 and S' are para-
phrases," "S is a deviant sentence formed by violating rule R or
condition C"). The grammar does not, in itself, provide any
sensible procedure for finding the deep structure of a given
sentence, or for producing a given sentence, just as it provides
no sensible procedure for finding a paraphrase to a given
sentence. It merely defines these tasks in a precise way. A per-
formance model must certainly incorporate a grammar; it is not
to be confused with a grammar. Once this point is clear, the fact
that transformations act as a kind of filter will occasion no sur-
prise or uneasiness.
To summarize, we have now suggested that the form of gram-
mar may be as follows. A grammar contains a syntactic com-
ponent, a semantic component, and a phonological component.
The latter two are purely interpretive; they play no part in the
recursive generation of sentence structures. The syntactic com-
ponent consists of a base and a transformational component.
The base, in turn, consists of a categorial subcomponent and a
lexicon. The base generates deep structures. A deep structure
enters the semantic component and receives a semantic interpre-
tation; it is mapped by the transformational rules into a surface
structure, which is then given a phonetic interpretation by the
rules of the phonological component. Thus the grammar assigns
semantic interpretations to signals, this association being me-
diated by the recursive rules of the syntactic component.
The categorial subcomponent of the base consists of a sequence
of context-free rewriting rules. The function of these rules is, in
essence, to define a certain system of grammatical relations that
determine semantic interpretation, and to specify an abstract
underlying order of elements that makes possible the functioning
of the transformational rules. To a large extent, the rules of the
base may be universal, and thus not, strictly speaking, part of
particular grammars; or it may be that, although free in part,
the choice of base rules is constrained by a universal condition
on the grammatical functions that are defined. Similarly, the
category symbols appearing in base rules are selected from a
142 DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

fixed universal alphabet; in fact, the choice of symbol may be

largely or perhaps completely determined by the formal role
the symbol plays in the system of base rules. The infinite genera-
tive capacity of the grammar arises from a particular formal
property of these categorial rules, namely that they may intro-
duce the initial symbol S into a line of a derivation. In this way,
the rewriting rules can, in effect, insert base Phrase-markers into
other base Phrase-markers, this process being iterable without
limit.
The lexicon consists of an unordered set of lexical entries and
certain redundancy rules. Each lexical entry is a set of features (but
see note 15 of Chapter 2). Some of these are phonological fea-
tures, drawn from a particular universal set of phonological
features (the distinctive-feature system). The set of phonological
features in a lexical entry can be extracted and represented as a
phonological matrix that bears the relation "is a" to each of the
specified syntactic features belonging to the lexical entry. Some
of the features are semantic features. These, too, are presumably
drawn from a universal "alphabet," but little is known about this
today, and nothing has been said about it here. We call a fea-
ture "semantic" if it is not mentioned in any syntactic rule, thus
begging the question of whether semantics is involved in syn-
tax.15 The redundancy rules of the lexicon add and specify fea-
tures wherever this can be predicted by general rule. Thus the
lexical entries constitute the full set of irregularities of the
language.
We may construct a derivation of a generalized Phrase-marker
by applying the categorial rules in the specified order, beginning
with S, reapplying them to each new occurrence of S introduced
in the course of the derivation. In this way, we derive a pre-
terminal string, which becomes a generalized Phrase-marker
when lexical entries are inserted in accordance with the trans-
formational rules specified by the contextual features that belong
to these lexical entries. The base of the syntactic component
thus generates an infinite set of generalized Phrase-markers.
The transformational subcomponent consists of a sequence of
singulary transformations. Each transformation is fully defined
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 1 43

by a structure index, which is a Boolean condition on Analyza-

bility, and a sequence of elementary transformations. The
notion "Analyzable" is determined in terms of the "is a" relation,
which, in turn, is defined by the rewriting rules of the base and
by the lexicon. Thus transformations may refer to specified
syntactic features as if they were categories. In fact, transforma-
tions must also be designed so that they can specify and add
syntactic features, but we shall not go into this modification of
the theory of transformational grammar here (see Chapter 4, § 2).
Given a generalized Phrase-marker, we construct a transforma-
tional derivation by applying the sequence of transformational
rules sequentially, "from the bottom up" — that is, applying
the sequence of rules to a given configuration only if we have
already applied it to all base Phrase-markers embedded in this
configuration. If none of the transformations blocks, we derive
in this way a well-formed surface structure. In this and only this
case, the generalized Phrase-marker to which the transforma-
tions were originally applied constitutes a deep structure, namely
the deep structure of the sentence S, which is the terminal string
of the derived surface structure. This deep structure expresses
the semantic content of S, whereas the surface structure of S
determines its phonetic form.
The interpretive components of a grammar have not been
our concern here. Insofar as details of their structure have been
worked out, they seem to function in parallel ways. The phono-
logical component consists of a sequence of rules that apply to a
surface structure "from the bottom up" in the tree-diagram
representing it. That is, these rules apply in a cycle, first to the
minimal elements (formatives), then to the constituents of which
they are parts (a constituent of a Phrase-marker being a sub-
string of its terminal string dominated by a single category
symbol), then to the constituents of which these are parts, and so
on, until the maximal domain of phonological processes is
reached. (See Chomsky, Halle, and Lukoff, 1956; Halle and
Chomsky, i960, forthcoming; Chomsky, 19626; Chomsky and
Miller, 1963.) In this way a phonetic representation of the entire
sentence is formed on the basis of the intrinsic abstract phono-
 DEEP
144 STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

logical properties of its formatives and the categories represented

in the surface structure.
In a somewhat similar way, the projection rules of the
semantic component operate on the deep structure generated by
the base, assigning a semantic interpretation (a "reading") to
each constituent, on the basis of the readings assigned to its
parts (ultimately, the intrinsic semantic properties of the
formatives) and the categories and grammatical relations rep-
resented in the deep structure. (See Katz and Fodor, 1963; Katz
and Postal, 1964; and other papers by Katz listed in the bibliog-
raphy.) To the extent that grammatical categories and rela-
tions can be described in language-independent terms, one may
hope to find universal projection rules, which need not, there-
fore, be stated as part of a specific grammar.
Throughout this discussion, we have simply been presuppos-
ing the theory of grammatical transformations as presented in
the references cited, but it is perhaps worth mentioning that this
theory, too, can apparently be simplified in various ways. First, it
appears that permutations can be eliminated from the set of
elementary transformations in favor of substitutions, deletions,
and adjunctions. That is, the derived Phrase-markers that would
be provided by permutations may not be necessary in addition
to those provided by the other elementary transformations.
Elimination of permutations from the base set would greatly
simplify the theory of derived constituent structure.lfi Second,
it seems that the structural analyses that determine the domain
of transformations can be limited to Boolean conditions on
Analyzability. That is, quantifiers can be eliminated from the
formulation of transformations in favor of a general convention
on deletion, as mentioned in note 13. If so, this places a severe
additional restriction on the theory of transformations.
The latter point deserves some further clarification. We shall
discuss it briefly here and then return to the question in Chapter
4, § 2.2. We are proposing the following convention to guarantee
recoverability of deletion: a deletion operation can eliminate
only a dummy element, or a formative explicitly mentioned in
the structure index (for example, you in imperatives), or the
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 145

designated representative of a category (for example, the wh-

question transformations that delete Noun Phrases are in fact
limited to indefinite Pronouns — cf. Chomsky, 1964, § 2.2), or
an element that is otherwise represented in the sentence in a
fixed position. To clarify the latter point further, let us define
an erasure transformation as one that substitutes a term X of its
proper analysis for a term Y of its proper analysis (leaving X
intact), and then deletes this new occurrence of X which re-
placed Y. In the example of relativization discussed earlier (pp.
128 f.), if we have the string
123 4
(8) the man — [#wh- — the man — had been fired#] returned to work

the relative transformation can be formulated as an erasure

operation that substitutes the first term X of the proper analysis
for the third term Y, erasing the latter17 in the process. Avoiding
details of formalization, which are straightforward within the
general theory of transformations, we may say briefly that the
erasure operation uses the term X to delete Y in such a case. We
say, then, that an erasure operation can use the term X to delete
Y just in case X and Y are identical. We shall investigate the
exact nature of the required relation between X and Y some-
what more fully in Chapter 4, pp. I'j'ji-
As an additional illustration, consider the reflexivization
operation (see Lees and Klima, 1963, for a detailed discussion). It
has frequently been observed that in a sentence such as "J°hn
hurt John" or "the boy hurt the boy," the two phonetically
identical Noun Phrases are necessarily interpreted as differing in
reference; sameness of reference requires reflexivization of the
second Noun Phrase (this is also true of pronominalization).
Various attempts have been made to build an account of this into
the syntactic component, but none has been very convincing.
The availability of lexical features suggests a new approach that
might be explored. Suppose that certain lexical items are
designated as "referential" and that by a general convention,
each occurrence of a referential item is assigned a marker, say, an
integer, as a feature.18 The reflexivization rule can be formulated
146 DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

as an erasure operation that uses one Noun Phrase to delete

another. As in the case of relativization (cf. note 17), the erasure
leaves a residue, in particular, the feature [±Human], and it in-
troduces the new phonetic element self. Thus when applied to "I
hurt I," the first Noun Phrase is used to delete the second, finally
giving, "I hurt myself." But by the recoverability condition on
deletion, the reflexivization rule (similarly, the pronominalization
rule) will apply only when the integers assigned to the two items
are the same. The semantic component will then interpret two
referential items as having the same reference just in case they
are strictly identical — in particular, in case they have been
assigned the same integer in the deep structure. This gives the
right answer in many cases, but there are interesting problems
that arise when the referential items are plural, and of
course there are problems in specifying the notion "referential"
properly.
Notice, incidentally, that the reflexivization rule does not al-
ways apply (though pronominalization does) even when the two
Nouns are strictly identical and hence coreferential. Thus we
have "I kept it near me" alongside of "I aimed it at myself,"
and so on. The difference is that in the first, but not the second,
the repeated Noun is in a Sentence-Complement to the Verb.
Thus "I kept it near me" has a deep structure of the form
"I — kept — it — # S #," where S dominates "it is near me." But
"I aimed it at myself" has a deep structure of the form "I —
aimed — it — at me" (there is no underlying sentence "it is at
me"). The reflexivization rule does not apply to a repeated N
dominated by an occurrence of S that does not dominate the
"antecedent" occurrence of N. This particular remark about
English is, apparently, a consequence of a more general condition
on transformations, namely that no morphological material (in
this case, self) can be introduced into a configuration dominated
by S once the cycle of transformational rules has already com-
pleted its application to this configuration (though items can still
be extracted from this constituent of a larger "matrix structure,"
in the next cycle of transformational rules). There are a few
examples that seem to conflict with this analysis (such as "I
DEEP STRUCTURES AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 147

pushed it away from me," "I drew it toward me"), for reasons
that I do not understand, but it covers a large number of
convincing cases, and, in the distinction it makes between super-
ficially analogous cases that differ only in that one but not the
other is based on an independently existing embedded sentence,
it provides an interesting confirmation of the theory of trans-
formational grammar.
Returning to the main theme, we can apparently define a
grammatical transformation in terms of a "structure index"
that is a Boolean condition on Analyzability and a sequence of
elementary transformations drawn from a base set including
substitutions, deletions, and adjunctions. It seems also that these
form larger repeated units (for example, substitution-deletions,
erasures) and that the limitations on their application can be
given by general conventions of the sort just mentioned. If this
is correct, then the formal properties of the theory of transforma-
tions become fairly clear and reasonably simple, and it may be
possible to undertake abstract study of them of a sort that has
not been feasible in the past.
Some Residual Problems

§ /. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

§ I.I.Degrees of grammaticalness
IT is quite apparent that current theories of syntax and
semantics are highly fragmentary and tentative, and that they
involve open questions of a fundamental nature. Furthermore,
only very rudimentary grammatical descriptions are available,
for any language, so that no satisfactory answers can be given for
many factual questions. Consequently, the problem suggested by
the title of this section can, for the present, be at best a source
for speculation. Nevertheless, some of the topics of the preced-
ing chapters relate to the question of the proper balance between
syntax and semantics in a way that deserves at least some further
comment.
The distinction between strict subcategorization features and
selectional features, which is formally well defined, appears to
correlate rather closely with an important distinction in language
use. Each such contextual feature is associated with a certain
rule that limits lexical entries containing this feature to certain
contexts.1 We can, in each case, construct a deviant sentence by
breaking the rule. Thus in § 3 of Chapter 2, Verbs are strictly
subcategorized into Intransitives, Transitives, pre-Adjectival,
pre-Sentence, etc. In these cases, violation of the rules will give
such strings as:
(1) (i) John found sad
(ii) John elapsed that Bill will come
148
§ 1. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS I49

(iii) John compelled

(iv) John became Bill to leave
(v) John persuaded great authority to Bill
On the other hand, failure to observe a selectional rule will give
such typical examples as
(2) (i) colorless green ideas sleep furiously
(ii) golf plays John
(iii) the boy may frighten sincerity
(iv) misery loves company
(v) they perform their leisure with diligence

(cf. § 2.3.1 of Chapter 2). Clearly, strings such as (1) that break
strict subcategorization rules and strings such as (2) that break
selectional rules are deviant. It is necessary to impose an inter-
pretation on them somehow — this being a task that varies in
difficulty or challenge from case to case — whereas there is no
question of imposing an interpretation in the case of such
strictly well-formed sentences as
(3) (i) revolutionary new ideas appear infrequently
(ii) John plays golf
(iii) sincerity may frighten the boy
(iv) John loves company
(v) they perform their duty with diligence
Nevertheless, the manner of deviation illustrated in (2) is
rather different from that in (1). Sentences that break selectional
rules can often be interpreted metaphorically (particularly, as
personification — cf. Bloomfield, 1963) or allusively in one way
or another, if an appropriate context of greater or less com-
plexity is supplied. That is, these sentences are apparently
interpreted by a direct analogy to well-formed sentences that
observe the selectional rules in question. Clearly, one would
proceed in quite a different way if forced to assign an inter-
pretation to sentences that break strict subcategorization rules,
for example, the sentences of (1).
These examples are, I think, typical of a fairly wide class of
150 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

cases. A descriptively adequate grammar should make all of

these distinctions on some formal grounds, and a grammar of
the type just described seems to make them in some measure, at
least. It distinguishes perfectly well-formed sentences such as
(3) from the sentences of (1) and (2), which are not directly
generated by the system of grammatical rules. It further separates
the sentences of (1), generated by relaxing strict subcategorization
rules, from sentences such as (2), which are generated when
selectional rules are relaxed. Thus it takes several steps toward
the development of a significant theory of "degree of gram-
ma ticalness."2
It seems that sentences deviating from selectional rules that
involve "higher-level" lexical features such as [Count] are much
less acceptable and are more difficult to interpret than those
that involve such "lower-level" features as [Human]. At the
same time, it is important to bear in mind that not all rules
involving low-level syntactic features tolerate deviation as readily
as do selectional rules involving these features.8 Thus both of the
sentences
(4) (i) the book who you read was a best seller
(ii) who you met is John
result from failure to observe rules involving the feature
[Human], but are totally unacceptable — although of course an
interpretation can easily, and no doubt uniformly, be imposed on
them. Both in degree of acceptability and manner of interpreta-
tion, they differ completely from sentences that result from a
failure to observe selectional rules involving the feature [Human].
Thus no matter how selectional rules are treated, there is no
doubt that such features as [Human] play a role in purely syn-
tactic rules (since surely the examples of (4) are ruled out on
purely syntactic grounds).
Similarly, consider the selectional feature [[-(-Abstract] • • • —
• • • [+Animate]] assigned to such Verbs as frighten, amuse, charm,
••• . This feature is involved in rules that are as inviolable as
those that give the book which you read was a best seller and
what you found was my book, while excluding (4). Thus items
§ I. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS I5I

that are positively specified with respect to this feature can ap-
pear in the position of pure Adjectives, so that we have such
sentences as a very frightening {amusing, charming, •••) person
suddenly appeared, but not, for example,
(5) (i) a very walking person appeared
(ii) a very hitting person appeared
These sentences, like those of (4), are immediately and perhaps
uniquely interpretable, but are obviously much more seriously
ungrammatical, in the intuitive sense that we are now attempting
to explicate, than the examples of violation of selectional rules
given earlier. Thus it seems that this selectionally introduced
contextual feature is also involved in rules that cannot be violated
without serious departure from grammaticalness.4
Examples such as (4) and (5) therefore support two important
observations. First, it is clear that features such as [Human]
and [[-(-Abstract] • • • — • • • [-(-Animate]] play a role in the func-
tioning of the syntactic component, no matter how narrowly
syntax is conceived, as long as it is agreed that (4) and (5) are
syntactically deviant. The special character of the examples of
(2) is not attributable to the fact that these sentences violate rules
involving "low-level features," but rather to the fact that the
rules that they violate are selectional rules. Second, it is clear
from such examples as (4) and (5) that the notion "grammatical-
ness" cannot be related to "interpretability" (ease, uniqueness,
or uniformity of interpretation), in any simple way, at least.
There are sentences such as (4) and (5) that are uniquely, uni-
formly, and immediately interpretable, no doubt, although they
are paradigm examples of departure from well-formedness. On
the other hand, there are also perfectly well-formed sentences
that may pose great difficulties for interpretation, and may be
subject to a variety of perhaps conflicting interpretations. More
generally, it is clear that the intuitive notion of grammatical well-
formedness is by no means a simple one and that an adequate
explication of it will involve theoretical constructs of a highly
abstract nature, just as it is clear that various diverse factors
determine how and whether a sentence can be interpreted.
152 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

The attempts described in the references of note 2 to give a

precise definition to at least one dimension of degree of gram-
maticalness are much more plausible if limited to the question of
deviation from selectional rules than if extended to the full range
of examples of deviation from well-formedness. In fact, following
this suggestion, we might conclude that the only function of the
selectional rules is to impose a hierarchy of deviation from
grammaticalness on a certain set of sentences, namely those
sentences that can be generated by selectional constraints while
otherwise keeping the grammar unchanged.
Observe that the rules of the grammar impose a partial ordering
in terms of dominance among the features that constitute a com-
plex symbol in a Phrase-marker. For example, referring again to
the sample Phrase-marker (59) of Chapter 2 and the formative
frighten, we have a complex symbol consisting of the features
[+V, H NP, +[+Abstract] ••• — ••• [+Animate]], and others,
The rules of the grammar impose the dominance order [+V],
[-\ NP], [+[+Abstract] ••• — ••• [+Animate]], as indicated in
(59). In terms of this order, we can define the degree of deviation
of a string that results from substituting a lexical item in the
position of frighten in this Phrase-marker. The deviation is
greater the higher in the dominance hierarchy is the feature
corresponding to the rule that is relaxed. In the example given,
then, deviance would be greatest if the item substituted for
frighten is a non-Verb, less great if it is a Verb but a non-Transi-
tive Verb, and still less great if it is a Transitive Verb that does
not take an Abstract Subject. Thus we should have the following
order of deviance:
(6) (i) sincerity may virtue the boy
(ii) sincerity may elapse the boy
(iii) sincerity may admire the boy
This seems to give a natural explication for at least one sense
of the term "deviance." In this connection, compare the sug-
gestions of the references of note 2, which consider size of
category within which substitution takes place in determining
§ 1. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS 153

the degree of grammaticalness (the extent of syntactic deviance)

of a string.
At the end of § 4.1 of Chapter 2, it was pointed out that
features introduced by strict subcategorization rules dominate
features introduced by selectional rules; and in the same section
it was further noted that all lexical features are dominated by
the symbols for lexical categories. Furthermore, deviation from
selectional rules involving high-level features is apparently more
serious than deviation from selectional rules involving lower-
level features. These various observations combine to make the
definition of "degree of deviance" just proposed a rather natural
one. If the distinction between strict subcategorization rules and
selectional rules noted earlier is generally valid, we might go on
to superimpose on the scale of deviance a split into perhaps three
general types, namely the types that result from: (i) violation of
lexical category (such as (6i)); (ii) conflict with a strict sub-
categorization feature (such as (6ii) and (1)); and (iii) conflict
with a selectional feature (such as (6iii) and (2)). There are,
furthermore, subdivisions within at least the third type. Of
course, there are also many other types (such as (4), (5)).B This
is not surprising, since there are rules of many kinds that can be
violated.

§ 7.2. Further remarks on selectional rules

Selectional rules play a rather marginal role in the grammar,
although the features that they deal with may be involved in
many purely syntactic processes (cf. (4), (5)). One might propose,
therefore, that selectional rules be dropped from the syntax and
that their function be taken over by the semantic component.
Such a change would do little violence to the structure of gram-
mar as described earlier. Of course, the features that are utilized
and introduced by selectional rules would still appear in lexical
entries for strings. That is, boy would be specified as f+Human]
and frighten as permitting an Abstract Subject and Animate
Object, etc., in the lexical entries for these items. Furthermore, if
we continue to call a feature of the lexical entry a "syntactic
154 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

feature" when it is involved in a strictly syntactic rule, then these

features of the lexical entry will be syntactic rather than semantic
features (cf. the discussion of (4), (5)). Nevertheless, in ac-
cordance with this proposal, the grammar will directly generate
even such sentences as (2), though not, of course, (1), as syn-
tactically well formed. The syntactic component of the grammar
would not, in other words, impose a hierarchy of degree of
grammaticalness at these lower levels of deviation. This task
would now have to be taken over by the semantic component.
Let us continue to suppose that the semantic component is an
interpretive device based on projection rules of the type discussed
earlier, following Katz, Fodor, and Postal. The projection rules
must now be adapted to detect and interpret conflicts in feature
composition between grammatically related lexical items and,
more generally, grammatically related constituents of base
strings. The earlier discussion of deviance, in particular the
definition of "degree of deviance," can be carried over with
little change. The same is true of the comments regarding Noun-
Verb and Noun-Adjective selectional dominance. With slight
reformulation, the same arguments will hold under this revision
of the structure of grammar.
In § 4.3 of Chapter 2, we discussed two alternative proposals
for dealing with contextual features. The first was to introduce
them by rewriting rules and to have lexical items introduced
into derivations by matching of nondistinct complex symbols
(as in Chapter 2, § 3). The second was to regard the contextual
features of the lexicon as defining certain substitution trans-
formations that insert lexical items. As noted there, this is not
merely a notational question.
We have, then, two open questions in connection with
selectional rules, in particular: (i) Do they belong in the syn-
tactic or the semantic component? (ii) Should they be rewriting
rules introducing complex symbols or substitution transforma-
tions? Without attempting any exhaustive investigation of these
questions, I shall now mention briefly some considerations that
seem relevant to them.
Suppose that we were to introduce selectional features by
§ 1. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS 155

rewriting rules, in accordance with § 3 of Chapter 2. Notice that

the selectional rules differ from the strict subcategorization rules
in that they typically involve irrelevant symbols standing between
the items that they relate. The rule (57*iv) of Chapter 2 is
characteristic of selectional rules in this respect, with its reference
to the irrelevant items Aux and Det; it is atypical only in the
simplicity of these elements. That this may be more than a purely
notational matter is illustrated by (57XV) of Chapter 2, which
assigns features of the Subject to a modifying Adjective of the
Predicate. As these rules are formulated, the Adjective would
actually be assigned different features in these sentences:
(7) the boy is sad
(8) the boy grew sad
In the case of (7), the Adjective would be assigned the feature
[[+Human] Aux^fce— ] by rule (57XV) of Chapter 2, whereas
in the case of (8) it would be assigned the feature [[+Human]
Aux [+V] — ], or something of this sort.6 These features have
nothing in common, in our terms, though they actually identify
the same set of lexical items. This is as serious a deficiency as the
one noted in the case of a grammar that specifically distinguishes
Animate Subject from Animate Object, etc. (see pp. 114-115). We
may remedy it and, at the same time, eliminate the reference to
irrelevant intervening contexts in selectional rules by establishing
the following convention for these rules. Suppose that we have
the rule schema
(9) A * CS/[o] 08]
where [a] and [jg] are specified features or are null (but either
one or the other is nonnull).7 We take (9) to be applicable to
any string
(10) XWAVY
where X = [a, • • • ], Y = [fi, • • • ]» W 7* W^a, •••]W2(or is null)
and V ¥= Pi[j3, ••• ]VZ (or is null). The result of applying (9) to
(10) is the string
156 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

(11) XWBVY

where B is the complex symbol containing the features of A (or

[+^4], if A is a category symbol) in addition to each contextual
feature [+<p — #], where X = [<p, •••] and Y = [\p, •••]. (The
reader will observe that except for the condition on W, V, the
notion of "applicability" and the conventions for complex sym-
bols are as before, though stated somewhat differently.) What this
means is that the rule (9) assigns to A all contextual features
[+<p — \p], where [<p] is a lexical feature of the nearest complex
symbol containing [a] to the left of A, and [i//] is a lexical feature
of the nearest complex symbol containing [B] to the right of A.
Thus, in particular, we should now give the rules (157x1V) and
(57XV) in the form (12) and (13), respectively:

(12) [+V] ^ CS/[+N] (•••[+N])

(13) Adjective^ CS/[+N]

These rules would now have the effect of assigning to frighten

the feature [+[+Abstract] — [+Animate]], in particular, and to
sad the feature [+[+Human] —] in the case of both (7) and (8). In
this way we can avoid mention of irrelevant intervening symbols
in the statement of contexts and, more importantly, can avoid
the deficiency of dual-feature assignment noted in the case of (7)
and (8).
Within the alternative framework involving substitution
transformations, the analogous convention must be established.
In this case, it is necessary only to state the condition on W, V of
(10). This condition, however, is not statable directly in the form
of a Boolean structure index for a transformation. This fact,
though of no great importance, might be taken as suggesting that
the system involving rewriting rules is preferable.9
More important are certain questions of interpretation that
have some bearing on the form of selectional rules and their
placement in the grammar.10 Consider such a typical case of
violation of selectional rules as
§ I. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS 157

(14) John frightened sincerity

This is a deviant sentence, formed by relaxing the restriction of
frighten to Animate Direct-Objects. Nevertheless, there are frames
in which this restriction can be violated with no consequent
unnaturalness, as, for example, in
(15) (i) it is nonsense to speak of (there is no such activity as)
frightening sincerity
(ii) sincerity is not the sort of thing that can be frightened
(iii) one can(not) frighten sincerity
Clearly, a descriptively adequate grammar must indicate that
(14) is deviant (as in the case of the examples of (2)) and that the
examples of (15) are not. There are various ways to approach
this problem.
Suppose that the selectional rules are included in the syntax.
Then (14) and (15) are only derivatively generated by the gram-
mar (in the sense of note 2); they are generated with Phrase-
markers indicating that they depart in a particular respect from
grammaticalness. Since (14) nevertheless differs from (15) in
"deviance" from the intuitive point of view, this intuitive notion
does not correspond to grammaticalness. Rather, it is presumably
a property determined by the joint operation of both the
syntactic and the semantic components. Thus the projection rules
of the semantic component and the lexical entries for such words
as nonsense and speak must be designed in such a way that,
although the constituent frighten sincerity of the generalized
Phrase-markers of (i5i-iii) is marked as semantically incongruous,
the incongruity is removed by the readings assigned to constit-
uents dominating it, and consequently the sentences (15) (but not
(14)) are finally given a nondeviant interpretation.11 This seems
to me not at all an unnatural or intolerable consequence. Surely
it is not surprising to find that an intuitive concept such as
"deviance" can be explicated only in terms of theoretical con-
structs of various sorts, which have in themselves no direct and
uniform intuitive interpretation. In further support of this
conclusion, one might cite the fact that even strict subcategoriza-
158 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

tion rules can apparently be violated without leading necessarily

to semantic incongruity, as, for example, in
(16) (i) it is nonsense to speak of (there is no such activity as)
elapsing a book
(ii) elapsing a book is not an activity that can be performed
(iii) one cannot elapse a book
Here, too, one might plausibly maintain that base strings that
deviate significantly from grammaticalness are nevertheless con-
stituents of sentences that receive nondeviant interpretations, by
virtue of the semantic properties of certain lexical items and
certain constructions. In further support of the argument that
grammaticalness cannot, in any event, coincide with the intuitive
notion of "deviance," one can cite cases of perfectly grammatical
strings that are incongruous on nonsyntactic grounds (cf., for
example, p. 77).
Thus it seems to me that examples such as (15) do not present
a particularly strong argument for removing selectional rules
from the syntactic component and assigning their function to the
interpretive semantic rules. Nevertheless, if the latter course is
taken, then (14) and (15) will be directly generated by the syn-
tactic rules, and at least in such cases as these the relation of
grammaticalness to intuitive deviance will therefore be much
closer. This might be cited as a slight consideration in favor of
the decision to eliminate the selectional rules from the syntactic
component, and to modify the theory of the semantic component
in some way so as to allow it to accommodate these phenomena.
We have been considering the possibility of assigning the
function of selectional rules to the semantic component. Alter-
natively, one might raise the question whether the functions of
the semantic component as described earlier should not be taken
over, in toto, by the generative syntactic rules. More specifically,
we may ask whether the cycle of interpretive rules that assign
readings to higher nodes (larger constituents) of the underlying
generalized Phrase-marker should not be made to apply before
some of the syntactic rules, so that the dLtinction between the
§ 1. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS 159

two components is, in effect, obliterated. This notion, which is

by no means to be ruled out a priori, is explored by Bever and
Rosenbaum (forthcoming), who show that if it is adopted, the
internal organization of the syntactic component must be revised
in several essential ways.
It is clear from this fragmentary and inconclusive discussion
that the interrelation of semantic and syntactic rules is by no
means a settled issue, and that there is quite a range of possi-
bilities that deserve serious exploration. The approach I have
adopted in Chapter 2, § 3, is a conservative compromise between
the attempt to incorporate the semantic rules strictly within the
syntactic component and the attempt to elaborate the semantic
component so that it takes over the function of the selectional
rules. Evidently, further insight into these questions will await
a much more intensive study of semantic interpretive rules than
it has yet been possible to undertake. The work of the last few
years, I believe, has laid the groundwork for empirical investiga-
tion of this sort. There is a general theoretical framework parts
of which have received empirical support. Within this framework
it is possible to formulate certain reasonably clear questions, and
it is also fairly clear what kind of empirical evidence would be
relevant to deciding them. Alternative positions can be formu-
lated, but for the present any one that is adopted must be ex-
tremely tentative.
In general, one should not expect to be able to delimit a large
and complex domain before it has been thoroughly explored. A
decision as to the boundary separating syntax and semantics
(if there is one) is not a prerequisite for theoretical and descriptive
study of syntactic and semantic rules. On the contrary, the prob-
lem of delimitation will clearly remain open until these fields
are much better understood than they are today. Exactly the
same can be said about the boundary separating semantic sys-
tems from systems of knowledge and belief. That these seem to
interpenetrate in obscure ways has long been noted. One can
hardly achieve significant understanding of this matter in
advance of a deep analysis of systems of semantic rules, on the
160 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

one hand, and systems of belief, on the other. Short of this, one
can discuss only isolated examples within a theoretical vacuum.
It is not surprising that nothing conclusive results from this.

§ 1.3. Some additional problems of semantic theory

One major qualification must be added to this discussion of
the relation of syntax to semantics. I have described the semantic
component as a system of rules that assign readings to con-
stituents of Phrase-markers — a system that has no intrinsic
structure beyond this. But such a description is hardly sufficient.
In particular, there is little doubt that the system of "dictionary
definitions" is not as atomistic as implied by this account.
Concerning dictionary definitions, two major problems are
open to investigation. First, it is important to determine the
universal, language-independent constraints on semantic features
— in traditional terms, the system of possible concepts. The very
notion "lexical entry" presupposes some sort of fixed, universal
vocabulary in terms of which these objects are characterized,
just as the notion "phonetic representation" presupposes some
sort of universal phonetic theory. It is surely our ignorance of
the relevant psychological and physiological facts that makes
possible the widely held belief that there is little or no a priori
structure to the system of "attainable concepts."
Furthermore, quite apart from the question of universal con-
straints, it seems obvious that in any given linguistic system
lexical entries enter into intrinsic semantic relations of a much
more systematic sort than is suggested by what has been said so
far. We might use the term "field properties" to refer to these
undoubtedly significant though poorly understood aspects of a
descriptive semantic theory.12 Thus, for example, consider Ad-
jectives that are mutually exclusive in some referential domain,
for example, color words. Such "antonymy sets" (cf. Katz, 19646)
provide a simple example of a field property that cannot be
described naturally in terms of separate lexical entries, though it
obviously plays a role in semantic interpretation. Or consider the
"have a" relation, discussed in Bever and Rosenbaum (forth-
coming). We have
§ 1. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS l6l

(17) (i) the man has an arm

(ii) the arm has a finger
(iii) the finger has a cut
but not

(18) (i) the arm has a man

(ii) the finger has an arm
(iii) the cut has a finger

(except, irrelevantly to this point, as possible elliptic variants

of entirely different constructions, as in "the finger has an arm
attached to it," "the arm has a man on it," etc.). These examples,
furthermore, illustrate relations of meaning rather than relations
of fact. Thus there is no grammatical objection to "the ant has a
kidney," where "the kidney has an ant" is not false or impossible
but senseless, with the irrelevant exception just noted. In this
case, we have a hierarchy of terms with systematic relations that,
once again, cannot in any natural way be described within the
framework of independent lexical entries. Other systems of this
sort can easily be found, and, in fact, they suggest that part of the
semantic component of a grammar must be a characterization of
field properties that is outside the lexicon. This matter is crucial
but has been relatively unexplored within any general frame-
work, though there have been several valuable studies of certain
of its aspects. (See note 12.) Suppose, furthermore, that an at-
tempt is made to relate "deviance" in the intuitive sense to
"degree of grammaticalness" in the technical sense by excluding
such examples as (i8i-iii) from direct generation (cf. note 1).
The consequences of such a decision are not easy to determine.
Once again, we can do no more here than indicate problems
and stress the fact that there are many unanswered questions of
principle that might very well affect the formulation of even
those parts of the theory of grammar that seem reasonably well
established.
Finally, it is important to be aware of the many other problems
that face a theory of semantic interpretation of the kind referred
to in the preceding discussion. It is clear, as Katz and Fodor have
162 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

emphasized, that the meaning of a sentence is based on the

meaning of its elementary parts and the manner of their com-
bination. It is also clear that the manner of combination
provided by the surface (immediate constituent) structure is in
general almost totally irrelevant to semantic interpretation,
whereas the grammatical relations expressed in the abstract deep
structure are, in many cases, just those that determine the mean-
ing of the sentence. Cf., for example, Chapter i, § 4, and Chapter
2, § 2.2. However, there are cases that suggest the need for an
even more abstract notion of grammatical function and gram-
matical relation than any that has been developed so far, in any
systematic way. Consider, for example, these sentence pairs:
(19) (i) John strikes me as pompous — I regard John as
pompous
(ii) I liked the play — the play pleased me
(iii) John bought the book from Bill — Bill sold the book to
John
(iv) John struck Bill — Bill received a blow at the hands
of John
Clearly, there is a meaning relation, approaching a variety of
paraphrase, in these cases. It is not expressible in transforma-
tional terms, as is possible, for example, in these cases:
(20) (i) John is easy for us to please — it is easy for us to please
John
(ii) it was yesterday that he came — he came yesterday
In the case of (20), the deep structures of the paired sentences
are identical in all respects relevant to semantic interpretation
of the sort we are considering here, so that the transformational
analysis accounts for the (cognitive) synonymy. This does not
seem to be true in the case of (19), however. For example, in the
case of (191), although the deep structures would show that
"pompous" modifies "John" in both sentences of the pair, they
would not express the relations of the two Nouns to the Verb
that are (in some unclear sense) the semantically significant
ones. Thus in some sense the relation of "John" to "strike" is
§ 1. THE BOUNDARIES OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS l6g

the same as that of "John" to "regard," and the relation of

"strike" to "me" is the same as that of "regard" to "I." We have
no mechanism for expressing this fact, hence of accounting for
the meaning relation, in terms of lexical features or grammatical
relations of the deep structure.13 Consequently, it seems that
beyond the notions of surface structure (such as "grammatical
subject") and deep structure (such as "logical subject"), there is
some still more abstract notion of "semantic function" still
unexplained. Various formal devices for expressing these facts
suggest themselves, but the general problem seems to me non-
trivial.
Many related problems have been raised in the extensive dis-
cussion of the distinction between the "grammatical" Subject and
Predicate of a sentence and its "logical" or "psychological"
Subject and Predicate (see, for example, Paul, 1886; Jespersen,
1924; Wilson, 1926). To mention just one, Cook Wilson main-
tains (1926, pp. 119 f.) that "in the statement 'glass is elastic,' if
the matter of inquiry was elasticity and the question was what
substances possessed the property of elasticity, glass . . . would no
longer be subject, and the kind of stress which fell upon 'elastic'
when glass was the subject, would now be transferred to 'glass.' "
Thus in the statement "glass is elastic," " 'glass,' which has the
stress, is the only word which refers to the supposed new fact in
the nature of elasticity, that it is found in glass . .. [and therefore]
. . . 'glass' would have to be the predicate. . . . Thus the same
form of words should be analyzed differently according as the
words are the answer to one question or another," and, in gen-
eral, "the subject and predicate are not necessarily words in the
sentence, nor even something denoted by words in the sentence."
Whatever the force of such observations may be, it seems that
they lie beyond the scope of any existing theory of language
structure or language use.
To conclude this highly inconclusive discussion, I shall simply
point out that the syntactic and semantic structure of natural
languages evidently offers many mysteries, both of fact and of
principle, and that any attempt to delimit the boundaries of
these domains must certainly be quite tentative.
164 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON

§ 2.1. Redundancy
The lexicon was described earlier simply as a set of lexical
entries, each consisting of a distinctive feature matrix D and a
complex symbol C, the latter being a set of features of various
sorts (syntactic and semantic features, features that specify which
morphological or transformational processes apply to strings con-
taining the items in question, features that exempt items from
certain phonological rules, and so on).14 We have just seen that
this account is oversimplified in the case of semantic features,
further structure being necessary in the lexicon to account for
field properties. Furthermore, in Chapter 2, § 3, we pointed out
that various general conventions can be given that permit
significant simplification of such lexical entries.
To explore the question of simplification of lexical entries
somewhat further, let us, for concreteness, make a specific choice
at each point where, in the discussion, we listed alternative
possibilities that seemed to deserve consideration. In particular,
let us assume that the proper method for inserting lexical items
is by a general rule that inserts the lexical entry (D,C) in a
position • • • Q • • • in a Phrase-marker (Q being a complex symbol
developed by rewriting rules), where C is not distinct from Q in
the technical sense of feature theory. Thus we tentatively accept
the method of § 3 of Chapter 2, rather than that suggested in
Chapter 2, § 4.3. Furthermore, let us make the empirical assump-
tion that a grammar is more highly valued if the lexical entries
contain few positively specified strict subcategorization features
and many positively specified selectional features. Thus we tenta-
tively accept alternative (iv) of p. ill.18 These choices do affect
the following discussion, but analogous problems arise no
matter which of the proposed alternatives is selected.
We have, in effect, now adopted the following conventions:
(21) (i) only positively specified strict subcategorization features
and only negatively specified selectional features appear
explicitly in lexical entries, the others being introduced
by the auxiliary convention (ii)
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 165

(ii) if the lexical entry (D,C) is not explicitly provided with

the feature specification [cup — \fi] for the contextual
feature [<p — \fj] (where a = + in the case of a strict
subcategorization feature and a — — in the case of a
selectional feature), then assign it the specified feature
[-cup — >M
We also pointed out (in Chapter 2, § 3) that a convention anal-
ogous to (21 ii) can be established in the case of features cor-
responding to lexical categories.
In accordance with these conventions, we might give the
lexical entry for frighten (cf. (58) of Chapter 2) simply as:
(22) (frighten, [+V, + — NP, -[+N] — [-Animate], •••])
The conventions will introduce: the category features [—AT],
[—Adjective], [— M]; the strict subcategorization features [ ],
( NP^#-^S^#), ••• ; the selectional features [+[+N] —
[+ Animate]], [+[+N] — [+Human]], ••• . Thus frighten will be
specified (by (22) plus conventions) as a Verb, but not a Noun,
Adjective, or Modal; as insertable in the context sincerity —John
but not sincerity —le or sincerity — justice.11
We can proceed to develop an appropriate convention to
simplify lexical representation of items with inherent features
in the case where these are hierarchic rather than cross-
classifying. Let us say that the sequence of specified features
([otiFi], "•> [ttn-^n]) («i = + or —) is a hierarchic sequence with
respect to the grammar G if [a^J is the only specified feature
directly dominating [on+i/^+i], for each i < n, in G. Thus, for
example, with respect to the illustrative grammar (57) of Chap-
ter 2 we have the hierarchic sequences
(23) (i) ([-fAnimate], [±Human])
(ii) ([+N], [+Common], [-Count], [±Abstract])
(iii) ([+N], [±Common])18
Where such relationships obtain, we can utilize them to simplify
lexical entries by the following rather natural convention:19
(24) suppose that ([ai^J, ••• , [a,,/^]) is a maximal hierarchic
l66 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

sequence with respect to the grammar G, and that (D,C) is

a lexical entry of G, where C contains [a„Fn]. Then C is ex-
tended automatically to C containing C along with all of
the specified features [a(Ft], for each i, 1 ^ i < n.
Using this convention, we can simplify the lexical entry in (58)
of Chapter 2 for boy to the following:
(25) {boy, [+Common, -fHuman, -fCount, ••• ])
the features [+N], [+Animate] now being predictable.20
Let us say that the feature [aF] is lexically determined in the
grammar G if there is a hierarchic sequence ([+K], • • • , [aF])
with respect to G, where K is a lexical category (a = + or —).
This is to say that if (D,C) is a lexical entry and C contains
[aF], then (D,C) is necessarily a member of the lexical category
K, with respect to this entry, and it is unnecessary (by virtue of
convention (24)) to list [+K] in C. In the sample grammar (57),
(58) of § 3, Chapter 2, each lexical item contains lexically deter-
mined features. Hence, it is unnecessary, in the lexicon of (58), to
designate the lexical category for any item. If every lexical entry
contains lexically determined features, as seems plausible, then
the features [+C] and [— C], where C is a lexical category, need
never receive explicit mention in the lexicon.
We have thus far considered only universal notational con-
ventions underlying lexical representation. However, there are
also many language-specific redundancies. Thus, for example,
every Verb in English that can occur with a Direct-Object and
a following Manner Adverbial can occur as well with just a
Direct-Object, though not conversely.21 The strict subcategoriza-
tion rules of the grammatical sketch of § 3, Chapter 2, introduced
the features [ — NP] and [ — NP^Manner] for Verbs, among
others. In accordance with the observation just made, we see that
if a lexical item is specified in the lexicon as [-1 NP^Manner],
then it must also be specified as [H NP], though not necessarily
conversely. For example, read will be specified positively for both
features, but resemble, cost will be specified positively for
[ — NP] and negatively for [ — NP^Manner], since we can have
"he read the book (carefully, with great enthusiasm)," "John
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 167

resembled his father," but not "J°hn resembled his father care-
fully (with great enthusiasm)," etc. Here again we have a
redundancy in the lexicon and a significant generalization still
not expressed in the grammar. Clearly, what is needed is the
following rule:
(26) [+— NP^Manner] -* [+ —NP]
to be interpreted in the following manner: if (D,C) is a lexical
entry with distinctive feature matrix D and complex symbol C
containing [-| NP^Manner], then C is replaced by C, which
contains each specified feature [aF] of C, where F ¥= [ — NP], and
also the specified feature [-{ NP].
Actually, the rule (26) can be further generalized. It is also true
of Intransitive Verbs that if they can take a Manner Adverbial,
then they can occur without one. What is needed is a convention
permitting a variable over strings to appear in the rule gen-
eralizing (26), thus, in effect, allowing us to use part of the
internal structure of the notations for lexical features. Using <p
as a string variable, we can give the rule in this form:
(27) [H ^Manner] -» [H <p]
This is to be interpreted as follows: first, select any constant
string as tp; second, interpret the result in the manner described
in connection with (26). It might also be expedient to develop
the obvious convention that allows (27) to be stated as a con-
text-sensitive rule, or to allow a condition on <p to be added,
where this is well defined in terms of base rules.
Let us suppose that the rule (27) applies before the conventions
(21), (24). Then such words as walk, hit will be entered in the
lexicon in this form:
(28) (i) (walk, [+ — Manner, • • • ])
(ii) (hit, [+ — NP^Manner, ••• ])
By the rule (27) followed by the convention (21), these will be
automatically extended to
(29) (i) (walk, [-) Manner, H , NP^Manner,
NP, •••])
168 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

(ii) (hit, [+ — NP^Manner, + — NP, Manner, ,

Thus walk can appear with or without a Manner Adverbial,

but with no Direct-Object, and hit can appear with or without a
Manner Adverbial, but only with a Direct-Object.
Rules such as (27), (28) are closely analogous to the phono-
logical rules that Halle has called "morpheme structure rules"
(Halle, 1959a, 1959ft), and that I have been referring to here
(following a suggestion of his) as phonological redundancy rules.
These rules are designed to deal with the fact that certain
phonological feature specifications are predictable, given others.
Thus in an initial sequence #CC in English, if the second C is
a true consonant (that is, not a liquid or a glide), the first must
be [s]; if the second consonant is a liquid, the first must be an
obstruent, etc. The phonological redundancy rules that state
these facts are precisely of the form (26) and are interpreted in
the same way, except that the features in question are phono-
logical rather than syntactic, and, consequently, the generalization
to (27) has no analogue. We shall refer to the analogous syntactic
rules (26), (27) as syntactic redundancy rules. The redundancy
rules, both phonological and syntactic, state general properties of
all lexical entries, and therefore make it unnecessary to provide
feature specifications in lexical entries where these are not
idiosyncratic.
Observe that a distinction must be made between the con-
ventions (21), (24) and the syntactic redundancy rules (26), (27).
though both play the role of eliminating redundant specifications
from the lexicon. The former are universal, and therefore need
no specific statement in the grammar. They are part of the
procedure for interpreting grammars (the function / of (i2iv)-
(i4iv), Chapter 1, § 6). The latter, on the other hand, are partic-
ular to a given language, and therefore must be given in the
grammar.22 I have tried to emphasize this by calling the former
"conventions," and the latter, "rules."
Given a lexical entry (D,C), the phonological redundancy
rules give a fuller specification to D, and the syntactic redundancy
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 169

rules give a fuller specification to C. To this extent, the two

systems are analogous. However, there is still an important
difference between them, so far as the role that they play is con-
cerned. To see this, it is necessary to consider an aspect of the
system of phonological redundancy rules that has not always
been fully appreciated. The fact that there are rules for predicting
certain phonological feature specifications in terms of others
has long been known, and there are many descriptive studies
that give charts or rules of one sort or another to specify the set
of "phonologically admissible sequences," "possible syllables,"
and so on. Halle's achievement was not merely to reiterate the
fact that such constraints exist but to present a principled basis
for selection of one set of rules rather than another to determine
them. He showed that a very general and independently moti-
vated evaluation procedure for phonology (namely, minimization
of feature specification) seems to provide such a basis. That is,
application of this criterion selects a system of phonological
redundancy rules that defines the notion "phonologically ad-
missible" in a way that, in many crucial cases, conforms to the
known facts.23 He thus was able to propose an explanation for
the facts of phonological admissibility, in place of a mere
description — in other words, to give a general, language-in-
dependent definition of the notions "accidental gap" (such as,
in English, /blik/) and "systematic gap" (such as, in English,
/bnik/), in place of an ad hoc chart or list. The real function of
the phonological redundancy rules is to determine the class of
phonologically admissible (though perhaps nonoccurring) se-
quences in a principled way. To the extent that they succeed in
doing this, they provide empirical support for the linguistic
theory that contains the evaluation procedure that Halle
proposes, as well as the system of constraints on phonological
rules that this procedure presupposes. But there is no really con-
vincing analogue to the notion of "phonological admissibility"
in the case of the syntactic redundancy rules. Consequently, it is
an open question whether these have the significance of the
phonological redundancy rules.
This observation suggests that we seek an analogue to the
170 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

distinction between accidental and systematic gaps, on the syn-

tactic level. In fact, from a purely formal point of view, the syn-
tactic redundancy rules do make a distinction between "possible,
but nonoccurring lexical entry" and "impossible lexical entry,"
precisely as the phonological redundancy rules do. In both cases,
the redundancy rules provide general constraints on all lexical
entries, thus distinguishing possible from impossible lexical
entries (possibility with respect to a particular language, that is,
insofar as the redundancy rules are not universal conventions).
But in general not all of the possibilities will be actually realized
in the lexicon. What must be shown is that this formal tripartite
distinction of occurring, possible but nonoccurring, and im-
possible has the significance in the syntactic case that it clearly
does in the phonological case. Thus what must be shown is that
the possible but nonoccurring lexical entries have the status of
"accidental semantic gaps" in the sense that they correspond to
lexical items that the language does not provide for specifically
but could in principle incorporate with no alteration of the
general semantic system within which it functions. I have no
very satisfying examples at present.24 The problem is reasonably
clear, however, and merits investigation.
The study of syntactic redundancy rules is a large topic in
itself, but instead of continuing with additional examples, I
should like to consider briefly some of the problems that arise in
the attempt to deal with morphological processes within a frame-
work of the sort that has been outlined earlier.
§ 2a. Inflectional processes
It is useful to compare two ways of dealing with questions of
inflectional morphology, namely the traditional method of para-
digms and the descriptivist method of morphemic analysis. Since
English is too poor in inflection to illustrate this difference, we
shall turn to German for examples. In a traditional grammar, a
particular occurrence of a Noun would be described in terms of
its place in a system of paradigms defined by certain inflectional
categories, namely the categories of gender, number, case, and
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 171

declensional type. Each of these categories constitutes an in-

dependent "dimension" of the paradigm, and each word has a
particular "value" along each of these independent dimensions.25
Thus the word Briider in the phrase der Briider would be
characterized as Masculine, Plural, Genitive, and belonging to a
certain declensional class along with Vater, Mutter, etc.
In fact, we can restate the paradigmatic description directly
in terms of syntactic features. Regarding each of the dimensions
of the system of paradigms as a multivalued feature, with the
specifications being not + and — but, let us say, integers con-
ventionally associated with the traditional designations,28 we can
represent the Phrase-marker of the sentence • • • der Briider • • • as
containing the subconfiguration (30). Thus, associated with this

(30)

Article

definite

Briider

occurrence of Briider, there will be a feature matrix indicating

that this formative is assigned to the categories [1 Gender],
[2 Number], [2 Case], and [1 DC] (as well as to many others
represented in (30) simply by • • •). Notice that the specified
features [1 Gender] and [1 DC] are inherent to this formative
(that is, they are part of the complex symbol C of the lexical
entry (Bruder, C)) and that [2 Number] and [2 Case] are in-
troduced by grammatical rules. Presumably, the specified feature
172 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

[2 Number] is introduced by a context-free rule of the base apply-

ing to Nouns,27 and specified feature [2 Case] is introduced by
a rule that does not belong to the base subcomponent of the
syntax at all but rather to its transformational part (cf. note 35,
Chapter 2). If so, then of these features only [2 Number] will be
a feature of the preterminal symbol for which Bruder is substi-
tuted by the lexical rule, and all but [2 Case] will appear in the
terminal string generated by the base rules. Notice, incidentally,
that the specification [1 DC] might be introduced by a re-
dundancy rule that, in this case, takes into account both pho-
nological and other lexical features. A rule of the (interpretive)
phonological component will operate on (30), giving the form
Bruder. This rule will assert that a Vowel is fronted in a
formative that is simultaneously of the categories [2 Number],
[1 DC]. (A separate rule that is quite general would specify that
/(V)n/ is suffixed if, furthermore, it belongs to the category
[3 Case].)
In short, the theory of syntactic features developed earlier
can incorporate the traditional paradigmatic treatment directly.
The system of paradigms is simply described as a system of
features, one (or perhaps some hierarchic configuration) cor-
responding to each of the dimensions that define the system of
paradigms. Interpretive phonological rules, some quite specific,
some of considerable generality, then operate on the phonological
matrix of the lexical entry, giving, finally, a phonetic matrix.
Where these features are not completely independent (as, for
example, if declensional type depends on Gender), or where they
are partially determined by other aspects of a formative, re-
dundancy rules of the kind discussed earlier will apply.
The characteristic method of analysis of modern linguistics
is rather different from the traditional approach that we have
just restated in our terms. In place of the traditional categories
(our features), this approach would substitute morphemes. Thus
Bruder in (30) would perhaps be represented in the manner of
(31), in a completely consistent "item-and-arrangcment" gram-
mar:
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 173

(31) Bruder^DC^Masculine^Plural^Genitive

where each of these elements is regarded as a single morpheme,

DC± being a kind of "class marker."28 Rules would then be given
that would convert (31) into a sequence of phonemes.
Respresentations such as (31) are clumsy for a grammar based
on rewriting rules or transformations. There are several reasons
for this. For one thing, many of these "morphemes" are not
phonetically realized and must therefore be regarded, in par-
ticular contexts, as zero elements. In each such case a specific
context-sensitive rule must be given stating that the morpheme
in question is phonetically null. But this extensive set of rules is
entirely superfluous and can simply be omitted under the
alternative paradigmatic analysis. Thus compare the rules that
must be provided for the paradigmatic analysis (30) and for the
morphemic analysis (31). In the case of (31), we first apply a rule
stating that the Vowel is fronted in the context:—DC^ •••
Plural •••, where the item in question is a Noun. In the case of
(30), we have the corresponding rule that the Vowel is fronted
when the item in question has the features [DC 1] and [2 Num-
ber]. But in the case of the morphemic analysis we now have
the additional rules stating that in such contexts as (31), all four
inflectional morphemes are phonetically null. With the feature
analysis (30), we simply give no rule at all expressing the fact that
certain features are phonetically unrealized, just as we give no
rule expressing the fact that [+N], or, for that matter, NP, is
phonetically unrealized.29
More generally, the often suppletive character of inflectional
systems, as well as the fact that (as in the example) the effect of
the inflectional categories may be partially or even totally internal,
causes cumbersome and inelegant formulation of rules when the
representations to which they apply are in the form (31). How-
ever, suppletion and internal modification cause no special
difficulty at all in the paradigmatic formulation. Similarly, with
morphemic representations, it is necessary to refer to irrelevant
morphemes in many of the grammatical rules. For example, in the
174 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

case of (31), the rule for fronting of the Vowel must refer to the
morpheme Masculine, and this is the usual situation in the case
of agreement rules. But in the paradigmatic representation, these
elements, not being part of the terminal string, need not be
referred to at all in the rules to which they are not relevant.
Finally, notice that the order of morphemes is often quite
arbitrary, whereas this arbitrariness is avoided in the para-
digmatic treatment, the features being unordered.
I know of no compensating advantage for the modern de-
scriptivist reanalysis of traditional paradigmatic formulations in
terms of morpheme sequences. This seems, therefore, to be an
ill-advised theoretical innovation.
Within our framework, either paradigmatic analysis in terms
of features or sequential morphemic analysis is available, which-
ever permits the optimal and most general statement of some
aspect of the syntactic or phonological system. It seems that in
inflectional systems, the paradigmatic analysis has many ad-
vantages and is to be preferred, though there may be cases where
some compromise should be made.30 It is difficult to say anything
more definite, since there have been so few attempts to give
precise and principled descriptions of inflectional systems in a
way that would have some bearing on the theoretical issues
involved here.31
If we assume now that the paradigmatic solution is the correct
one, it follows that we must allow the transformational com-
ponent to contain rules that alter and expand the matrix of
features constituting a lexical item. For example, the feature
(or features) of Case must in general be specified by rules that
apply after many transformational rules have already taken
effect. (See note 35 of Chapter 2.) Similarly, rules of agreement
clearly belong to the transformational component (cf. in this
connection, Postal, 1964a, pp. 43L), and these rules add to Phrase-
markers specified features that enter into particular formatives,
dominating their phonological matrices. In the case of (30), for
example, the grammar must contain agreement rules that assign
to the Article all of the feature specifications for [Gender],
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 175

[Number], and [Case] of the Noun it modifies. Thus we must

have a rule that might be given in the form:

+N
aGender
a Gender
(32) Article -> /3 Number
f$ Number
y Case
y Case

where Article • • • N is an NP.

This rule is interpreted as asserting that in a string analyzable

as (X, Article, Y, N, Z), where the second plus third plus fourth
elements constitute an NP, the second element is to be assigned
to the categories [a Gender], [/3 Number], and [y Case] if the
fourth element is of these categories, a, /?, and y being variables
that range over integers. This rule thus asserts that the Article
agrees with its Noun in Gender, Number, and Case. In particular,
rule (32) assigns to the formative definite32 in (30) the features
[1 Gender], [2 Number], [2 Case]. This formative, so categorized,
would be converted to /der/ by rules of the phonology.
The rule (32) is a transformational rule of the usual kind
except that it introduces specified features instead of only non-
lexical formatives. Thus the features play a role which is
intermediate between that of formatives and that of true cate-
gories with respect to the operation of transformational rules, as
is quite natural. There is no particular difficulty in extending
the theory of transformations to allow for the formulation of
rules such as (32), which provide an appropriate formalization
for traditional rules of agreement. Regarding features as con-
stituent elements of formatives, these transformational rules
will, in effect, rewrite terminal symbols in certain restricted
ways.
Formally, rules of agreement such as (32) are quite analogous
to the rules of assimilation of the phonological component. For
example, in English, as in many other languages, nasals are
neutralized before stops, so that the words limp, lint, link, send,
ring would be represented /liNp/, /liNt/, /liNk/, /seNd/, /riNg/
in lexical entries, where /N/ = [-fnasal] and the other symbols
176 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

are also abbreviations for certain sets of phonological features.

The nasal assimilates to the following consonant with respect to
the features of gravity and compactness, so that we have the rule
a grave + consonantal
(33) [+ nasal] a grave
{3 compact f3 compact
interpreted in the manner of rule (32).33 Thus (33) asserts that
the features [a grave] and [/3 compact] are added to a [+ nasal]
that precedes an [a grave], \fi compact] consonant, where a, f3
range over {+, —}. It asserts, in other words, that the nasal is
/m/ before labials, /n/ before dentals, and /rj/ before velars
(where the voiced velar then drops in certain positions, giving
/sirj#/, etc. — I have not given the full statement of required
context in (33)).
In the case of rule (32), the features added are, apparently, the
only features associated with the nonlexical item definite (but cf.
note 32). Other agreement rules expand an already present
matrix of features — for example, the rule assigning features of
a Noun to a modifying Adjective. The latter, being a lexical
item, will have an independent feature matrix of its own, which
is expanded by the agreement rule. The Adjective, in this case, is
introduced into the prenominal position by a transformational
rule, and its features will include its inherent features (those given
in its lexical entry) and those associated with the complex symbol
that it replaces by the lexical rule.
It seems, then, that the traditional approach to the de-
scription of inflectional systems can be formalized quite readily
within the framework that we have established. Furthermore,
this appears to be the most natural way to deal with inflectional
systems.
Before turning to the much more perplexing problems of
derivational morphology, I should like to mention a few addi-
tional problems that arise when inflectional features are con-
sidered in further detail. We have been regarding a lexical item
as a set of phonological, semantic, and syntactic features. When
inserted into a Phrase-marker, a lexical item may acquire other
 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 177

features beyond those inherent to it in the lexicon. Thus if we

adopt the method of lexical insertion described in § 3 of Chapter
2, then contextual features may be added to the lexical entry
beyond those that it already contains; and, quite apart from this,
such features as [a Number] are inherent to the Phrase-marker
rather than the lexical item, as we have just observed, and become
part of the formative only after it is inserted into a Phrase-marker.
Furthermore, the features involved in the case dimension are
certainly added to a formative by rather late transformations
(since case often depends on aspects of surface rather than deep
structure — but see note 35, Chapter 2), and certain features
that are inherent to Nouns (such as Gender) are assigned to
Verbs and Adjectives only by transformations. We have been as-
suming that these various operations simply extend the set of
features constituting the formative. But various problems arise if
we follow this assumption consistently.
We have mentioned in several places (Chapter 3, notes 1 and 13,
and pp. i44f.) that deletions must be recoverable, and have sug-
gested that this condition can be formalized by the following
convention relating to what we called "erasure transformations":
an erasure transformation can use a term X of its proper analysis
to erase a term Y of the proper analysis only if X and Y are
identical. In the case of lexical items, "identity" might be taken
to mean strict identity of feature composition.
In some cases this decision has just the right consequences.
Consider, for example, the case of the relativization transformation
discussed previously (p. 145). Just as the generalized Phrase-
marker for the string "I saw the [# the man was clever #] boy" is
not the deep structure underlying any well-formed surface struc-
ture and hence does not provide the semantic interpretation for
any sentence (cf. pp. 137-138), so the generalized Phrase-marker for
"I saw the [# the boys were clever #] boy" does not underlie a
sentence. This is so because the element boys (containing the
feature [+Plural]) is not identical with the element boy (contain-
ing the feature [—Plural]) just as the element man is not identical
with boy. Hence, in neither case is relativization permitted.
But matters do not always work out quite this smoothly.
178 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

Consider the rules that provide for comparative constructions of

various sorts, in particular, for such sentences as
(34) John is more clever than Bill
In this case, the sentence is formed from the underlying deep
structure given as (35), following previous conventions. The fea-

(35) *-s-'

Predicate-Phrase

Aux VP

Present Copula Predicate

Compar Adjective

more than * S t A
v
clever

tures constituting the lexical formatives of (35) are not given

explicitly, but, rather, indicated by • • • . To derive (34) from (35)
in the manner described earlier, the transformational rules first
apply to the most deeply embedded base Phrase-marker, namely
that of "Bill is clever." Next, they reapply to the full configura-
tion (35), which has, at this point (omitting various refinements),
this terminal string:
(36) Jonn is more than [# Bill is clever #] clever
The comparative transformation, which applies next, can be
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON l^g

formulated as an erasure operation that uses the Adjective of the

matrix sentence to delete the corresponding Adjective of the
embedded sentence.34 Thus it applies to a string of this form:

(37)
1234 5 6
NP —'is —""— • •• # NP is — Adjective # — Adjective
(where • • • — • • • is as-as, more-than, etc.), deleting 5 and #. Finally,
it permutes 4 and 6 (technically, it places 4 to the right of 6,
deleting 4). This gives
(38) J°hn is more clever than Bill is
A final option is to delete the repeated copula, giving (34).
But recall that the deletion of the Adjective in the fifth posi-
tion of (37) by the comparative transformation is possible only
when the two Adjectives are identical. Similarly, the deletion
of the final copula in (38) requires identity of the two copulas.
In the case of (34), derived from (35), this causes no difficulty.
But consider the example (39), or the perfectly analogous French
example (40):
(39) these men are more clever than Mary
(40) ces hommes sont plus intelligents que Marie
In the case of (39), deletion of the Adjective is straightforward,
but our deletion conventions should prevent the deletion of the
copula, since it has the feature [—Plural] in the embedded
sentence and [+Plural] in the matrix sentence. Furthermore,
in the case of (40), the deletion of the Adjective of the embedded
sentence should be blocked, since it differs from the Adjective of
the matrix sentence in gender and number.
These observations suggest that it may not be correct to regard
a formative simply as a set of features, some inherent and some
added by transformation and as a consequence of insertion into
a Phrase-marker. In particular, it seems from such examples as
these that the features added to a formative by agreement trans-
formations are not part of the formative in the same sense as
l8o SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

those which are inherent to it or as those which it assumes as it

enters a Phrase-marker. Thus in the case of the relative trans-
formation, plurality of the Noun (which is a feature that the
Noun assumes as it enters a Phrase-marker) is a feature that must
be considered in determining whether it is identical to another
Noun, as we have just seen. However, in the case of Adjectives
and the copula (also Verbs, which take part in similar rules) the
inflectional features that are added by agreement transforma-
tions are apparently not considered in determining whether the
item in question is strictly identical with some other item.35
Some further support for this conclusion is given by such
examples as the following:
(41) (i) John is a more clever man than Bill
(ii) The Golden Notebook is as intricate a novel as Tristram
Shandy
(iii) I know several more successful lawyers than Bill
It is clear that the deep structures for these three sentences must
contain the base Phrase-markers underlying "Bill is a man,"
"Tristram, Shandy is a novel," "Bill is a lawyer," respectively.
Thus (4liii) implies that Bill is a lawyer; similarly, one cannot
replace "Bill" by "Mary" in (4ii).36 Sentences (4ii) and (41 ii)
pose no problems. But consider (41 iii). However the transforma-
tional rules are actually formulated, it is clear that we are deleting
"successful" and "a lawyer" as Predicates of "Bill" in the under-
lying structure. But the deletion of "a lawyer," in particular, is
permitted only under the identity condition discussed earlier,
and the string with which it is compared is not "a lawyer" but
rather its pluralized form, "lawyers,"37 from the base string
"I know several [# S #] lawyers." Here, then, is a case where
plurality is not considered a distinguishing property of Nouns,
for the purposes of a deletion operation, as contrasted with the
case of relativization, discussed earlier, where a distinction in the
feature of plurality was sufficient to block deletion. The crucial
difference apparently is that in this case, the Noun Phrase in
question is in Predicate position and therefore receives its num-
ber not inherently (as in the example discussed in connection
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON l8l

with relativization) but rather by an agreement transformation.

Thus we cannot have "They are a lawyer," "Bill is several
lawyers," etc., and such facts as these show that Predicate-
Nominals must be neutral with regard to number. Hence, the
conflict in number between the italicized Noun Phrases of "I
know several lawyers" and "Bill is a lawyer" is on a par with the
conflict in number and gender between the italicized Adjectives
of "ces hommes sont intelligents" and "Marie est intelligente"
(cf. (40)). In both cases, the conflicting features are introduced
by agreement transformations.
These examples suggest two conclusions. First, features intro-
duced by transformation into lexical formatives are not to be
considered in determining when deletion is permitted; a forma-
tive, in other words, is to be regarded as a pair of sets of features,
one member of the pair consisting of features that are inherent
to the lexical entry or the position of lexical insertion, the
second member of the pair consisting of features added by
transformation. Only the first set is considered in determining
legitimacy of deletion in the manner previously described.
Second, what is involved in determining legitimacy of deletion
is not identity but rather nondistinctness in the sense of distinc-
tive feature theory (cf. Chapter 2, § 2.3.2). Thus consider once
again the case of "I know several lawyers" — "Bill is a lawyer."
The Predicate-Nominal of the latter is not singular, in the base
structure; rather, it is unspecified with respect to number exactly
as the nasal is unspecified with respect to point of articulation in
the lexical representations of the formatives king, find, lamp, etc.
Hence, it is not identical with the corresponding nominal ele-
ment of "I know several lawyers"; it is, rather, nondistinct from
it, and the example suggests that this is sufficient to permit
deletion.38
Notice that this analysis of a formative as a pair of sets of
features need not actually be described or mentioned in any way
in the rules of the grammar, since it is, apparently, determined
by a general convention regarding the form of grammar. In
other words, we are tentatively proposing it for consideration as
a linguistic universal, admittedly, on rather slender evidence (but
l82 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

see note 2 of Chapter 2). If this proposal is a correct one, then

the analysis of formatives that we have suggested is a general
condition on the functioning of erasure transformations. The
only apparent alternative to the proposal just advanced is a
revision of the general conditions suggested earlier on the order
of application of transformational rules. Whether this may be
feasible, I do not know; but in any event, the proposal just dis-
cussed seems clearly preferable.
Summarizing, we seem to be led to the conclusion that non-
distinctness rather than strict identity is what is involved in
deletion, and that only those features of a formative that are
inherent either to its lexical entry or to the position in the
sentence where it is inserted are to be considered in determining
nondistinctness. Formally, we can say that a formative must be
regarded as a pair of sets of features, one member consisting of
the "inherent" features of the lexical entry or the sentence posi-
tion, the other member consisting of the "noninherent" features
introduced by transformation. The general principle for erasure
operations, then, is this: a term X of the proper analysis can be
used to erase a term Y of the proper analysis just in case the
inherent part of the formative X is not distinct from the inherent
part of the formative Y. But notice that this is an entirely natural
decision to reach. The original intuition motivating this condi-
tion was that deletions should, in some sense, be recoverable; and
the noninherent features of the formative are precisely those
that are determined by the context, hence that are recoverable
even if deleted. Similarly, it is natural to base the operation on
nondistinctness rather than identity, because the features un-
specified in underlying structures (such as number, in predicate
position) also make no independent contribution to sentence
interpretation, being added by what are, in essence, redundancy
rules, and are, in fact, simply a reflection of context. Thus they
are recoverable in the sense that the context that determined
them is still present in the string after deletion of the item in
question. Hence, the italicized condition formalizes a very
reasonable sense of "recoverability of deletion."
Consider now one last set of questions relating to the compara-
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 183

tive transformations. Suppose that we adopt the method of

lexical insertion proposed in § 3 of Chapter 2 and based on non-
distinctness, rather than that proposed in § 4.3 of Chapter 2. In
the Phrase-marker (35), then, each occurrence of the Adjective
clever will have such features as [post-Animate] (that is,
[+[-[-Animate]—]) added to it by selectional rules of the base
component (in this case, (57XV) of Chapter 2, now revised as (13)
of this chapter). But we clearly must allow such sentences as
"John is heavier than this rock"; and in this case, heavy will have
the feature [post-Animate] in the matrix sentence and the fea-
ture [post-Inanimate] in the embedded sentence of the Phrase-
marker corresponding to (35) (this Phrase-marker will be iden-
tical with (35) except that each occurrence of clever in (35)
will be replaced by heavy; and Bill, with the features [-(-Ani-
mate], •••, is replaced by the rock, with the features [—Animate],
•••, associated with rock). Hence, the two occurrences of heavy
that are compared when we attempt to apply the comparative
transformation differ in feature composition, one containing the
feature [post-Animate] and the other the feature [post-Inani-
mate]. As matters now stand, this difference of feature composi-
tion does not make the two items distinct from one another, in
the technical sense of feature theory (that is, it is not the case that
one of them is marked [+F] and the other [—F], for some fea-
ture [F]. Furthermore, it would be natural to regard these con-
textual features of the Adjective as noninherent, in the sense of
the preceding paragraph; therefore deletion is permitted.
There is, however, one class of examples that suggests that in
certain cases a difference in the composition of two formatives
with respect to such features as [post-Animate] should suffice to
block deletion. Consider such sentences as
(42) (i) John is as sad as the book he read yesterday
(ii) he exploits his employees more than the opportunity to
please
(iii) is Brazil as independent as the continuum hypothesis?
Clearly, these are deviant and must be marked as such in a
descriptively adequate grammar. In each case, the deleted items
184 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

differ in selectional features from the items with which they are
compared. Thus sad is [post-Animate] in the matrix sentence of
(421) and [post-Inanimate] in the embedded sentence, and
possibly this might be regarded as the factor that blocks the
transformation and prevents deletion. The only alternative, in
these cases, would be to assume that two homonymous lexical
entries are involved, in each of the examples of (42).39 In intro-
ducing examples of this sort, however, we touch on problems of
homonymity and range of meaning that are cloaked in such
obscurity, for the moment, that no conclusions at all can be
drawn from them.

§ 2.3. Derivational processes

Derivational processes create much more of a problem for
any sort of generative (that is, explicit) grammar than do inflec-
tional systems. This results from the fact that they are typically
sporadic and only quasi-productive. We shall consider several
examples briefly, without, however, arriving at any very satis-
factory way of dealing with the problems that arise.
Where derivational processes are productive, they in fact raise
no serious difficulties. Consider, for example, nominalization
transformations of the sort that form the sentences "their de-
struction of the property . . .," "their refusal to participate . . . ,"
etc. Clearly, the words destruction, refusal, etc., will not be en-
tered in the lexicon as such. Rather, destroy and refuse will be
entered in the lexicon with a feature specification that deter-
mines the phonetic form they will assume (by later phono-
logical rules) when they appear in nominalized sentences. A
nominalization transformation will apply at the appropriate
stage of derivation to the generalized Phrase-marker containing
the configuration "they destroy the property" dominated by S,40
forming ultimately the Phrase-marker (43), where irrelevant
details are omitted,41 and where Flt •••, Fm, Gu ••, Gn stand for
specified features. It is not at all clear that destruction or refusal
should be regarded as Nouns in "their destruction of the prop-
erty . . . ," "their refusal to come . . ." (although refusal happens
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 185

S
(13)

Predicate-Phrase

Det

[+Definite] nom VP

their

F1...Fm Det N

destroy [+Definite] G, ... G,

the property

to be a Noun in "their refusal surprised me," which derives in

part from the string underlying "they refuse"). Alternatively,
the nominalized Predicate-Phrase as a whole might be said to
occupy the Noun position. In any event, phonological rules will
determine that nomT'destroy becomes destruction and that nomT~
refuse becomes refusal, and so on.42 To have the proper effect,
these rules must, of course, take account of inherent features
associated with items in lexical entries, namely the features that
determine which form of nom these items take. In such cases as
these, the proposed framework is quite adequate for formulating
the syntactic generative rules as well as the rules of semantic
and phonological interpretation.
Notice, incidentally, that in the light of these remarks we
must revise the description of the example (1) of Chapter 2
l86 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

(^"sincerity may frighten John"), which served as a basis for

discussion throughout that Chapter. In fact, sincerity would
surely not be entered into the lexicon, though sincere would.
Sincerity is formed by a transformation, and is a "defective
Predicate" in just the same way as refusal is a defective Pred-
icate in "their refusal surprised me" or "the refusal surprised
me." That is to say, there is a transformational rule that operates
on "NP-is-Adjective" constructions such as "John is sincere (of
manner)" and gives such nominalizations as "John's sincerity
(of manner)," where "sincerity (of manner)," like "refusal (to
come)," can be regarded as a Noun. The phrase sincerity ap-
pears as a full NP, in a manner which we shall not describe in
detail here, when the underlying sentence "NP-is-sincere" has
an Unspecified Subject and the matrix sentence in which it is
embedded has a non-Definite Article. Details aside, it is clear
that, contrary to what we assumed earlier, sincerity is not
introduced in (1) of Chapter 2 by the lexical rule, so that actually
even this very simple sentence is the result of a transformational
development from a complex basis.
But consider now the case of quasi-productive processes, such
as those that are involved in the formation of such words as
horror, horrid, horrify; terror, (*terrid), terrify; candor, candid,
(*candify); or telegram, phonograph, gramophone, etc., or, for
that matter, such words as frighten, in the example (1) of Chap-
ter 2). In these cases, there are no rules of any generality that
produce the derived items, as there are in the case of sincerity,
destruction, and so on. Hence, it seems that these items must be
entered in the lexicon directly. This, however, is a very un-
fortunate conclusion, since it is clear that from the point of view
of both the semantic and the phonological interpretation it is
important to have internal structure represented in these words.
Their meaning is clearly to some extent predictable (or at least
limited) by the inherent semantic properties of the morphemes
that they contain, and it is easy to show that internal structure
must be assigned to these items if the phonological rules are to
apply properly in forming their phonetic representations (cf.
the discussion of the transformational cycle for English in
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 187

Halle and Chomsky, i960; Chomsky, 19626; Chomsky and

Miller, 1963; and, for a detailed statement, Halle and Chomsky,
forthcoming).
This dilemma is typical of a wide class of examples with vary-
ing degrees of productivity, and it is not at all clear how it is to
be resolved, or, in fact, whether there is any non-ad hoc solution
that can be achieved at all.43 Perhaps one must regard the gaps
as accidental, at least in some such cases, and incorporate in the
grammar overly general rules that allow for nonoccurring as
well as actual cases. Alternatively, it may be necessary to extend
the theory of the lexicon to permit some "internal computation,"
in place of simple application of the general lexical rule in the
manner already described. Thus telegraph, horrify, frighten,
might be entered in the lexicon as
(44) (i) (tele~Stemlt [Flt •••])
(ii) (StemjTi/y, [G„ •••])
(iii) (StenV>n, [Hlt •••])
these items being entered into strings by means of the general
lexical rule. Furthermore, the lexicon would also contain the
entries
(45) W (graph, [+Stem1( •••])
(ii) (horr, [+Stenv])
(iii) (fright, [+N, +Stem3, ••• ])
these now being inserted in strings formed by prior insertion in
preterminal strings of items selected from (44). There may be
several layers of such extension of base derivations within the
lexicon, in the case of morphologically complex forms.
However, the rule that replaces categories such as Stem4 by
items of (45) must be formulated with some care. There are
contextual restrictions on these replacements that must be
specified because these processes are only marginally productive.
Thus Stemj can be replaced by graph, scope, phone in the con-
text tele —, but not by scope or phone in the context phono —.
The same is true in the other cases. More seriously, these exten-
sions of base derivations within the lexicon must in general de-
l88 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

pend also on the feature composition of the item being analyzed.

Thus Stem3 can be rewritten fright in the context — en only
when the features Hv H2, • • • of (44m) indicate that it is a pure
transitive, takes only Animate Object, etc. In other words, provi-
sion must be made for the fact that frighten is not a Verb of the
same type as redden or soften, and this can only be done by tak-
ing into account the feature composition of the only partially
specified lexical entries of (44) as well as the feature composition
of the items of (45) that substitute for the categories appearing in
the entries of (44). Precisely how such rules should be formulated
is not at all clear to me. It may be possible to determine the
restrictions completely by feature specifications in (44), (45),
relying on a reapplication of the lexical rule to insert the items
appropriately. Alternatively, it may be better to allow the lexi-
con to contain context-sensitive rewriting rules to effect these
extensions of base derivations. The former alternative is of
course preferable, since it does not affect the structure of the
lexicon. The lexicon would, under this alternative, be simply a
list of entries, and the lexical rule (now inapplicable) would be
the only rule involving lexical entries. However, I do not know
whether this approach will prove feasible when it is attempted
in detail.
In the examples just discussed, whichever method is chosen
for extending base derivations, we shall have a complex symbol
dominating a sequence of symbols. There is apparently no
empirical motivation for allowing complex symbols to appear
above the level of lexical categories, with the substantial enrich-
ment of linguistic theory and corresponding reduction in its
interest and importance that this elaboration entails. Limitation
of complex symbols to lexical categories implies that no complex
symbol will dominate a branching configuration, within the
categorial component. Now, however, we have some evidence
that within a word, branching must be permitted in a configura-
tion dominated by a complex symbol.44
In the light of such examples, we may have to relax the re-
quirement (pp. 112-113) that branching is not tolerated within the
dominance scope of a complex symbol. This restriction seems to
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON 189

hold only above the level of the word. With this modification,
we still retain the earlier restriction of complex symbols to
lexical categories.
Alternative analyses suggest themselves for several of these
examples. In the case of such words as frighten, one might seek
syntactic justification for a transformational analysis from an
underlying causative construction so that "it frightens John"
would derive from the structure underlying "it makes John
afraid," this in turn deriving from the abstract structure "it
makes S" where S dominates "John is afraid." Adjectives would
then have to be divided in the lexicon into two classes depend-
ing on whether or not they undergo this transformation. Thus,
afraid, red, soft would be in one category; whereas happy, green,
tender would be in the other. Conceivably, we might go on to
analyze such words as wizen, chasten as based on a similar analy-
sis, with the underlying Adjective designated lexically as one
that must undergo this transformational process (in the case of
chasten, the underlying form would have to be lexically dis-
tinguished from the homonymous Adjective that belongs to the
class of those that cannot undergo the transformational process
in question). Such an analysis could be extended to many other
forms — for example, such Verbs as enrage, clarify. It might even
be extended to account for such words as drop, grow, discussed
in note 15 of Chapter 2, where it was observed that the Intransi-
tive occurrences cannot be derived from underlying Transitives.
A general "causative" transformation might permit a derivation
of "he dropped the ball," "he grows corn," etc., from an under-
lying structure of the form "he caused S," where S is the structure
underlying "the ball drops," "corn grows," and so on. A number
of syntactic arguments might be given in favor of a general
"causative" operation to accommodate these and other cases.
There is no doubt that items must be specified lexically in terms
of the operations that apply to them; this is particularly clear
from a consideration of phonological rules, but is no less true of
syntactic processes. Much of lexical structure is, in fact, simply a
classification induced by the system of phonological and syntac-
tic rules. Postal has suggested, furthermore, that there should be
190 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

a general analysis of lexical items with respect to each rule R,

into those which must, those which may, and those which cannot
be subject to R, and has investigated some of the consequences of
this assumption. I mention these possibilities simply to indicate
that there remain numerous relatively unexplored ways to deal
with the problems that arise when the structure of a lexicon is
considered seriously.
Problems similar to those of derivational morphology are not
lacking beyond the word level as well. Consider, for example,
such phrases as "take for granted," which abound in English.
From a semantic and distributional point of view, this phrase
seems to be a single lexical item, and it therefore must be entered
in the lexicon as such, with its unique set of syntactic and
semantic features. On the other hand, its behavior with respect to
transformations and morphological processes obviously shows
that it is some sort of Verb-with-Complement construction.
Once again, then, we have a lexical item with a rich internal
structure. In such a phrase as "take offense at" the problem is
more acute. Again, distributional as well as semantic considera-
tions suggest that this is a lexical item, but certain transforma-
tions apply to this phrase as if "offense" were a normal Noun
Phrase (cf. "I didn't think that any offense would be taken at
that remark"). Verb^Particle constructions also provide a variety
of related problems. To some extent, the Particle is a fairly free
"Adverbial" element, as in "I brought the book (in, out, up,
down)." Often, however, the Verb""Particle construction is
(distributionally as well as semantically) a unique lexical item
(such as "look up," "bring off," "look over"). In all cases, how-
ever, the syntactic structure is apparently the same, with respect
to the possibility of applying familiar transformational rules. I
see no way, for the present, to give a thoroughly satisfactory
treatment of this general question.46
The Verb^Particle constructions "look up (the record),"
"bring in (the book)," and so on, are of course not to be confused
with the very different constructions discussed in Chapter 2,
§ 2.3.4. There we noted that certain Verbs were in close construe-
§ 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LEXICON lgi

tion with certain Adverbials (for example, "decide on the boat,"

in the sense of "choose the boat"), and that these Verb^Ad-
verbial constructions are very different from others (such as
"decide (while) on the boat") that involve a much looser associa-
tion of Verb and Adverbial. In these close constructions, the
choice of Particle is often narrowly or even uniquely constrained
by the choice of Verb (for example, "argue with X about Y"). We
must therefore indicate in the lexical entry for such words as
decide, argue, that they take certain particles and not others, as,
in fact, is commonly done in dictionaries. This information can
be presented in various ways. One possibility is to develop the
Adverbial freely and to assign a contextual feature to the Verb
(for example, to decide, the contextual feature [ — on^NP], to
argue, the feature [ — with^NP'^about^'NP]). If either of the
methods of lexical insertion described in Chapter 2, § 4.3 is used,
the Verbs in question will now be inserted only in the permitted
positions, and the resulting Phrase-marker will now have the
structure required for further rules. A second possibility is to
develop the Adverbial freely but to give the lexical entry as a
sequence of formatives, much as in the case of telescope, take for
granted, and so on. Thus we would have the entries decide # on,
arguc(# about)(# with), etc. Associated with these lexical entries,
then, will be an erasure transformation that will use the freely
generated Particles of the Prepositional-Phrases to delete the
Particles of the lexical entries. Under this alternative, we rely
on the filtering effect of transformations to guarantee correct
insertion in well-formed deep structures, and, once again, we
derive the correctly formed Phrase-markers when successful
lexical insertion takes place. Still a third possibility would be
to enter the lexical items in the manner just proposed, and to
derive the Adverbials with a dummy element in the Preposition-
position, then distributing the Particles of the lexical entry by
substitution transformations. Again, the same Phrase-markers
result. There are still further possibilities.
The same choices, incidentally, are also available in Verb^Par-
ticle constructions. In this case, however, the Phrase-marker that
ig2 SOME RESIDUAL PROBLEMS

results from lexical insertion and associated operations must be

different from that of the Verb^Adverbial constructions, since
later rules apply very differently in the two cases.
I see little basis for choosing among these alternatives at the
moment; until sharper criteria are discovered, these can only be
regarded as essentially notational variants.
Obviously, this discussion by no means exhausts the com-
plexity or variety of topics that, so far, resist systematic and re-
vealing grammatical description. It is possible that we are
approaching here the fringe of marginal cases, to be expected in
a system as complex as a natural language, where significant
systematization is just not possible. Still, it is much too early to
draw this conclusion with any confidence and, even if it is
eventually justified, we still must face the problem of extracting
whatever subregularities exist in this domain. In any event, the
questions we have touched on here have not yet been illuminated
in any serious way by approaching them within the framework
of any explicit grammatical theory. For the present, one can
barely go beyond mere taxonomic arrangement of data. Whether
these limitations are intrinsic, or whether a deeper analysis can
succeed in unraveling some of these difficulties, remains an open
question.
Notes

NOTES TO CHAPTER i
1. To accept traditional mentalism, in this way, is not to accept
Bloomfield's dichotomy of "mentalism" versus "mechanism." Men-
talistic linguistics is simply theoretical linguistics that uses per-
formance as data (along with other data, for example, the data
provided by introspection) for the determination of competence,
the latter being taken as the primary object of its investigation.
The mentalist, in this traditional sense, need make no assumptions
about the possible physiological basis for the mental reality that
he studies. In particular, he need not deny that there is such a
basis. One would guess, rather, that it is the mentalistic studies
that will ultimately be of greatest value for the investigation of
neurophysiological mechanisms, since they alone are concerned
with determining abstractly the properties that such mechanisms
must exhibit and the functions they must perform.
In fact, the issue of mentalism versus antimentalism in linguistics
apparently has to do only with goals and interests, and not with
questions of truth or falsity, sense or nonsense. At least three issues
are involved in this rather idle controversy: (a) dualism — are the
rules that underlie performance represented in a nonmaterial
medium?; (b) behaviorism — do the data of performance exhaust
the domain of interest to the linguist, or is he also concerned with
other facts, in particular those pertaining to the deeper systems
that underlie behavior?; (c) introspectionism — should one make
use of introspective data in the attempt to ascertain the properties
of these underlying systems? It is the dualistic position against
which Bloomfield irrelevantly inveighed. The behaviorist position
is not an arguable matter. It is simply an expression of lack of
interest in theory and explanation. This is clear, for example, in
Twaddell's critique (1935) of Sapir's mentalistic phonology, which
used informant responses and comments as evidence bearing on
the psychological reality of some abstract system of phonological
elements. For Twaddell, the enterprise has no point because all

193
194 NOTES TO CHAPTER I

that interests him is the behavior itself, "which is already available

for the student of language, though in less concentrated form."
Characteristically, this lack of interest in linguistic theory expresses
itself in the proposal to limit the term "theory" to "summary of
data" (as in Twaddell's paper, or, to take a more recent example,
in Dixon, 1963, although the discussion of "theories" in the latter
is sufficiently vague as to allow other interpretations of what he
may have in mind). Perhaps this loss of interest in theory, in the
usual sense, was fostered by certain ideas (e.g., strict operationalism
or strong verificationism) that were considered briefly in positivist
philosophy of science, but rejected forthwith, in the early nine-
teen-thirties. In any event, question (b) poses no substantive
issue. Question (c) arises only if one rejects the behaviorist limita-
tions of (b). To maintain, on grounds of methodological purity,
that introspective judgments of the informant (often, the linguist
himself) should be disregarded is, for the present, to condemn
the study of language to utter sterility. It is difficult to imagine
what possible reason might be given for this. We return to this
matter later. For further discussion, see Katz (1964c).
2. This has been denied recently by several European linguists (e.g.,
Dixon, 1963; Uhlenbeck, 1963, 1964). They offer no reasons for
their skepticism concerning traditional grammar, however. What-
ever evidence is available today seems to me to show that by and
large the traditional views are basically correct, so far as they go,
and that the suggested innovations are totally unjustifiable. For
example, consider Uhlenbeck's proposal that the constituent anal-
ysis of "the man saw the boy" is [the man saw] [the boy], a pro-
posal which presumably also implies that in the sentences [the
man put] [it into the box], [the man aimed] [it at John], [the man
persuaded] [Bill that it was unlikely], etc., the constituents are as
indicated. There are many considerations relevant to the deter-
mination of constituent structure (cf. note 7); to my knowledge,
they support the traditional analysis without exception against
this proposal, for which the only argument offered is that it is the
result of a "pure linguistic analysis." Cf. Uhlenbeck (1964), and
the discussion there. As to Dixon's objections to traditional gram-
mars, since he offers neither any alternative nor any argument
(beyond the correct but irrelevant observation that they have been
"long condemned by professional linguists"), there is nothing fur-
ther to discuss, in this case.
3. Furthermore, it seems to me that speech perception is also best
studied in this framework. See, for example, Halle and Stevens
(1962).
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1
>95

4. Tests that seem to determine a useful notion of this sort have been
described in various places — for example, Miller and Isard (1963).
5. These characterizations are equally vague, and the concepts in-
volved are equally obscure. The notion "likely to be produced" or
"probable" is sometimes thought to be more "objective" and
antecedently better defined than the others, on the assumption
that there is some clear meaning to the notion "probability of a
sentence" or "probability of a sentence type." Actually, the latter
notions are objective and antecedently clear only if probability is
based on an estimate of relative frequency and if sentence type
means something like "sequence of word or morpheme classes."
(Furthermore, if the notion is to be at all significant, these classes
must be extremely small and of mutually substitutable elements,
or else unacceptable and ungrammatical sentences will be as
"likely" and acceptable as grammatical ones.) But in this case,
though "probability of a sentence (type)" is clear and well defined,
it is an utterly useless notion, since almost all highly acceptable
sentences (in the intuitive sense) will have probabilities empirically
indistinguishable from zero and will belong to sentence types with
probabilities empirically indistinguishable from zero. Thus the
acceptable or grammatical sentences (or sentence types) are no
more likely, in any objective sense of this word, than the others.
This remains true if we consider, not "likelihood," but "likelihood
relative to a given situation," as long as "situations" are specified
in terms of observable physical properties and are not mentalistic
constructs. It is noteworthy that linguists who talk of hardheaded
objective study of use of sentences in real situations, when they
actually come to citing examples, invariably describe the "situa-
tions" in completely mentalistic terms. Cf., e.g., Dixon (1963,
p. 101), where, in the only illustrative example in the book, a
sentence is described as gaining its meaning from the situation
"British Culture." To describe British culture as "a situation" is,
in the first place, a category mistake; furthermore, to regard it as
a pattern abstracted from observed behavior, and hence objec-
tively describable in purely physical terms, betrays a complete mis-
understanding of what might be expected from anthropological
research.
For further discussion, see Katz and Fodor (1964).
6. That it may be true is suggested by several (for the moment, quite
untested) observations. For example, in Chomsky and Miller
(1963, p. 286) the following example is cited: "anyone who feels
that if so many more students whom we haven't actually admitted
are sitting in on the course than ones we have that the room had
I96 NOTES TO CHAPTER I

to be changed, then probably auditors will have to be excluded, is

likely to agree that the curriculum needs revision." This contains
six nested dependencies (along with other dependencies that go
beyond nesting) with no self-embedding. Though hardly a model
of felicitous style, it seems fairly comprehensible, and not ex-
tremely low on the scale of acceptability. In comparison, self-em-
bedding of degree two or three seems to disturb acceptability much
more severely. The matter is worth studying, since a positive result
concerning (.jii) would, as noted, support a conclusion about
organization of memory which is not entirely obvious.
7. It has sometimes been claimed that the traditional coordinated
structures are necessarily right-recursive (Yngve, i960) or left-
recursive (Harman, 1963, p. 613, rule 3i). These conclusions seem
to me equally unacceptable. Thus to assume (with Harman) that
the phrase "a tall, young, handsome, intelligent man" has the
structure [[[[ta^ young] handsome] intelligent] man] seems to me
no more justifiable than to assume that it has the structure [tall
[young [handsome [intelligent man]]]]. In fact, there is no gram-
matical motivation for any internal structure, and, as I have just
noted, the assumption that there is no structure is also supported
on grounds of acceptability, with extremely weak and plausible
assumptions about organization of memory. Notice that there are
cases where further structure might be justified (e.g., [intelligent
[young man]] or, perhaps [YOUNG [intelligent man]], with con-
trastive stress on "young"), but the issue is rather whether it is
always necessary.
The same is true if we consider the very different type of Adjec-
tive-Noun construction that we find in such phrases as "all the
young, old, and middle-aged voters" (for an interesting discussion
of these various kinds of modification relations, see Oman, 1964).
Here, too, neither the structure [[young, old] and middle-aged] nor
[young [old and middle-aged]] has any justification.
Similarly, it is surely impossible to assume, with Yngve, that in
the phrase "John, Mary, and their two children" the structure is
[John] [[Mary] [and their two children]], so that "John" is coordi-
nated with "Mary and their two children," the latter being ana-
lyzed into the coordinated items "Mary" and "their two children."
This is entirely counter to the sense. Notice, again, that conjunc-
tion can have this structure (e.g., "John, as well as Mary and her
child"), but surely it is false to claim that it must have this
structure.
In these cases all known syntactic, semantic, phonetic, and per-
ceptual considerations converge in support of the traditional view
that these constructions are typically coordinating (multiple-
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 ig7

branching). Notice also that this is the weakest assumption. The

burden of proof rests on one who claims additional structure be-
yond this. There are various ways of justifying assignment of
constituent structure. For example, in such a phrase as "all (none)
of the blue, green, red, and (or) yellow pennants," if one wanted to
argue that "blue, green, red" is a constituent (i.e., that the struc-
ture is left-branching), or that "green, red, and (or) yellow" is a
constituent (that the structure is right-branching), then he would
have to show that these analyses are required for some grammatical
rule, that the postulated intermediate phrases must receive a
semantic interpretation, that they define a phonetic contour, that
there are perceptual grounds for the analysis, or something of this
sort. All of these claims are patently false in this case, and the
other cases mentioned here. Thus no semantic interpretation can
be assigned to "old and middle-aged" in "young, old, and middle-
aged voters" or to "green, red, or yellow" in "none of the blue,
green, red, or yellow pennants" or to "Mary and their two chil-
dren" in "John, Mary, and their two children"; the phonetic rules
explicitly preclude such constituent analysis; there are no gram-
matical rules that require these analyses; there are no perceptual
or other arguments to support them. It seems difficult, then, to
see any grounds for objecting to the traditional analysis and
insisting on additional intermediate categorization, in such cases
as these.
8. Yngve (i960, and several other papers) has proposed a different
theory to account for certain observations such as those of (4).
Beyond the obvious condition of finiteness of memory, his theory
assumes also that order of generation is identical with order of
production — that the speaker and hearer produce sentences "from
top-to-bottom" (they first decide on the major structures, then the
substructures of these, etc., leaving to the very end of the process
the choice of lexical items). Under this highly restrictive additional
assumption, the optimal perceptual device mentioned earlier is no
longer constructible, and left-branching and multiple-branching,
as well as nesting and self-embedding, contribute to "depth" in
Yngve's sense, hence to unacceptability. To support this hypothesis,
it would be necessary to show (a) that it has some initial plausi-
bility, and (6) that left-branching and multiple-branching in fact
contribute to unacceptability exactly as do nesting and self-em-
bedding. As to (a), I see no plausibility at all to the assumption
that the speaker must uniformly select sentence type, then deter-
mine subcategories, etc., finally, at the last stage, deciding what he
is going to talk about; or that the hearer should invariably make
all higher-level decisions before doing any lower-level analysis. As
198 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

to (b), the hypothesis is supported by no evidence at all. The

examples given by Yngve all involve nesting and self-embedding
and hence are irrelevant to the hypothesis, since the unaccept-
ability in this case follows from the assumption of finiteness alone
widiout the additional assumption of "top-to-bottom" production
for speaker and hearer. Furthermore, the hypothesis is contradicted
by the observation (4iii) that multiply coordinated structures (cf.
note 7) are the most acceptable (rather than the least acceptable,
as predicted) and that left-branching structures are far more
acceptable than nested structures of equal "depth," in Yngve's
sense. It also fails to explain why examples of type (41V), such as
(21), though very low in "depth," are still unacceptable.
However, Yngve makes one important point in these papers,
namely, that some transformations can be used to decrease nesting,
hence to reduce the perceptual load. This suggests an interesting
argument as to why grammars should contain transformational
rules. Some additional weight to this argument is given by the dis-
cussion of performance models involving transformational gram-
mars in Miller and Chomsky (1963, Part 2).
g. It is astonishing to find that even this truism has recently been
challenged. See Dixon (1963). However, it seems that when Dixon
denies that a language has infinitely many sentences, he is using
the term "infinite" in some special and rather obscure sense. Thus
on the same page (p. 83) on which he objects to the assertion "that
there are an infinite number of sentences in a language" he states
that "we are clearly unable to say that there is any definite num-
ber, N, such that no sentence contains more than N clauses" (that
is, he states that the language is infinite). Either this is a blatant
self-contradiction, or else he has some new sense of die word "in-
finite" in mind. For further discussion of his remarks in this con-
nection, see Chomsky (in press).
10. Aside from terminology, I follow here the exposition in Katz and
Postal (1964). In particular, I shall assume throughout that the
semantic component is essentially as they describe it and that the
phonological component is essentially as described in Chomsky,
Halle, and Lukoff (1956); Halle (1959a, 19596, 1962a); Chomsky
(19626); Chomsky and Miller (1963); Halle and Chomsky (i960;
forthcoming).
11. I assume throughout that the syntactic component contains a
lexicon, and that each lexical item is specified in the lexicon in
terms of its intrinsic semantic features, whatever these may be. I
shall return to this matter in the next chapter.
12. In place of die terms "deep structure" and "surface structure," one
might use the corresponding Humboldtian notions "inner form"
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1
199

of a sentence and "outer form" of a sentence. However, though it

seems to me that "deep structure" and "surface structure," in the
sense in which these terms will be used here, do correspond quite
closely to Humboldtian "inner form" and "outer form," respec-
tively (as used of a sentence), I have adopted the more neutral
terminology to avoid the question, here, of textual interpretation.
The terms "depth grammar" and "surface grammar" are familiar
in modern philosophy in something roughly like the sense here
intended (cf. Wittgenstein's distinction of "Tiefengrammatik" and
"Oberflachengrammatik," 1953, p. 168); Hockett uses similar ter-
minology in his discussion of the inadequacy of taxonomic linguis-
tics (Hockett, 1958, Chapter 29). Postal has used the terms "under-
lying structure" and "superficial structure" (Postal, 19646) for the
same notions.
The distinction between deep and surface structure, in the sense
in which these terms are used here, is drawn quite clearly in the
Port-Royal Grammar (Lancelot et al., 1660). See Chomsky (1964,
pp. 15-16; forthcoming) for some discussion and references. In phil-
osophical discussion, it is often introduced in an attempt to show
how certain philosophical positions arise from false grammatical
analogies, the surface structure of certain expressions being mis-
takenly considered to be semantically interpretable by means ap-
propriate only to other, superficially similar sentences. Thus
Thomas Reid (1785) holds a common source of philosophical error
to lie in the fact that
in all languages, there are phrases which have a distinct mean-
ing; while at the same time, there may be something in the
structure of them that disagrees with the analogy of grammar or
with the principles of philosophy. . . . Thus, we speak of feeling
pain as if pain was something distinct from the feeling of it. We
speak of pain coming and going, and removing from one place
to another. Such phrases are meant by those who use them in a
sense that is neither obscure nor false. But the philosopher puts
them into his alembic, reduces them to their first principles,
draws out of them a sense that was never meant, and so imagines
that he has discovered an error of the vulgar [pp. 167-168].
More generally, he criticizes the theory of ideas as based on a
deviation from the "popular meaning," in which "to have an idea
of anything signifies nothing more than to think of it" (p. 105).
But philosophers take an idea to be "the object that the mind
contemplates" (p. 105); to have an idea, then, is to possess in the
mind such an image, picture, or representation as the immediate
object of thought. It follows that there are two objects of thought:
200 NOTES TO CHAPTER I

the idea, which is in the mind, and the thing represented by it.
From this conclusion follow the absurdities, as Reid regards them,
of the traditional theory of ideas. One of the sources of these
absurdities is the failure of the philosopher to attend "to the dis-
tinction between the operations of the mind and the objects of
these operations . . . although this distinction be familiar to the
vulgar, and found in the structure of all languages . . ." (p. no).
Notice that these two senses of "having an idea" are distinguished
by Descartes in the Preface to the Meditations (1641, p. 138).
Reid's linguistic observation is made considerably earlier by Du
Marsais, in a work published posthumously in 1769, in the follow-
ing passage (pp. 179-180):
Ainsi, comme nous avons dit j'ai un livre, j'ai un diamant, j'ai une
montre, nous disons par imitation, j'ai la fievre, j'ai envie, j'ai
peur, j'ai un doute, j'ai pitie, j'ai une idee, etc. Mais livre, dia-
mant, montre sont autant de noms d'objects rebels qui existent
ind^pendamment de notre maniere de penser; au lieu que
sante, fievre, peur, doute, envie, ne sont que des termes mita-
physiques qui ne d^signent que des manieres d'etres considered
par des points de vue particuliers de l'esprit.
Dans cet exemple, j'ai une montre, j'ai est une expression
qui doit etre prise dans le sens propre: mais dans j'ai une idee,
j'ai n'est dit que par une imitation. C'est une expression em-
pruntee. J'ai une idee, c'est-a-dire, je pense, je concois de telle
ou telle maniere. J'ai envie, c'est-a-dire, je desire; j'ai la volonte,
c'est-a-dire, je veux, etc.
Ainsi, idee, concept, imagination, ne marquent point d'objets
r^els, et encore moins des etres sensibles que Ton puisse unir
l'un avec l'autre.
In more recent years, it has been widely held that the aims of
philosophy should, in fact, be strictly limited to "the detection of
the sources in linguistic idioms of recurrent misconstructions and
absurd theories" (Ryle, 1931).
13. These descriptions are not fully accurate. In fact, the sentential
complement in (10) should, more properly, be regarded as em-
bedded in a Prepositional-Phrase (cf. Chapter 3); and, as Peter
Rosenbaum has pointed out, the sentential complement of (11)
should be regarded as embedded in the Noun-Phrase Object of
"expect." Furthermore, the treatment of the Verbal Auxiliaries in
(10) and (11) is incorrect, and there are other modifications relat-
ing to the marking of the passive transformation, to which we
shall return in the next chapter.
14. It seems clear that many children acquire first or second languages
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 201

quite successfully even though no special care is taken to teach

them and no special attention is given to their progress. It also
seems apparent that much of the actual speech observed consists
of fragments and deviant expressions of a variety of sorts. Thus it
seems that a child must have the ability to "invent" a generative
grammar that defines well-formedness and assigns interpretations
to sentences even though the primary linguistic data that he uses
as a basis for this act of theory construction may, from the point
of view of the theory he constructs, be deficient in various
respects. In general, diere is an important element of truth in the
traditional view that "die pains which everyone finds in conversa-
tion ... is not to comprehend what anodier thinketh, but to
extricate his thought from the signs or words which often agree
not with it" (Cordemoy, 1667), and the problem this poses for
speech perception is magnified many times for die language
learner.
15. For example, Russell (1940, p. 33: "from a logical point of view,
a proper name may be assigned to any continuous portion of
space-time"), if we interpret his notion of "logically proper name"
as embodying an empirical hypothesis. Interpreted in this way,
Russell is stating what is, no doubt, a psychological truth. Inter-
preted otherwise, he is giving an unmotivated definition of "proper
name." There is no logical necessity for names or other "object
words" to meet any condition of spatiotemporal contiguity or to
have other Gestalt qualities, and it is a nontrivial fact that they
apparently do, insofar as the designated objects are of the type
that can actually be perceived (for example, it is not true of
"United States" — similarly, it need not be true of somewhat more
abstract and functionally defined notions such as "barrier"). Thus
there are no logical grounds for the apparent nonexistence in na-
tural languages of words such as "LIMB," similar to "limb" except
that it designates die single object consisting of a dog's four legs,
so that "its LIMB is brown" (like "its head is brown") would mean
that die object consisting of the four legs is brown. Similarly,
there is no a priori reason why a natural language could not con-
tain a word "HERD," like the collective "herd" except that it
denotes a single scattered object with cows as parts, so that "a cow
lost a leg" implies "the HERD lost a leg," etc.
16. Thus for Aristotle (De Anima, 4036), the "essence of a house is
assigned in such a formula as 'a shelter against destruction by
wind, rain, and heat,' " though "the physicist would describe it
as 'stones, bricks, and timbers.'" For interesting comments on
such definitions, see Foot (1961), Katz (1964^).
17. By a "reasonable procedure" I mean one that does not involve
202 NOTES TO CHAPTER ]

extralinguistic information — that is, one that does not incorporate

an "encyclopedia." See Bar-Hillel (i960) for discussion. The possi-
bility of a reasonable procedure for translation between arbitrary
languages depends on the sufficiency of substantive universals. In
fact, although there is much reason to believe that languages are
to a significant extent cast in the same mold, there is little reason
to suppose that reasonable procedures of translation are in general
possible.
18. Actually, a set of structural descriptions should be assigned by /
to each st (and each structural description must be assigned to
exactly one st), given Gjt one for each way of interpreting the sen-
tence st with respect to G,. Thus an unambiguous sentence should
receive one structural description, a doubly ambiguous sentence
two structural descriptions, etc. We assume that mappings are
effective — that there is an algorithm for enumerating sentences,
structural descriptions, and grammars and (throughout this is less
obvious) for determining the values of / and m in all cases.
19. Obviously, to construct an actual theory of language learning, it
would be necessary to face several other very serious questions in-
volving, for example, the gradual development of an appropriate
hypothesis, simplification of the technique for finding a compatible
hypothesis, and the continual accretion of linguistic skill and
knowledge and the deepening of the analysis of language structure
that may continue long after the basic form of tire language has
been mastered. What I am describing is an idealization in which
only the moment of acquisition of the correct grammar is con-
sidered. Introduction of these additional considerations might
affect the general discussion in many ways. For example, in some
limited but nevertheless real way, the preconditions (i)-(v) them-
selves might possibly be developed on the basis of deeper in-
nate structure, in ways that depend in part on primary linguistic
data and the order and manner in which they are presented. Fur-
thermore, it might very well be true that a series of successively
more detailed and highly structured schemata (corresponding to
maturational stages, but perhaps in part themselves determined
in form by earlier steps of language acquisition) are applied to the
data at successive stages of language acquisition. There are, a
priori, many possibilities that can be considered here.
20. It is instructive to see how modern structural linguistics has at-
tempted to meet these conditions. It assumes that the technique
for discovering the correct hypothesis (grammar) must be based on
procedures of successive segmentation and classification of the
items in the corpus (which constitutes the primary linguistic data,
when supplemented, perhaps, by certain kinds of semantic in-
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 203

formation the exact relevance of which to the problem at hand

has never been clarified). To compensate for this extremely strong
demand on the procedure of grammar discovery, it was necessary
to sacrifice descriptive adequacy, over a wide range of cases. In
fact, the methodological discussions of modern linguistics pay very
little attention to considerations (ii)-(iv) (though they do imply
certain conclusions about them) and concentrate almost solely on
development of constructive, step-by-step procedures of classifica-
tion and segmentation. For discussion, see Lees (1957), Chomsky
(1964)-
gi. This point has some historical interest. In fact, as has generally
been noted by commentators, Locke's attempt to refute the doc-
trine of innate ideas is largely vitiated by his failure to observe
the distinction we have just been discussing, although this was
clear to Descartes (and was later re-emphasized by Leibniz, in
his critique of Locke's Essay). Cf. § 8.
88. See note 19. An actual acquisition model must have a strategy for
finding hypotheses. Suppose, for example, that the strategy is to
consider only grammars that have better than a certain value (in
terms of the evaluation measure (v)), at each stage in the process
of language learning. What is required of a significant linguistic
theory, then, is that given primary linguistic data D, the class of
grammars compatible with D be sufficiently scattered, in terms of
value, so that the intersection of the class of grammars compatible
with D and the class of grammars which are highly valued be
reasonably small. Only then can language learning actually take
place.
83. See references of note 10.
84. Failure of attempts to justify an explanatory theory may be in-
terpreted in various ways, of course. It may indicate that the
theory is wrong, or that its consequences were incorrectly de-
termined — in particular, that the grammar tested for descriptive
adequacy was not the most highly valued one. Since any reason-
able evaluation measure must be a systematic measure, and since
language is a tightly interconnected system, the latter possibility
is not to be discounted. In short, justification of linguistic theory
does not avoid the problems faced by justification of any sub-
stantive and nontrivial empirical hypothesis.
85. Actually, it is not clear that Quine's position should be taken as
in any real sense an empiricist one. Thus he goes on to propose
that in the innate quality space a red ball might be less distant
from a green ball than from a red kerchief, so that we have not
just a pre-experiential characterization of distance but also an
innate analysis of this into distance in various respects. On the
204 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

basis of these few comments, one might interpret him as propos-

ing that such concepts as "ball" are innate ideas, hence as adopting
an extreme form of nativism; at least, it is difficult to see wherein
the cited proposal differs from this. In further support of such an
antiempiricist interpretation, one may point to Quine's virtual
renunciation of reinforcement theory (cf. my note 26).
Unfortunately, what are intended as empiricist views have gen-
erally been formulated in such an indefinite way that it is next
to impossible to interpret them with any certainty, or to analyze
or evaluate them. An extreme example, perhaps, is Skinner's ac-
count of how language is learned and used (Skinner, 1957). There
seem to be only two coherent interpretations that one can give
to this account. If we interpret the terms "stimulus," "reinforce-
ment," "conditioning," etc., which appear in it, as having the
meanings given to them in experimental psychology, then this
account is so grossly and obviously counter to fact that discussion
is quite beside the point. Alternatively, we may interpret these
terms as metaphoric extensions of the (essentially homonymous)
terms used in experimental psychology, in which case what is
proposed is a mentalist account differing from traditional ones
only in that many distinctions are necessarily obscured because
of the poverty of the terminological apparatus available for para-
phrase of the traditional mentalistic notions. What is particularly
puzzling, then, is the insistent claim that this paraphrase is some-
how "scientific" in a way in which traditional mentalism is not.
26. This application is perhaps mediated by "reinforcement," though
many contemporary behaviorists use this term in such a loose
way that reference to reinforcement adds nothing to the account
of acquisition of knowledge that they propose. For example, Quine
suggests (i960, pp. 82-83) that "some basic predilection for con-
formity" may take the place of "ulterior values," and that society's
reinforcement of the response may consist "in no more than cor-
roborative usage, whose resemblance to the child's effort is the
sole reward." As Quine correctly notes, "this again is congenial
enough to Skinner's scheme, for he does not enumerate the re-
wards" (this being one of the contributory factors to the near
vacuity of Skinner's scheme). What this proposal comes to is that
the only function of "reinforcement" may be to provide the child
with information about correct usage; thus the empirical claim
of "reinforcement theory" will be that learning of language can-
not proceed in the absence of data. Actually, Skinner's concept
of "reinforcement" is apparently still weaker than this, for he
does not even require that the "reinforcing stimulus" impinge
on the responding organism; it is sufficient that it be hoped for
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 20K

or imagined (for a collection of examples bearing on this matter,

see Chomsky, 19596).
27. These mechanisms, as is now known, need not be at all elementary.
Cf., for example, Lettvin et al. (1959), Hubel and Wiesel (1962),
Frishkopf and Goldstein (1963). This work has demonstrated that
peripheral processing in the receptor system or in lower cortical
centers may provide a complex analysis of stimuli that, further-
more, seems to be rather specific to the animal's life-space and
well correlated with behavior patterns. Thus it seems that not
even peripheral processing can be described within the unstruc-
tured and atomistic framework that has been presupposed in
empiricist thinking.
28. I depart here from the Langley translation, which renders this
passage inaccurately. The French original is as follows: ". . . je
demeure d'accord que nous apprenons les id^es et les verities
inn£es, soit en prenant garde a leur source, soit en les verifiant
par l'experience. Ainsi je ne saurois admettre cette proposition,
tout ce qu'on apprend n'est pas inne. Les verit^s des nombres sont
en nous, et on ne laisse pas de les apprendre, soit en les tirant de
leur source lorsqu'on les apprend par raison demonstrative (ce
qui fait voir qu'elles sont innees) soit en les £prouvant dans les
exemples comme font les arithm^ticiens vulgaires. . . ."
29. Cf. Chomsky (1964) for additional discussion and quotations il-
lustrating Humboldt's views on these questions.
30. That this is a fair interpretation of taxonomic linguistics is not
at all clear. For one thing, structural linguistics has rarely been
concerned with the "creative" aspect of language use, which was
a dominant theme in rationalistic linguistic theory. It has, in odier
words, given little attention to the production and interpretation
of new, previously unheard sentences — that is, to the normal
use of language. Thus the suggestion that the various theories
of immediate constituent analysis might be interpreted as gen-
erative, phrase structure grammars (as in Chomsky, 1956, 1962a,
or Postal, 1964a) certainly goes beyond what is explicitly stated
by linguists who have developed these theories, and very likely
beyond their intentions as well. Hence, the central problem of
descriptive adequacy is not really raised within structural lin-
guistics. Secondly, many "neo-Bloomfieldian" linguists, accepting
Bloomfield's behaviorism under interpretation (b) of note 1 (as
well as Firthians and "neo-Firthians" and many others), have
thereby explicitly rejected any concern for descriptive adequacy,
limiting the task of grammatical description, at least in theory,
to organization of the primary linguistic data. Others have held
that a grammar should at least describe the "habits" or "disposi-
206 NOTES TO CHAPTER I

tions" of the speaker, though the sense in which language use

might be regarded as a matter of habit or disposition has never
been satisfactorily clarified. To be more precise, there is no clear
sense of the term "habit" or "disposition" in accordance with
which it would be correct to describe language as a "habit
structure" or a "system of dispositions."
In general, it is not clear that most behaviorist tendencies
should be regarded as varieties of empiricism at all, since, as
distinct from classical empiricism, they renounce any interest in
mental processes or faculties (that is, in the problems of descrip-
tive or explanatory adequacy).
31. This is the only respect in which a comparison of such alternatives
is relevant, apart from their relative success in accounting for the
given facts of language acquisition. But this consideration ap-
parently offers no information that has any bearing on the choice
among alternative theories.
In general, it is important to bear in mind that an extremely
specialized input-output relation does not necessarily presuppose
a complex and highly structured device. Whether our assumption
about the mind is that it contains the schema for transformational
grammar or that it contains mechanisms for making arbitrary
associations or for carrying out certain kinds of inductive or
taxonomic operations, there is apparently little knowledge about
the brain and little engineering insight into plausible physical
systems that can be used to support these hypotheses. Similarly,
there is no justification for the common assumption that there
is an asymmetry between rationalist and empiricist views in that
the former somehow beg the question, not showing how the
postulated internal structure arises. Empiricist views leave open
precisely the same question. For the moment, there is no better
account of how the empiricist data-processing operations might
have been developed, as innate structure, in a species, than there
is of how the rationalist schema may arise through evolutionary
processes or other determinants of the structure of organisms. Nor
does comparison with species other than man help die empiricist
argument. On the contrary, every known species has highly spe-
cialized cognitive capacities. It is important to observe that com-
parative psychology has not characteristically proceeded on
empiricist assumptions about knowledge and behavior, and lends
no support to these assumptions.
32. There is reason to believe that the language-acquisition system
may be fully functional only during a "critical period" of mental
development or, more specifically, that its various maturational
stages (see note 19) have critical periods. See Lenneberg (forth-
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 207

coming) for an important and informative review of data bearing

on this question. Many other aspects of the problem of biologically
given constraints on the nature of human language are discussed
here and in Lenneberg (i960).
Notice that we do not, of course, imply that the functions of
language acquisition are carried out by entirely separate com-
ponents of the abstract mind or the physical brain, just as when
one studies analyzing mechanisms in perception (cf. Sutherland,
1959, 1964), it is not implied that these are distinct and separate
components of the full perceptual system. In fact, it is an impor-
tant problem for psychology to determine to what extent other
aspects of cognition share properties of language acquisition and
language use, and to attempt, in this way, to develop a richer and
more comprehensive theory of mind.
33. It is a curious fact that empiricism is commonly regarded as some-
how a "scientific" philosophy. Actually, the empiricist approach
to acquisition of knowledge has a certain dogmatic and aprioristic
character that is largely lacking in its rationalist counterpart. In
the particular case of language acquisition, the empiricist approach
begins its investigation with the stipulation that certain arbi-
trarily selected data-processing mechanisms (e.g., principles of
association, taxonomic procedures) are the only ones available to
the language-acquisition device. It then investigates the applica-
tion of these procedures to data, without, however, attempting to
show that the result of this application corresponds to grammars
that can be shown, independently, to be descriptively adequate.
A nondogmatic alternative to empiricism would begin by observ-
ing that in studying language acquisition, what we are given is
certain information about the primary data that are presented
and the grammar that is the resulting product, and the problem
we face is that of determining the structure of the device that
mediates this input-output relation (the same is true of the more
general problem of which language acquisition is a special case).
There are no grounds for any specific assumptions, empiricist or
otherwise, about the internal structure of this device. Continu-
ing with no preconceptions, we would naturally turn to the study
of uniformities in the output (formal and substantive universals),
which we then must attribute to the structure of the device (or, if
this can be shown, to uniformities in the input, this alternative
rarely being a serious one in the cases that are of interest). This,
in effect, has been the rationalist approach, and it is difficult to
see what alternative there can be to it if dogmatic presuppositions
as to the nature of mental processes are eliminated.
34. That is, a theory that meets conditions (i)-(iv) of p. 31. I shall
208 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

henceforth assume, with no further comment, that any linguistic

theory under discussion attempts to meet at least Uiese conditions.
35. There has, during the past few years, been a fair amount of in-
vestigation into the formal properties of very simple theories of
grammar. For the most part, it has been restricted to weak gen-
erative capacity, though there are a few results involving strong
generative capacity as well (in particular, those referred to in § 2).
The latter is, obviously, by far the more interesting notion, but it
is much more difficult to study. For surveys of this work, see
Chomsky (1963), Chomsky and Schiitzenberger (1963).
36. See Postal (19626, 1964a, 1964c). Neither the theory of context-
free grammar nor the theory of finite-state grammar is an artifact
invented for mathematical investigation. Each is well motivated
formally and has independent interest, apart from linguistics,
and each has in fact been proposed by linguists as a comprehensive
theory of language. In fact, as Postal shows (1964a), almost every
linguistic theory that has received any substantial attention in
recent years, insofar as it is clear, falls within the framework of
context-free grammar. As we shall see later, a special form of
the theory of context-free grammar apparently plays a crucial
role within the general theory of transformational grammar.
37. This possibility cannot be ruled out a priori, but, in fact, it seems
definitely not to be the case. In particular, it seems that, when
the theory of transformational grammar is properly formulated,
any such grammar must meet formal conditions that restrict it
to the enumeration of recursive sets. Cf. the conditions on base
rules; also note 1, Chapter 3, and further discussion in Chapter 3
and Chapter 4, § 2.2, of conditions on deletion transformations.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2
1. In detail, there is some room for discussion about bodi termi-
nology and substance throughout (2), and, particularly in the case
of (2ii), alternative conventions and decisions have been applied.
However, I think that the central facts are clear enough, and
there has, in fact, been overwhelming accord about most of them.
For present purposes, I shall raise no further question (except
of detail) about the adequacy of these observations, taking them
simply as facts to be accounted for by a grammatical theory.
2. A theory of language must state the principles interrelating its
theoretical terms (e.g., "phoneme," "morpheme," "transformation,"
"Noun Phrase," "Subject") and ultimately must relate this sys-
tem of concepts to potential empirical phenomena (to primary
linguistic data). For reasons discussed in Chomsky (1957) and
NOTES TO CHAPTER a 20g

elsewhere, it seems to me that all significant structural notions

will have to be characterized in terms of the previously defined
notion "generative grammar" (whereas structural linguistics has
assumed, in general, that the notion "grammar" must be developed
and explained in terms of previously defined notions such as
"phoneme," and "morpheme"). That is, I am assuming that the
basic notion to be defined is "G is a most highly valued grammar
of the language of which primary linguistic data D constitutes a
sample," where I) is represented in terms of primitive notions of
the theory; the phonemes, morphemes, transformations, etc., of
the language are, then, the elements that play a specified role
in the derivations and representations determined by G. If so, partial
generative grammars will provide the only empirical data critical
for evaluating a theory of the form of language. For the present,
then, such evidence must be drawn from grammatical descriptions
of relatively few languages. This is not particularly disturbing.
What is important is that such assumptions be supported by
available evidence and formulated with enough clarity so that
new or improved generative grammars will have bearing on their
correctness, as the depth and range of linguistic study increases.
We must, in short, accept Humboldt's conclusion, expressed in a
letter of 182a to Schlegel (Leitzmann, 1908, p. 84): "dass jede
grammatische Discussion nur dann wahrhaften wissenschaftlichen
Gewinn bringt, wenn sie so durchgefiihrt wird, als lage in ihr
allein der ganze Zweck, und wenn man jede, noch so rohe
Sprache selbst, gerade mit derselben Sorgfalt behandelt als
Griechisch und Lateinisch."
Study of a wide range of languages is only one of the ways to
evaluate the hypothesis that some formal condition is a linguistic
universal. Paradoxical as this may seem at first glance, considera-
tions internal to a single language may provide significant sup-
port for the conclusion that some formal property should be
attributed not to the theory of the particular language in ques-
tion (its grammar) but rather to the general linguistic dieory on
which the particular grammar is based. Study of descriptive or
explanatory adequacy may lead to such a conclusion; further-
more, due difficulty or impossibility of formulating certain condi-
tions within the framework, of an otherwise well-supported theory
of grammar provides some evidence that these are, in reality,
general conditions on the applicability of grammatical rules
rather than aspects of the particular language, to be expressed
within the system of grammatical rules itself. Several cases of dds
sort will be mentioned later.
In general, it should be expected that only descriptions con-
210 NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

cerned with deep structure will have serious import for proposals
concerning linguistic universals. Since descriptions of this sort are
few, any such proposals are hazardous, but are clearly no less in-
teresting or important for being hazardous.
3. A weak though sufficient condition is given in Chomsky (1955,
Chapter 6). A stronger but rather well-motivated condition is pro-
posed by Postal (1964a). Some aspects of this question are dis-
cussed in Chomsky and Miller (1963, § 4); Chomsky (1963, § 3).
4. For some discussion, see the references cited on p. 16, and many
others. These demonstrations of the inadequacies of phrase struc-
ture grammar have not been challenged, although some confu-
sions have been introduced by terminological equivocations. The
most extreme example of this can be found in Harman (1963),
where many of the standard arguments against phrase structure
grammar are repeated, with approval, in an article with the
subtitle "a defense of phrase structure." This curious situation
results simply from the author's redefinition of the term "phrase
structure" to refer to a system far richer than that to which the
term "phrase structure grammar" has been universally applied
in the rather ample literature on this subject (in particular, to
a system in which in place of category symbols, in the sense of
phrase structure grammar, we have pairs (a, qp), where a is a
category symbol and q> is a set of indices used to code transfor-
mations, contextual restrictions, etc.). That is, Harman in effect re-
states the arguments against phrase structure grammar as argu-
ments against limiting the term "phrase structure grammar" to
the particular systems that have previously been defined as "phrase
structure grammar." This terminological proposal does not
touch on the substantive issue as to the adequacy of the taxonomic
theory of grammar for which phrase structure grammar (in the
usual sense) is a model. The essential adequacy of phrase structure
grammar as a model for taxonomic grammatical theory (with the
possible but irrelevant exception of problems involving discon-
tinuous constituents — see Chomsky, 1957, Postal, 1964a) is demon-
strated quite convincingly by Postal, and is not challenged by
Harman, or anyone else, to my knowledge. The only issue that
Harman raises, in this connection, is whether the term "phrase
structure grammar" should be restricted to taxonomic models or
whether the term should be used in some far richer sense as well,
and this terminological question is of no conceivable importance.
The terminological equivocation has only the effect of suggesting
to the casual reader, quite erroneously, that there is some issue
about the linguistic adequacy of the theory of phrase structure
grammar (in the usual sense).
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 211

A further source of possible confusion, in connection with this

paper, is that there is a way of interpreting the grammar pre-
sented there as a phrase structure grammar, namely by regarding
each complex element (a, cp) as a single, unanalyzable category
symbol. Under this interpretation, what we have here is a new
proposal as to the proper evaluation procedure for a phrase
structure grammar, a proposal which is immediately refuted by
the fact that under this interpretation, the structural description
provided by the Phrase-marker of the now highest-valued grammar
is invariably incorrect. For example, in John saw Bill, did Tom
see you?, the three elements John, Bill, Tom would belong to three
distinct and entirely unrelated categories, and would have no
categorial assignment in common. Thus we have the following
alternatives: we may interpret the paper as proposing a new
evaluation measure for phrase structure grammars, in which case
it is immediately refuted on grounds of descriptive inadequacy;
or we may interpret it as proposing that the term "phrase struc-
ture grammar" be used in some entirely new sense, in which case
it has no bearing on the issue of the adequacy of phrase structure
grammar. For some further discussion see Chomsky (in press), where
this and other criticisms of transformational grammar, some real,
some only apparent, are taken up.
5. This assumption is made explicitly in Chomsky (1955), in the
discussion of the base of a transformational grammar (Chapter 7),
and, to my knowledge, in all subsequent empirical studies of
transformational grammar. An analogous assumption with respect
to transformational rules is made in Matthews (1964, Appendix
A, § z). Formal properties of sequential grammars have been
studied by Ginsburg and Rice (1962) and Shamir (1961), these
being context-free grammars where the sequential property is,
furthermore, intrinsic (in the sense of note 6, Chapter 3), rather
than extrinsic, as presupposed here (for the context-sensitive case,
at least).
6. As noted earlier, there are rather different conventions, and some
substantive disagreements about the usage of these terms. Thus
if we were to change the rules of (5), and, correspondingly, the
Phrase-marker (3), to provide a binary analysis of the major
category S into sincerity (NP) and may frighten the boy (VP),
then the latter would be the Predicate-of the sentence in the sense
denned in (11). See the final paragraph of § 2.3.4 f°r an
emendation of these suggested definitions of functional notions.
7. Let us assume, furthermore, that Y, Z are unique, in this case —
in other words, that there is only one occurrence of B in X. The
definition can be generalized to accommodate the case where this
212 NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

condition is violated, but it seems to me reasonable to impose

this condition of uniqueness on the system of base rules.
8. Notice that accurate definitions require a precise specification of
the notions "occurrence," "dominate," etc. This raises no difficulty
of principle, and throughout the informal discussion here I shall
simply avoid these questions. Precise definitions for most of the
notions that will be used here, taking occurrences into account,
may be found in Chomsky (1955).
9. One might question whether M should be regarded as a lexical
category, or whether, alternatively, the rules M -* may, can, • • •
should not be included in the set (5I). The significance of this
distinction will be discussed later. This is by no means merely a
terminological issue. Thus, for example, we might hope to estab-
lish general conventions involving the distinction between lexical
and nonlexical categories. To illustrate the range of possibilities
that may be relevant, I mention just two considerations. The gen-
eral rule for conjunction seems to be roughly this: if XZY and XZ'Y
are two strings such that for some category A, Z is an A and Z' is
an A, then we may form the string X^Z^and^Z'^Y, where
Z^and^Z' is an A (see Chomsky 1957, § 5.2, and for a much more
far-reaching study, Gleitman, 1961). But, clearly, A must be a
category of a special type; in fact, we come much closer to charac-
terizing the actual range of possibilities if we limit A to major
categories. By this criterion, M should be a lexical category.
Second, consider the phonological rules that assign stress in
English by a transformational cycle (see Chomsky, Halle, and
Lukoff, 1956; Halle and Chomsky, i960, forthcoming; Chomsky and
Miller, 1963). These rules assign stress in a fixed way in strings
belonging to certain categories. By and large, the categories in
question seem to be the major categories, in the sense just de-
scribed. In particular, elements of nonlexical formative categories
(e.g., Articles) are unstressed. By this criterion, one might want
M to be a nonlexical category, though even here the situation is
unclear; cf. the well-known contrast of may-may, as in John may
try (it is permitted) and John may try (it is possible).
10. Some have argued that the distinction in question has nothing
to do with rules of English, but only with statistics of usage. What
seem to be insuperable difficulties for any such analysis have been
raised and frequently reiterated, and I see no point in considering
this possibility any further as long as proponents of this most
implausible view make no attempt to deal with these objections.
Cf. Chapter 1, § 2.
11. For some discussion of a possible syntactic basis for such sub-
categorization, with a small amount of supporting evidence, see
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 21»

Chomsky (1955, Chapter 4), summarized in part in Chomsky

(1961) and Miller and Chomsky (1963). A critique of these and
other discussions is given in Katz (1964a). I think that Katz's
major criticisms are correct, but that they can perhaps be met
by narrowing the scope of the proposals to just what is being
discussed here, namely the question of subcategorization of lexical
categories within the framework of an independently justified
generative grammar.
12. In the syntactic component of this (pretransformational) grammar,
indices on category symbols were used to express agreement (and,
in general, what Harris, 1951, calls long components) but not
subcategorization and selectional restrictions. These devices be-
come unnecessary once grammatical transformations are intro-
duced. See, in this connection, the discussion in Postal (1964a).
13. Matthews devised a technique of indexing category symbols to
meet the difficulties that he found, and he later incorporated this
technique as one of the main devices of the COMIT programming
system that he developed with the collaboration of V. Yngve.
Similar difficulties were noted independently by R. Stockwell, T.
Anderson, and P. Schachter, and they have suggested a somewhat
different way of handling them (see Stockwell and Schachter,
1962; Schachter, 1962). E. Bach has also dealt with this question,
in a somewhat different way (Bach, 1964). The method that I
shall elaborate later incorporates various features of these pro-
posals, but differs from them in certain respects. The problem
of remedying this defect in phrase structure grammar is clearly
very much open, and deserves much further study. Although this
defect was pointed out quite early, there was no attempt to deal
with it in most of the published work of the last several years.
14. Thus [s] is an abbreviation for the set of features [+ consonantal,
— vocalic, — voiced, -+- continuant, + strident, — grave] and [m]
for the set of features [+ consonantal, — vocalic, + nasal, + voiced,
+ grave]. Rule (18) applies to any segment specified as [+ continu-
ant] (hence to [s]) in a context which is specified as — [+ voiced]
(hence to the context [ — m]), converting the segment to which it
applies to a voiced segment with, otherwise, the same features as
before (hence converting [s] to [z] = [+ consonantal, — vocalic,
+ voiced, + continuant, + strident, — grave]).
I shall henceforth use the convention, customary on the phono-
logical level, of enclosing sets of features by square brackets.
15. But notice that a phonological matrix can be regarded simply as
a set of specified phonological features, if we index each specified
feature by an integer indicating the column it occupies in the
matrix. Thus the two-column matrix representing the formative
214 NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

bee can be regarded as consisting of the features [+ consonantal^

— vocaliq, — continuant^, • • • , — consonantal2, + vocalic2,
— grave2, • • •]. A lexical entry can now be regarded simply as
a set of features, some phonological, some syntactic. Of course,
a lexical entry must also contain a definition, in a complete gram-
mar, and it can be plausibly argued (see Katz and Fodor, 1963)
that this too consists simply of a set of features. (Actually the
Katz-Fodor definitions are not simply sets, but it does not seem
that the further structure they impose plays any role in their
theory.) We might, then, take a lexical entry to be simply a set
of features, some syntactic, some phonological, some semantic.
However, largely for ease of exposition, we shall not follow
this course but shall, rather, regard a lexical entry as a matrix-
complex symbol pair, as in the text.
If we regard a lexical entry as a set of features, then items
that are similar in sound, meaning, or syntactic function will not
be related to one another in the lexicon. For example, the In-
transitive "grow" of "the boy grew" or "corn grows," and the
Transitive "grow" of "he grows corn" would have to constitute
two separate lexical entries, despite the meaning relation that
holds between them, since there is apparently no way to derive
the Intransitive structures from the Transitive ones, as can be
done in the case of "the window broke," "someone broke the
window." Cf. p. 189. The same would be true of "drop" in "the
price dropped," "he dropped the ball," "he dropped that silly pre-
tense"; or of "command" in the example discussed on p. 119, and
in innumerable other cases of many different kinds. Alternatively,
such relationships can be expressed by taking a lexical entry to
be a Boolean function of features. Although it is likely that such
a modification of the theory of lexical structure is necessary, it
raises many problems of fact and principle to which I have no
answer, and I therefore continue the exposition without develop-
ing it.
16. Recall Bloomfield's characterization of a lexicon as the list of
basic irregularities of a language (1933, p. 274). The same point
is made by Sweet (1913, p. 31), who holds that "grammar deals
with die general facts of language, lexicology with the special
facts."
17. More generally, the phonological redundancy rules, which de-
termine such features as voicing of vowels or unrounding of high
front vowels in English, can be supplemented by analogous syn-
tactic and semantic redundancy rules. Furthermore, redundancy
rules may relate features of these various types. For example, if
the traditional view that syntactic categorization is in part de-
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 215

termined semantically can be substantiated in any serious way,

it can be expressed by a redundancy rule determining syntatic
features in terms of semantic ones. We shall return to the question
of redundancy rules in § 6.
Notice, incidentally, that the rules (20) (and, in fact, all rules
that establish a partial hierarchy among syntactic features) might
be regarded as redundancy rules rather than as rules of the base.
Such a decision would have various consequences, to which we
shall return in § 4.3.
18. By a local transformation (with respect to A) I mean one that
affects only a substring dominated by the single category symbol
A. Thus all rules of the transformational cycle in phonology are
local, in this sense. There is some reason to suspect that it might
be appropriate to intersperse certain local transformations among
the rewriting rules of the base. Thus Adverbial Phrases consisting
of Preposition^Determiner^Noun are in general restricted as to
the choice of these elements, and these restrictions could be stated
by local transformations to the effect that Preposition and Noun
can be rewritten in certain restricted ways when dominated by
such category symbols as Place Adverbial and Time Adverbial.
In fact, one might consider a new extension of the theory of
context-free grammar, permitting rules that restrict rewriting by
local transformations (i.e., in terms of the dominating category
symbol), alongside of the fairly widely studied extension of con-
text-free grammar to context-sensitive grammars that permit rules
that restrict rewriting in terms of contiguous symbols.
The example of the preceding paragraph involves a transfor-
mation that is local with respect to a category A (A, in this case,
being some type of Adverbial), and, furthermore, that introduces
a string into a position dominated by the lexical category B which
is immediately dominated by A. Let us call such a transformation
strictly local. The only motivation for this highly special definition
is that many of the examples of local transformations that come
to mind meet this restrictive condition as well (for example, quite
generally, nominalization transformations that give such forms as
"I persuaded John of my seriousness" from an underlying form
"I persuaded John of N S," where S dominates the string under-
lying "I am serious" and the transformation substitutes a trans-
form of this string for the dummy symbol occupying the position
of the lexical category N, which is immediately dominated by the
category symbol NP with respect to which the transformation is
local).
19. Notice that an important question is begged when we assume that
Noun subcategorization is independent of context and that the
2l6 NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

selectional restrictions on Subject-Verb-Object are given com-

pletely by rules determining die subcategorization of Verbs in
terms of previously chosen Noun subcategories. We shall return
to this matter in § 4.2.
20. This decision, as several of the others, will be slightly modified
later in the text.
21. The status of the symbol S' in this rule is unexplained at the
present state of the exposition. It will indicate the position of a
transform of a sentence, as the theory of the syntactic component
is extended later on.
22. Observe that in (36) such an expression as " — /lAe^Predicate-
Nominal" is a single symbol, standing for a particular syntactic
feature.
The careful reader will notice that as these rules are formulated,
lexical items can be inserted in the wrong position by the lexical
rule. We shall return to this question in § 3, avoiding it now
only so as not to overburden the exposition. Actually, a more
careful analysis would revise (40) and (41) in detail.
23. An apparent exception to the last remark is the subcategorization
of Verbs in terms of choice of the Progressive form be + Ing.
To maintain the suggested generalization concerning strict sub-
categorization, we should have to claim that such Verbs as own,
understand, and know occur freely with or without Progressive
(along with all other Verbs), but that the Progressive form is
deleted by an obligatory transformation when it precedes these
Verbs (this peculiarity would be marked by a feature that consti-
tutes part of the lexical entries for these forms). But, in fact,
Uiere is good reason to assume this, as has been pointed out to
me by Barbara Hall. Thus each element of the Auxiliary has
associated with it certain characteristic Advcrbials that may (or,
in the case of Present tense, must) cooccur with this Auxiliary
element, and the characteristic Adverbials of Progressive do occur
with the Verbs own, understand, know, etc. (cf. "I know the
answer right now," alongside of "I know the answer"), although
such forms as "I eat the apple right now," "I eat the apple," are
ruled out (except, in the latter case, as "generic," which can,
in fact, be treated as involving deletion of a "dummy" Adverbial).
24. Strictly speaking, this is not the case, as we have defined "syntactic
feature" (cf. pp. 82f.). Actually, it is only the features involved in
the set of rules of which (2o)-(2i) constitute a sample that de-
termine selectional classification. Idiosyncratic syntactic features
of particular lexical items, not introduced by such general rules
as (2o)-(2i) but simply listed in the lexical entries, play no role
in Verb subclassification.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 217

25. Notice that these alternatives are not strictly equivalent. Thus,
for example, of the three mentioned only the one we are using
permits also the free use of variables, as in the case of schema
(44). On the other hand, the use of labeled brackets is appropriate
for the formulation of the transformational rules of the phono-
logical component. Use of complex symbols at arbitrary nodes
(as in Harman, 1963 — cf. note 4) gives a form of transformational
grammar that is richer in some respects and poorer in others
than the formulation in terms of Boolean conditions on Analyz-
ability, as in most current work on generative grammar. Cf. Chom-
sky (in press) for some discussion.
26. Proper Nouns of course can have nonrestrictive relatives (and,
marginally, Adjective modifiers derived from nonrestrictive rela-
tives— e.g., "clever Hans" or "old Tom"). But although restrictive
relatives belong to the Determiner system, there are several rea-
sons for supposing that nonrestrictive relatives are, rather, Com-
plements of the full NP (and in some cases, of a full sentence —
e.g., "I found John likable, which surprised me very much").
Notice that Adjective modifiers can derive from either restrictive
or nonrestrictive relatives (consider, for example, the ambiguity
of the sentence "the industrious Chinese dominate the economy
of Southeast Asia"). This matter is discussed in the Port-Royal
Logic (Arnauld et ah, 1662), and, in more recent times, by Jesper-
sen (1924, Chapter 8).
Notice also that Proper Nouns can also be used as Common
Nouns, in restricted ways (e.g., "this cannot be the England that
I know and love," "I once read a novel by a different John
Smith"). Some such expressions may be derived from Proper
Nouns with nonrestrictive relatives by transformation; others sug-
gest that a redundancy rule may be needed, in the lexicon, as-
signing certain of the features of Common Nouns to Proper
Nouns.
27. Once again, this is not to deny that an interpretation can some-
times be imposed on such phrases as those of (54). See the dis-
cussion of the problem of justification at the outset of § 2.3.1,
and the references of footnote 11.
Notice, in particular, that the relation of the Verb to the Place
Adverbial in "John died in England" (= "in England, John
died") is very different from that in "John stayed in England"
("John lived in England" is, in fact, an ambiguous representative
of both constructions, being interpretable as either "John re-
sided in England," analogous structurally to "John stayed in
England" with a Verbal Complement introduced by rule (52m),
or roughly as "in England, John really lived" or "in England,
2l8 NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

John remained alive," with a Place Adverbial that is a Verb

Phrase Complement introduced by (52") — cf. "John will surely
die on the Continent, but he may live in England"). This differ-
ence of structure between "live in England" and "die in England"
accounts for the fact (noted by Ralph Long) that "England is
lived in by many people" is much more natural than "England is
died in by many people" — in fact, this remark is true only when
"live in" has the sense of "reside in" or "inhabit." Cf. p. 104 for
further discussion of such "pseudopassives."
28. There are well-known marginal exceptions to this remark (e.g.,
"a good time was had by all" or "recourse was had to a new
plan"), and it is also clear that the locution "take Manner Ad-
verbials freely" requires considerable further analysis and clarifi-
cation (see Lees, 1960a, p. 26), as does the distinction between
Adverbials that qualify the Verb and those which might more
properly be said to qualify the Subject. (As an example of the
latter, consider the Adverbial of "John married Mary with no
great enthusiasm," which means, roughly, "John was not very
enthusiastic about marrying Mary," and therefore seems to play
a role more like that of the Adverbial modifier of the Subject in
"John, cleverly, stayed away yesterday" than like that of the Ad-
verbial modifier of the Verb in "John laid his plans cleverly."
See Austin (1956) for some discussion of such cases.) Nevertheless,
the essential correctness of the comments in the text does not
seem to me in doubt.
It must be borne in mind that the general rules of a grammar
are not invalidated by the existence of exceptions. Thus one does
not eliminate the rule for forming the past tense of Verbs from
the grammar on the grounds that many Verbs are irregular; nor is
the generalization that relates Manner Adverbials to passivization
invalidated by the fact that certain items must be listed, in the
lexicon, as conflicting with this generalization, if this turns out
to be the case. In either the case of past tense or that of passivi-
zation, the generalization is invalidated (in the sense of "internal
justification" — cf. Chapter 1, § 4) only if a more highly valued
grammar can be constructed that does not contain it. It is for this
reason that the discovery of peculiarities and exceptions (which
are rarely lacking, in a system of the complexity of a natural
language) is generally so unrewarding and, in itself, has so little
importance for the study of the grammatical structure of the
language in question, unless, of course, it leads to the discovery
of deeper generalizations.
It is also worth noting that many of the Manner Adverbials,
like many other Adverbials, are Sentence transforms with deleted
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 2lg

Subjects. Thus underlying the sentence "John gave the lecture

with great enthusiasm," with the Adverbial "with great enthusi-
asm," is the base string "John has great enthusiasm" (note that
"with" is quite generally a transform of "have"), with the re-
peated NP "John" deleted, as is usual (cf. Chapter 3 and Chapter
4, § 2.2). Similarly, Place Adverbials (at least those which are VP
complements) must sometimes, or perhaps always, be regarded
as Sentence transforms (so that, for example, "I read the book
in England" derives from an underlying structure very much like
the one that underlies "I read the book while (I was) in England").
Adverbials are a rich and as yet relatively unexplored system,
and therefore anything we say about them must be regarded as
quite tentative.
29. Alternatively, we may drop this condition and extend the first
convention so that the complex symbol introduced in the analysis
of a lexical category A contains not only the feature [+ A], but
also the feature [— B] for any lexical category B other than A.
This convention entails that a word specified as belonging to two
lexical categories must have two separate lexical entries, and it
raises unanswered questions about the structure of the lexicon. It
would have the advantage of overcoming a defect in our notation
for features introduced by context-sensitive subcategorization rules.
Thus, in the grammar (55), the feature [—] designates both
Proper Nouns and Intransitive Verbs. (This is why the feature
[4- N] had to be mentioned in rule (571V).) This might lead to
difficulty if a certain lexical item were both a Noun and a Verb,
since it might be non-Proper as a Noun but Transitive as a Verb,
or Transitive as a Verb and Proper as a Noun. If the proposal
of this note is adopted, the problem cannot arise. Alternatively,
it will be necessary to designate such features by a more complex
notation indicating not only the frame in question but also the
symbol that dominates it.
There may be some point to allowing a lexical item to appear in
several categorial positions (either by specifying it positively with
respect to several lexical categories, or by leaving it totally un-
specified with respect to these categories) — for example, in the
case of such words as "proof," "desire," "belief." Suppose that
these are specified as taking Sentential Complements of various
forms, but are permitted to enter either the Noun or Verb position.
Then the lexical insertion rule will place them in either the
frame ". . . N that S . . ." or the frame "... V that S . . . ," in the
positions of the Noun and Verb, respectively. Hence it will not be
necessary to derive the former by transformation from the latter,
as is necessary, for example, in the case of ". . . proving that S . . .".
220 NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

Under such an analysis, "John's proof that S" would derive from
the structure underlying "John has a proof that S" by the
sequence of transformations that derives "John's book" from the
structure underlying "John has a book." One might go on to
relate "John has a proof that S" to "John proves that S" (perhaps,
ultimately, as "John takes a walk" is related to "John walks"), but
this is another matter.
In connection with this discussion, it is also necessary to estab-
lish a general distinctness condition regarding the idiosyncratic,
purely lexical features (e.g., the feature [Object-deletion] in (58),
(59)). For discussion of this question, which becomes critical in
case diese features relate to the phonological component, see Halle
and Chomsky (forthcoming).
30. It has been maintained that these relations can be defined in
terms of some notion of cooccurrence, but this seems to me du-
bious, for reasons presented in various places (e.g., in Bar-Hillel,
1954; and Chomsky, 1964). Observe that the definitions of gram-
matical relation or grammatical function that have been suggested
here refer only to the base of the syntax and not to surface
structures of actual sentences in other than the simplest cases. The
significant grammatical relations of an actual sentence (e.g. (7),
p. 70), are those which are defined in the basis (deep structure)
of this sentence.
31. I give these informally, instead of using the notation developed
earlier, to simplify the reading. There is nothing essential in-
volved in this change of notation.
32. For example, if we were to adapt the definitions of universal
categories and functions so that they apply to such sentences as
"in England is where I met him," which are often cited to show
that phrases other than NP's can occur as Subjects, these proposals
would fail completely. This sentence, however, is obviously trans-
formationally derived. It would be perfectly correct to say that
"in England" is the Subject of "in England is where I met him,"
extending the grammatical relation Subject-of, that is, [NP, S],
to the derived Phrase-marker (the surface structure). In the basis,
however, "in England" is an Adverbial of Place, associated with
the VP meet him in the Predicate-Phrase "met him in England,"
and the sentence is interpreted in accordance with the gram-
matical relations defined in this underlying deep structure.
This extension to surface structures of such functional notions
as Subject-of is not an entirely straightforward matter. Thus in
base structures, there is apparently never more than a single
occurrence of a category such as NP in any structure immediately
dominated by a single category (cf. note 7), and our definitions
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 221

of these notions relied on this fact. But this is not true of surface
structures. In the sentence "this book I really enjoyed," both
"this book" and "I" are NP's immediately dominated by S. Ap-
parently, then, order is significant in determining the grammatical
relations defined by surface structures (not surprisingly), though it
seems to play no role in the determination of grammatical rela-
tions in deep structures. Consequently, somewhat different defi-
nitions are needed for the surface notions.
It might be suggested that Topic-Comment is the basic gram-
matical relation of surface structure corresponding (roughly) to
the fundamental Subject-Predicate relation of deep structure.
Thus we might define the Topic-of the Sentence as the leftmost
NP immediately dominated by S in the surface structure, and
the Comment-of die Sentence as the rest of the string. Often, of
course, Topic and Subject will coincide, but not in the examples
discussed. This proposal, which seems plausible, was suggested to
me by Paul Kiparsky. One might refine it in various ways, for
example, by defining the Topic-of the Sentence as the leftmost
NP that is immediately dominated by S in the surface structure
and that is, furthermore, a major category (cf. p. 74 — this will
make John the Topic in the cleft sentence "it was John who I
saw"). Other elaborations also come to mind, but I shall not go
into the question any more fully here.
33. This very fruitful and important insight is as old as syntactic
theory itself; it is developed quite clearly in the Grammaire
generate et raisonnee of Port-Royal (cf. Chomsky, 1964, § 1.0; forth-
coming, for discussion). What is, in essence, the same idea was rein-
troduced into modern linguistics by Harris, though he has not dis-
cussed it in quite these terms (cf. Harris, 1952, 1954, 1957)- For
further discussion of this notion, within the framework of trans-
formational generative grammar, see Chomsky (1957), and for
steps toward a substantive theory of semantic interpretation based
on this assumption, see Katz and Fodor (1963) and Katz and Postal
(1964).
34. Curry's proposals are so sketchy that it is impossible to extract
from them more than a general point of view. The position of
Saumjan and Soboleva is much more explicitly worked out, but
it is defective in crucial respects. Cf. Hall (1965), for an analysis of
this approach. It is possible that "stratificational grammar" also
adopts a similar position, but the published references to this
theory (e.g., Gleason, 1964) are much too vague for any conclusion
to be drawn.
35. Notice, for example, that Case is usually determined by the posi-
tion of the Noun in surface structure rather than in deep struc-
222 NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

ture, although the surface structures given by stylistic inversions

do not affect Case. Even in English, poor as it is in inflection, this
can be observed. For example, the Pronoun in the sentences "he
was struck by a bullet," "he is easy to please," "he frightens easily"
is, in each case, the "logical Object," that is, the Direct-Object of
Verbs strike, please, frighten, respectively, in the underlying deep
structures. Nevertheless, the form is he rather than him. But
stylistic inversion of the type we have just been discussing gives
such forms as "him I really like," "him I would definitely try not
to antagonize." Where inflections are richer, this phenomenon,
which illustrates the peripheral character of these processes of
inversion, is much more apparent.
The relation between inflection, ambiguity, and word order was
discussed at some length in traditional linguistic theory. See
Chomsky, forthcoming, for some references.
NOTES TO CHAPTER j
1. Some details irrelevant to the problem under discussion are omit-
ted in these examples. We here regard each lexical item as stand-
ing for a complex of features, namely those that constitute its
lexical entry in addition to those entered by redundancy rules.
The use of the dummy symbol A has been extended here to the
case of various unspecified elements that will be deleted by oblig-
atory transformations. There is, in fact, good reason to require
that only "recoverable deletions" be permitted in the grammar.
For discussion of this very important question, see Chomsky, 1964,
§ 2.2. We shall return to it at the end of this chapter and in
Chapter 4, § 2.2.
The formative nom in (3) is one of several that might be as-
signed to the Tense^Modal position of the Auxiliary, and that
determine the form of the Nominalization (for-to, possessive-ing,
etc.).
2. The details of this, both for Transformation-markers and Phrase-
markers, are worked out in Chomsky (1955), within the following
general framework. Linguistic theory provides a (universal) system
of levels of representation. Each level L is a system based on a set
of primes (minimal elements — i.e., an alphabet); the operation
of concatenation, which forms strings of primes of arbitrary finite
length (the terms and notions all being borrowed from the theory
of concatenation algebras — cf. e.g., Rosenbloom, 1950); various re-
lations; a designated class of strings (or sets of strings) of primes
called /.-markers; a mapping of L-markers onto L'-markers, where
L' is the next "lower" level (thus levels are arranged in a hier-
archy). In particular, on the level P of phrase structure and the
NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 223

level T of transformations we have P-markers and T-markers in

the sense just described informally. A hierarchy of linguistic levels
(phonetic, phonological, word, morphological, phrase structure,
transformational structure) can be developed within a uniform
framework in this way. For details, see Chomsky (1955). For a
discussion of T-markers, see Katz and Postal (1964).
3. For discussion of negation, see Klima (1964), Katz (19646). The
formation of questions and imperatives and the semantic inter-
pretation of the question and imperative markers are discussed
in Katz and Postal (1964). In Hockett (1961) the proposal is
made that the passive transformation be conditional on a marker
in the underlying form, but no supporting argument is given for
what, in the context of that paper, is no more than a notational
innovation.
Notice that the reformulation of the passive transformation as
obligatory, relative to choice of an optional marker in the under-
lying string, is independent of the principle that we have just
cited, since the passive marker, as distinct from the question, nega-
tion, and imperative markers, has no independent semantic inter-
pretation. Furthermore, we have noted in § 4.4 of Chapter 2 that
there are good reasons to distinguish such transformations as pas-
sive from purely stylistic inversion operations. These observations
suggest that we attempt to formulate a more general condition of
which the principle just cited is itself a consequence, namely that
"nonstylistic transformations" are all signaled by optional markers
drawn from a fixed, universal, language-independent set. This
attempt presupposes a deeper analysis of the notion "nonstylistic
transformation" than we have been able to provide here, however.
4. For illuminating discussion of this question, and several others
that we are considering here, see Fillmore (1963) and Fraser
0963)-
5. Both of these observations are due to Fillmore (1963).
6. In connection with ordering of rules, it is necessary to distinguish
extrinsic order, imposed by the explicit ordering of rules, from
intrinsic order, which is simply a consequence of how rules are
formulated. Thus if the rule Rx introduces the symbol A and R2
analyzes A, there is an intrinsic order relating Rl and R2, but not
necessarily any extrinsic order. Similarly, if a certain transforma-
tion T1 applies to a certain structure that is formed only by
application of T2, there is an intrinsic order Tv T2- Taxonomic
linguistics disallows extrinsic ordering, but has not been clear
about the status of intrinsic ordering. Generative grammars have
ordinarily required both. For some discussion of this matter, see
Chomsky (1964).
224 NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

7. We are discussing only embedding transformations here, but

should extend the discussion to various generalized transformations
that form coordinate constructions (e.g., conjunction). There are
certain problems concerning these, but I believe that they can be
incorporated quite readily in the present scheme by permitting
rule schemata (in the sense of Chomsky and Miller, 1963, p. 298;
Chomsky and Schiitzenberger, 1963, p. 133) introducing coordi-
nated elements that are dien modified, rearranged, and appropri-
ately interrelated by singulary transformations. If the suggestion
of note 9, Chapter 2, is workable, then such rule schemata need
not be stated in the grammar at all. Rather, by a general con-
vention we can associate such a schema with each major category.
This approach to coordination relies heavily on the filtering effect
of transformations, discussed later. Thus wherever we have co-
ordination, some category is coordinated n times in the matrix
sentence, and n occurrences of matched sentences are independ-
ently generated by the base rules.
8. Notice, incidentally, that we can now eliminate Complement from
the set of category symbols. We could go on, at this point, to
define "Complement" as a functional notion (to be more precise,
as a cover term for several functional notions), in the manner of
pp. 70-71.
9. As it stands, this claim seems to me somewhat too strong, though
it is true in one important sense of semantic interpretation. For
example, it seems clear that the order of "quantifiers" in surface
structures sometimes plays a role in semantic interpretation. Thus
for many speakers — in particular, for me — the sentences "every-
one in the room knows at least two languages" and "at least two
languages are known by everyone in the room" are not synony-
mous. Still, we might maintain that in such examples both in-
terpretations are latent (as would be indicated by the identity
of the deep structures of the two sentences in all respects relevant
to semantic interpretation), and that the reason for the opposing
interpretations is an extraneous factor — an overriding considera-
tion involving order of quantifiers in surface structures — that
filters out certain latent interpretations provided by the deep
structures. In support of this view, it may be pointed out that
other sentences that derive from these (e.g., "there are two lan-
guages that everyone in the room knows") may switch interpre-
tations, indicating that these interpretations must have been latent
all along. There are other examples that suggest something similar.
For example, Grice has suggested that the temporal order im-
plied in conjunction may be regarded as a feature of discourse
rather than as part of the meaning of "and," and Jakobson has
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 25

also discussed "iconic" features of discourse involving relations

between temporal order in surface structure and order of im-
portance, etc. Also relevant in this connection is the notion of
Topic-Comment mentioned in note 32, Chapter 2. For some
references to remarks in the Port-Royal Logic on the effect of
grammatical transformations on meaning, see Chomsky (forth-
coming).
10. The other function of the transformational component is to
express restrictions on distribution for lexical items and for sen-
tence structures.
11. Formally speaking, what we are suggesting is this. Suppose that
the symbol A immediately dominates XBY (where B is a symbol)
in the Phrase-marker K; that is, A -» XBY was one of the cate-
gorial rules used in generating this Phrase-marker. Then (A,B)
constitutes a branch of K. Furthermore, if this occurrence of B
immediately dominates ZCW (where C is a symbol), so that (B,C)
is a branch, then (A,B,C) is a branch, etc. Suppose now that
(Av • • • , An) is a branch of the generalized Phrase-marker K
formed by base rules, and that Ax = An. Then it must be that
for some i, 1 $S i ^ n, Ai = S. In other words, the only way to
form new deep structures is to insert elementary "propositions" —
technically, base Phrase-markers — in other Phrase-markers. This
is by no means a logically necessary feature of phrase structure
grammars.
Notice that the schemata that underlie coordination (cf. note 7)
also provide infinite generative capacity, but here too the true
recursive property can apparently be limited to the schema S -»
S#S# • • • #S, hence to rules introducing "propositions."
This formulation leaves unexplained some rather marginal
phenomena (e.g., the source of such expressions as "very, very
very Adjective" and some more significant ones (e.g., the possibility
of iterating Adverbials and various kinds of parenthetic elements,
the status of which in general is unclear). For some discussion of
Adverbial sequences, see Matthews (1961).
is. Cf. pp. 117-118. For some discussion, see Chomsky (1964, § 1.0,
and forthcoming).
13. Notice, incidentally, that this identity condition need never be
stated in the grammar, since it is a general condition on the func-
tioning of grammars. This is important, since (as was pointed out
by Lees, 1960a), the condition is not really identity of strings but
rather total identity of structures, in all cases in which identity
conditions appear in transformations. But to define identity of
structures in terms of Analyzability it is necessary to use quanti-
fiers; in fact, this may be the only case in which quantifiers must
226 NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

appear in the structural analyses that define transformations. Ex-

tracting the identity condition from grammars, we are therefore
able to formulate the structural analyses that define transforma-
tions strictly as Boolean conditions on Analyzability, thus greatly
restricting the power of the dieory of transformational gram-
mar.
14. For discussion see Miller and Chomsky (1963); Schlesinger (1964);
Miller and Isard (1964); and the r&ume' in Chapter i, § 2.
15. See § 2.3.1 of Chapter 2, and § 1 of Chapter 4. A serious discussion
of this question, as well as the question of dependency of syntax
on semantics, awaits a development of the theory of universal
semantics, that is, an account of the nature of semantic representa-
tion. Although various positions about these questions have been
stated with great confidence and authority, the only serious work
that I know of on the relation of these domains is that of Katz,
Fodor, and Postal (see bibliography; for discussion of other claims
that have been made, see Chomsky, 1957, and many other publica-
tions). For the moment, I see no reason to modify the view, ex-
pressed in Chomsky (1957) and elsewhere, that although, obviously,
semantic considerations are relevant to the construction of general
linguistic theory (that is, obviously the theory of syntax should be
designed so that the syntactic structures exhibited for particular
languages will support semantic interpretation), there is, at pres-
ent, no way to show that semantic considerations play a role in
the choice of the syntactic or phonological component of a gram-
mar or that semantic features (in any significant sense of this term)
play a role in the functioning of the syntactic or phonological
rules. Thus no serious proposal has been advanced to show how
semantic considerations can contribute to an evaluation procedure
for such systems or provide some of the primary linguistic data on
the basis of which they are selected. See Chapter 1, § 6, and Chap-
ter 4, § 1, for some additional related discussion.
16. Some of the details of this modification are worked out in Fraser
(forthcoming). The extent to which the complexity of the theory
of derived constituent structure depends on the presence of per-
mutations is quite clear, for example, from the analysis of these
notions in Chomsky (1955, Chapter 8).
17. Notice that in this case the third term of the proper analysis is
not strictly deleted. Rather, this term is deleted except for the
feature [± Human], which then assumes its phonological shape
(giving who, which, or that) by later rules. This is often true of
what we are here calling erasure operations.
18. A natural notational decision would be to restrict the integers one
and two to first and second person, respectively.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 227

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4
1. Whether the rule is a rewriting rule or a substitution transforma-
tion — cf. Chapter 2, § 4.3 — does not concern us here; for con-
venience of exposition, we shall assume the latter.
2. To avoid what has been a persistent misunderstanding, it must be
emphasized again that "grammaticalness" is being used here as a
technical term, with no implication that deviant sentences are
being "legislated against" as "without a function" or "illegitimate."
Quite the contrary is true, as has repeatedly been stressed and
illustrated, in discussions of generative grammar. For discussion,
see Chomsky (1961) and many other references. The question as
to whether the grammar should generate deviant sentences is
purely terminological, having to do with nothing more than the
technical sense of "generate." A descriptively adequate grammar
must assign to each string a structural description that indicates
the manner of its deviation from strict well-formedness (if any). A
natural terminological decision would be to say that the grammar
directly generates the language consisting of just the sentences that
do not deviate at all (such as (3)), with their structural descrip-
tions. The grammar derivatively generates all other strings (such
as (1) and (2)), with their structural descriptions. These structural
descriptions will indicate the manner and degree of deviance of
the derivatively generated sentences. The principles that deter-
mine how interpretations can be imposed on deviant sentences
may be universal (as suggested in Chomsky, 1955, 1961; Miller
and Chomsky, 1963; and again here) or specific to a given language
(as suggested in Katz, 1964a). This is a substantive issue, but many
of the other questions that have been debated concerning these
notions seem to me quite empty, having to do only with termino-
logical decisions.
3. Recall that selectional rules, as illustrated earlier, are rules that
insert Verbs and Adjectives into generalized Phrase-markers on the
basis of the intrinsic syntactic features of the Nouns that appear
in various positions. But not all of the rules referring to intrinsic
syntactic features of Nouns are selectional rules; in particular, the
rules violated in the formation of (4) involve such features but are
not selectional rules.
4. Many of the Verbs of the category [+[+ Abstract] • • • — • • •
[-(- Animate]] do not have Adjectival forms with ing, but these
seem invariably to have other affixes as variants of ing (bothersome
for bothering, scary for scaring, impressive for impressing, etc.).
5. These examples do not begin to exhaust the range of possibilities
that must be considered in a full study of interpretation of deviant
sentences. For one thing, they do not illustrate the use of order-
228 NOTES TO CHAPTER 4

inversion as a stylistic device (cf. Chapter 2, § 4.4, for some discus-

sion). The discussion of deviation from grammaticalness that has
been carried on here offers no insight into this phenomenon. For
example, consider the following line: "Me up at does/out of the
floor/quietly Stare/a poisoned mouse/still who alive/is asking
What/have i done that/You wouldn't have" (E. E. Cummings).
This poses not the slightest difficulty or ambiguity of interpreta-
tion, and it would surely be quite beside the point to try to assign
it a degree of deviation in terms of the number or kind of rules
of the grammar that are violated in generating it.
6. Notice that the formulation given previously left an ambiguity in
the latter case, which is resolved only by the convention that we
now state.
7. We are, in effect, assuming the convention e = [e, • • •], where e
is the null element. Notice that features are unordered in a com-
plex symbol. As elsewhere in this discussion, I make no attempt
here to present an absolutely precise account or to give these
definitions in their simplest and most general forms.
8. Thus X is null if [a] is null; Y is null if [(}] is null.
9. This difficulty would, in fact, not arise if we were to give a some-
what different analysis of post-Verbal Adjectives in English, deriv-
ing them from underlying strings with Sentence-Complements to
the Verbs. In some cases, this is surely correct (e.g., "John seems
sad" from an underlying structure containing the base string "John
is sad," which becomes "John seems to be sad," and then "John
seems sad" by further transformations — similarly, in the case of
"become" this analysis is well motivated, in particular, because it
can provide a basis for excluding "become" from passivization),
and it may be correct to extend it to many or all such cases. For
some other proposals for derivation of certain of these forms, see
Zierer (1964).
It is worth noting that a condition like that imposed on W and
V in the discussion of the schema (9) is probably necessary in the
theory of transformations, although this problem has never been
discussed explicitly.
10. I am indebted to Thomas Bever and Peter Rosenbaum for many
interesting and suggestive comments relating to this question.
11. In many or all such cases, some notion of "generic" seems to be
involved critically (I owe this observation to Barbara Hall). One
might therefore try to show that part of the semantic effect of
"generic" is to cancel semantic conflicts of certain sorts. Notice,
incidentally, that the deep structure of each of the sentences of
(15) will contain a string with sincerity as the Direct-Object of the
Main Verb frighten (and with an unspecified Subject).
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 229

ia. Interest in these questions can be traced to Humboldt (1836); for

representative statements of his, see Chomsky (1964). See Ullmann
(1959) for discussion of much related descriptive work. Also
relevant are some psychological studies that have attempted to
place a linguistic item in a context of somehow related items, such
as Luria and Vinogradova (1959), and much current work in
"componential analysis."
13. Although the sentences of (igi) are near-paraphrases, still it is by
no means true that a "cooccurrence relation" of the sort that has
been discussed by Harris (1957), Hiz (1961), and others holds be-
tween them. Thus pompous can be replaced quite naturally by
a friend in "I regard John as ," but hardly in "John strikes
me as " (I owe this observation to J. Katz). It is clear, then,
that the close meaning relation between regard and strike (involv-
ing, in particular, inversion of the Subject-Verb-Object relations)
does not determine a corresponding similarity of distributional
restrictions. The rules involving contextual features, in other
words, may be partially independent of semantic properties. Such
examples must be borne in mind if any attempt is made to give
some substance to the widely voiced (but, for the moment, totally
empty) claim that semantic considerations somehow determine
syntactic structure or distributional properties.
I have been assuming, in discussing (191) that the Subject-of
strikes in the deep structure is John, but it should be noted that
this is not at all obvious. One alternative would be to take the
underlying structure to be i'C 'S — strikes me, where it^~S is an
NP and S dominates the structure underlying "John is pompous."
An obligatory transformation would give the structure underlying
"it strikes me that John is pompous," and a further optional trans-
formation would give "John strikes me as pompous." The lexical
item strike of (191) would then have very different strict subcate-
gorization features from the phonetically identical item of "it
struck me blind," while both would differ in strict subcategoriza-
tion from strike in "he struck me," "he struck an outlandish pose,"
etc. (cf. note 15, Chapter 2). If this analysis can be justified on
syntactic grounds, then the deep structures will be somewhat more
appropriate for the semantic interpretation than assumed in the
text. As several people have observed, there are other relevant
syntactic differences between the paired examples of (191)- For
example, such sentences as "John strikes me as pompous," "his
remarks impress me as unintelligible" do not passivize, although
the sentences "I regard John as pompous," "it struck me blind,"
and so on, are freely subject to passivization.
In connection with (1 giii), Harris has suggested (1952, pp. 24-25)
230 NOTES TO CHAPTER 4

that it may be possible to express the meaning relation on dis-

tributional grounds, but his suggestions as to how this might be
possible have not yet been developed to the point where their
merits can be evaluated.
Notice that the problems mentioned here admit of no merely
terminological solution. Thus we could perfectly well state the
facts relating to (19) in terms of such new notions as "semantic
subject," "semantic object," various kinds of "sememes," etc., but
such proliferation of terminology contributes nothing toward
clarifying the serious issues raised by such examples.
14. As pointed out in note 15, Chapter 2, a distinctive-feature matrix
is simply a way of representing a set of abstract phonological
features, so that a lexical entry (a formative) may be regarded
simply as a set of features, with further structure denned on them
in the manner suggested informally in this discussion.
15. With respect to selectional features, alternative (iv) is well moti-
vated. See note 20.
To say that a feature is positively (negatively) specified is to say
that it is marked + (respectively, —). Notice that these or any anal-
ogous conventions make a distinction amounting to the marked/
unmarked distinction that has often been discussed, though quite
inconclusively, in connection with features and categories.
16. Such examples as "sincerity frightens" can be found, of course, but
only as (rather mannered) transforms of "sincerity frightens Un-
specified-Object," and so on. The possibilities for this are, in fact,
quite limited — for example, no one would interpret "his sincerity
was frightening" as ambiguous. Notice that words of the category
of "frighten" do appear quite naturally as Intransitives in surface
structures, as in "John frightens easily" (this in fact is much more
general — cf. "the book reads easily," etc.). But this is irrelevant
here. In such a case, the "grammatical Subject" is the "logical
Object" — that is, the Direct Object of the deep structure "Un-
specified-Subject frightens John easily." The often obligatory
Adverbial of Manner, in these cases, suggests that one might seek
a generalization involving also the passive transformation.
17. The latter would be interpretable only as a deviant sentence.
18. One might question the factual correctness of this, particularly in
die case of {[—Count], [± Abstract]}. I have been assuming that
the features {[— Count], [+ Abstract]} characterize the true Ab-
stract Nouns such as virtue, justice, while the features {[— Count],
[— Abstract]} characterize the Mass Nouns such as water, dirt. But
there is a subdivision of Inanimate Count Nouns that seems to
correspond to this, namely the distinction into [+ Concrete], such
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 231

as table, mountain, and [— Concrete], such as problem, effort. If

it turns out that the features [± Concrete] and [+ Abstract] (as
subfeatures of [— Animate] and [— Count], respectively) should be
identified, then the feature [Abstract] would be cross-classifying
rather than hierarchic with respect to [+ Count]. This question is
not easy to resolve without much more empirical study, however.
19. The desirability of such a convention was pointed out by Paul
Postal.
so. Notice that if we were explicitly to list positively specified rather
than negatively specified selectional features in the lexicon, then
this convention would have to be extended to selectional features
as well. Thus we should not want to have to list both the features
corresponding to "takes Human Subject" and "takes Animate
Subject" for "run," for example. Such a convention would, in
effect, treat a selectional feature as itself being a kind of complex
symbol.
si. As always, there are a few exceptions that require separate state-
ment. Recall that we have presented some reasons for regarding
the phrase by^passive (where passive is a dummy terminal symbol,
replaceable, in fact, by the universal dummy symbol A) as a Man-
ner Adverbial. A Verb that can appear only in the passive would
therefore be an exception to this rule (e.g., "he is said to be a
rather decent fellow," or, perhaps, such forms as "he was shorn of
all dignity").
82. The phonological redundancy rules are also subject to certain uni-
versal constraints, and there is no doubt that, for all features, these
constraints go well beyond what has been illustrated here. As
these are formulated, they will also play the role of general con-
ventions (i.e., aspects of the general definition of "human lan-
guage") that can be relied on to reduce the specificity of particular
grammars.
23. See Halle (1959a, 19596), 1961, 1962a, 1964. Cf. also the discussion
of evaluation procedures and explanatory adequacy in Chapter 1,
§§ 6, 7, and in the references given there. Notice that Halle's
definition of the notion "phonologically admissible" (i.e., "acci-
dental" versus "systematic gap") suggests what in Chapter 1 was
called a "formal" rather than a "substantive" linguistic universal,
though there are, no doubt, also substantive constraints to be dis-
covered here.
24. As possible examples of "accidental gaps" we might point to the
nonexistence of a Verb X taking as Direct-Object expressions
designating animals and having otherwise the same meaning as
the transitive "grow," so that "he X's dogs" is parallel in meaning
232 NOTES TO CHAPTER 4

to "he grows corn" ("raise" appears to cover both senses); or the

absence of a word that bears to plants the relation that "corpse"
bears to animals (this example was suggested by T. G. Bever).
25. Thus we can regard the category of case in German as a four-
valued, gender as a three-valued, and number as a two-valued
dimension, and we can consider all Nouns as being arrayed in a
single multivalued dimension of declensional classes. Presumably,
this is not the optimal analysis, and furdier structure must be
imposed along these "dimensions." It is also possible to try to give
a language-independent characterization of these categories. These
are important matters and have been the subject of much study
that, however, goes well beyond the scope of diis discussion. I
shall therefore consider only an unstructured description in these
illustrative examples.
26. Simply for expository purposes, let us take the integers in the
order of conventional presentations, so diat [1 Gender] is Mas-
culine, [2 Number] is Plural, [2 Case] is Genitive, and Bruder is
assigned to Class 1 along the "dimension" of declensional class.
Notice that we have assumed all along that features are "binary"
— that they simply partition their domain of applicability into
two disjoint classes. There was no logical necessity for this. In
phonology, it seems clear that the distinctive features are, in fact,
best regarded as binary in their phonological function (cf., e.g.,
Halle, 1957), though obviously not always in their phonetic func-
tion. Thus in the case of the feature Stress, we can easily find five
or more degrees that must be marked in English, and other
phonetic features would also have to be regarded as multivalued
in a detailed grammar. It has been maintained (cf. Jakobson,
1936) that such "dimensions" as Case should also be analyzed into
a hierarchy of binary features (like phonological distinctive fea-
tures), but we shall not consider this question here.
27. That is, the categorial rule that develops Nouns will not be N -» A
(cf. p. 122), but rather N -» [A, a Number] (a = + or — for English
or German, though it may have more values or a different organiza-
tion of values — cf. note 25 — for other systems).
28. Actually, in descriptivist grammars of the item-and-arrangement
type the latter might be omitted, since its only function is to per-
mit some generality to be introduced into the "morphophonemic"
rules and since these grammars are, in fact, designed in such a way
as to exclude the possibility of all but the most elementary general
rules. See Chomsky (1964, pp. 3if.) for discussion.
29. This defect of morphemic analysis of inflectional systems, which
is quite serious, in practice, was pointed out to me by Morris
Halle.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 233

30. Thus an alternative to the analysis presented in (30) would be to

regard a lexical item such as Bruder as consisting of a Stem fol-
lowed by an Ending, and to regard the Ending as belonging to the
paradigmatic categories.
31. In the last few years, there has been very intensive and fruitful
study of the transformational cycle of Russian and Latvian phonol-
ogy (for references, see Chomsky, 1964, note 6, p. 14). The rules
that constitute this system apply to Phrase-markers, and conse-
quently their formulation depends very heavily on answers to the
questions being considered here. There has, so far, been no serious
investigation of how a transformational cycle applies to a feature
system and to Phrase-markers such as (30). When this is clarified,
it will be possible to bring phonological evidence to bear on the
question of morphemic versus paradigmatic representation of
inflectional systems. For the moment, the empirical evidence sug-
gests that the ordering of the transformational cycle in phonology
is determined completely by categories, not features (though of
course certain rules may be restricted in application in terms of
syntactic features). This is, furthermore, the most natural assump-
tion, if we regard the features as actually constituting the terminal
symbol (the formative).
32. This formative might, in fact, be regarded as consisting of the
feature [+ Definite], hence as a degenerate complex symbol that
is expanded by the rule into the full complex symbol [+ Definite,
a Gender, |3 Number, y Case]. See note 38 for some support for
this assumption.
33. Variables over feature specifications were used in Chomsky, Halle,
and Lukoff (1956) and Halle and Chomsky (i960), in developing
the transformational stress cycle. The idea of using them to deal
with assimilation is due to Halle (1962b). T. G. Bever has pointed
out that the same device can be applied to a description of various
kinds of alternations that involve feature shift (e.g., Ablaut). Cf.
Bever (1963), Bever and Langendoen (1963).
34. See Lees (1961) and Smith (1961). When the two Adjectives are
paired in a rather special way that is for the present poorly under-
stood, the transformation is not blocked even when they are dis-
tinct. Thus we have such forms as "this is taller than that is wide."
Cf. Harris (1957), p. 314.
35. Notice that the distinction that is emerging in this discussion is
not coincident with that suggested in note 30.
It is interesting to note that the correctness of such examples
as (40) has been questioned. In one of the earliest descriptive
studies of French, Vaugelas (1647, pp. 461-462) maintains that
such a fa(on de parler cannot be considered either "absolument
234 NOTES TO CHAPTER 4

mauvaise" or "fort bonne," and suggests that it be avoided when

masculine and feminine forms of the Adjective differ. Thus, a man
speaking to a woman should not say je suis plus beau que vous,
but should rather ("pour parler regulierement") resort to the
paraphrase je suis plus beau que vous n'etes belle, although it
would be perfectly all right for him to say je suis plus riche que
vous.
36. This fact, pointed out to me by Brandon Quails, raises various
difficulties for the analysis of comparatives. In particular, if such
sentences as (4iiii) are regarded as derived from "I know several
lawyers (who are) more successful than Bill" by Noun-Adjective
inversion following deletion of "who are," as seems quite plausible,
we must somehow account for such facts as the following: the
impossibility of "I know a more clever man than Mary" or "I
have never seen a heavier book than this rock," although the pre-
sumed sources of these (namely, "I know a man (who is) more
clever than Mary" and "I have never seen a book (which is)
heavier than this rock") are perfectly all right; the fact that the
sentence "I have never read a more intricate poem than Tristram
Shandy" implies that the latter is a poem, whereas the sentence
"I have never read a poem (which is) more intricate than Tristram
Shandy," which, in this view, is taken to be its source, does not
imply that Tristram Shandy is a poem; etc.
Again, as throughout this discussion, I should like to emphasize
that there is no particular difficulty in formulating an ad hoc sys-
tem of transformational rules that will have the desired properties.
The problem, rather, is to provide some explanation for such
phenomena as those of the preceding paragraph.
37. The deletion of the pluralized non-Definite Article is automatic,
in this position.
38. Similar considerations may account for another apparent violation
of the general condition on recoverability of deletions. As has fre-
quently been observed, the identity condition for relativization
involves only the Noun, and not the Determiner of the deleted
Noun Phrase. Thus from "I have a [# the friend is from England
#] friend" we can form, by relativization, "I have a friend (who is)
from England" in the usual way. The deleted Noun Phrase is "the
friend," and the problem is the deletion of the Article, which
differs from the Article that is used to erase it by the relative trans-
formation. The embedded sentence could not be "a friend is from
England," in which case the problem would not arise, since def-
initeness of the Article is automatic in this position. But the fact
that definiteness is obligatory suggests that in the underlying Phrase-
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 235

marker the Article be left unspecified for definiteness, this being

added by a "redundancy rule" (in this case, an obligatory trans-
formation). If this is the correct analysis, then by the principle just
established, deletion of the Article will be permissible, since in its
underlying form it is nondistinct from the Article of the Noun
Phrase of the matrix sentence.
Note that this decision requires a feature analysis for Articles,
with [± Definite] taken as a syntactic feature.
39. Notice that although sad, for example, need not be marked in the
lexicon for post-Animateness (if we decide that what is involved
here is not a matter of homonymity), it may very well be assigned
contextual features corresponding to various subfeatures of [— Ani-
mate], so as to characterize as deviant such sentences as "the pencil
is sad," which cannot receive an interpretation analogous to that
of "the book was sad." This matter has no relevance to the point
at issue, though it raises nontrivial problems of a different sort.
40. We oversimplify somewhat. Thus the constituent base Phrase-
marker, in this case, might contain a certain nominalization mor-
pheme in place of the pre-Aspect part of the Auxiliary.
41. These constructions are interesting in many respects. See Lees
(1960a, pp. 64f.), Chomsky (1964, pp. 47f.), and Katz and Postal
(1964, pp. i2of.) for discussion.
42. Here, too, we might raise the question whether the nominalization
element should be represented as a morpheme nom or as one of
the features Fv • • •, Fm— in this case, a feature added by the
transformation.
43. A detailed study of one system of essentially this sort, namely
formation of compound nouns, is presented in Lees (1960a, Chap-
ter 4, and appendices). See now also Zimmer (1964).
44. Cf. also note 30. Perhaps it will be possible to rephrase this con-
vention as part of a general definition of the notion "word." That
is, one might try to state a general rule determining placement of
word boundaries in terms of lexical categories and branching
within the scope of complex symbols. This possibility was sug-
gested by some observations of Paul Postal's, and should be further
explored.
45. A related class of problems is examined briefly by Harris (1957,
§ 4.5), in his discussion of "quasi-transformations." Bolinger, in
various articles (e.g., Bolinger, 1961), has listed many examples of
poorly understood quasi-productive processes. Such lists simply
indicate areas where all presently known theories of language have
failed to provide any substantial insight, and they can be ex-
tended in many ways, with little difficulty. Bolinger suggests that
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Index

Acquisition model, see Language subcategorization of, 79

learning, acquisition model major, 74, 106, 115, 116, 212
Adequacy, empirical Competence, 3, 4, 6, 8-10, 15, 16, 18,
descriptive, 27, 30-38, 40, 41, 59- 19, 21, 24, 27, 32, 34, 140, 193
62, 76, 78, 115, 150, 157, 203, and performance, 10, 25, 139, 197
205, 206, 209, 211, 227 Complex symbols, 82-90, 95, 98, 102,
explanatory, 25-27, 30-38, 40, 41, 110, 112, 121, 122, 188, 189, 219,
44, 46, 59-62, 78, 93, 97, 203. *33
206, 231, 234 Component
Adverbials, 101-105, l9l> 2I5~219 base, see Base component
Analyzability, 56, 98, 121, 122, 143, categorial, 120, 122-126, 128, 134,
144, 147, 217, 225, 226 136, 141
Anderson, T., 213 transformational, 140, 142
Assimilation, rules of, 175, 233 see also Grammar, generative
Concatenation-systems, 124, 125
Bach, E., 213 Constructions
Base component causative, 189
general structure, 84-90, 98, 99, comparative, 178-180, 182, 183, 233,
120, 123, 128, 136, 137, 140, 141
illustrated, 106-111 234
coordinated, 196, 198, 212, 224, 225
transformational rules in, 122 left-branching, 12-14, 196-198
Base rules, types of, 111-127 multiple-branching, 12-14, 196,
Basis of a sentence, 17, 128, 130
Beattie, James, 5 '97
nested, 12-14, 198
Behaviorism, 193, 194, 204, 206 right-branching, 12-14, 196, 197
Bever, T. G., 160, 228, 232, 233 self-embedded, 12-14, 196-198
Bloomfield, L., 205, 214
Cooccurence, 0,5, 220, 229
Bolinger, D. L., 235
Boundary symbol, 66 Cudworth, R., 49
Curry, H. B., 221
Case, 221
Categories Deep structure, 16-18, 23, 24, 29, 70,
grammatical, 64-69, 86, 144 99, 118, 120, 123, 162, 163, 178,
lexical, 74, 82, 84, 115, 116, 166, 199, 210, 220-222, 224, 229
212, 213, 219 aspects of, 64-106

247
248 INDEX

Deep structure (continued) lexical, 65, 68, 74, 79, 81, 82, 84, 86,
defined, 136, 198, 199 87
and grammatical transformations, see also Lexical entries
128-147 Functional notions, 68-74
Derivation, 66, 85, 88, 98, 142 Functions, grammatical, 23, 68-74,
sequential, 67 86, 113, 126, 136, 141, 162, 220,
transformational, 135, 143 224
Descartes, R., 48, 200, 203
Dictionary definitions, 160 Generative capacity
Diderot, D., 7 strong, 39, 60-62, 88, 99, 208
Direct-object, logical, 23 weak, 60-62, 90, 98, 208
Distinctive-feature theory, 28, 55, 65, Grammaire genirale et raisonnie, by
80, 81, 87 Lancelot et al., 6, 117, 118, 137,
Distinctness of feature matrices, 81, 199, 221
84, 85, 110, 123, 181, 182, 220 Grammar, generative
Dixon, R. W., 194 base component in, 106-111
Du Marsais, C. Ch., 5, 200 defined, 4, 8, 9, 61, 209
delimitation of, 35
Dummy symbol, 122, 132, 144, 222
first attempts at, 79
organization of, 15-18, 63
Empiricism, 47, 51-54, 58, 59, 203, in performance models, 10, 15
206, 207 phonological component of, 16, 28,
Ethology, 57, 206
29. 35. 4°. 45. 75- 80, 81, 88, 89,
Evaluation measures, 32, 34-47, 61, 135, 141, 143, 175, 198
97, 111, 164, 169, 203, 211, 226, semantic component of, 16, 28, 75,
231 77, 78, 88, 132, 135, 141, 146,
and notational conventions, 42-46
153. 154. 157. !58. 159. l6°-
Exceptions, 192, 218, 231 164, 198
projection rules of, 144
Features syntactic component of, 3, 16, 17,
contextual, 93, 111, 121, 123, 139, 28, 78, 79, 88, 89, 117, 135, 136,
148, 151, 154, 156, 165, 229, 139, 141, 145, 151, 154, 157-
235 159. >98
distinctive or phonological, 142, base of, 17, 63
213, 214, 230, 232 defined, 141
selectional, 122, 148, 164, 165, 230 transformational component of,
semantic, 88, 110, 120, 142, 154, 17. 132
164, 190, 198, 214 Grammar, particular, 5-7
strict subcategorization, 148, 164, opposed to universal grammar, 6
165 Grammar, philosophical, 5
syntactic, 75-79, 82-87, 95- 97- 1I0- Grammar and philosophical error,
112, 113, 120, 142, 153, 154, 199, 200
164, 171, 172, 175, 190, 814- Grammar, types of
216, 227, 233, 235 constituent structure, 67, 122
Field properties, 160, 161, 229 context-free, 61, 67, 139, 208, 215
Fiithian linguistics, 205 context-sensitive, 61, 215
Fodor, J. A., 154, 161, 214 selectional rules, 95-97
Formatives, 3, 14, 16, 65, 85, 143, 144, subcategorization rules, 90-106,
181, 230, 233 i>3
grammatical, 65, 122 finite-state, 208
INDEX 249
Grammar, types of (continued) Language learning, 25, 27, 28, 36, 37,
phrase structure, 61, 67, 88-90, 98, 43- 45-47. 53. 54- 57. 58- 200,
9g, 122, 136, 139, 140, 205, 210, 201, 203, 206, 207
211, 213 acquisition model, 30-33, 35, 38,
sequential, 211 47' 51-58. 117. 202, 203, 207
stratificational, 221 and linguistic theory, 47-59
structuralist, 5, 6 Language use, creative aspect of, 6,
traditional, 5, 6, 8, 63, 64, 73, 110, 8, 57. 58. 136- 205
172, 194, 222 Languages, artificial, 136, 140
transformational, 16, 54, 59, 70, Langue-parole, 4
89, 90, 98, 122, 198, 111, 217 Learning theory, 204
theory of, 55, 134, 136, 137, 143, Leibniz, G., 49-52, 203
208 Lexical entries, 87, 122, 198, 214
Grammar, universal, 5-7, 28, 65, 115- see also Formatives
118, 141, 142, 144, 231 Lexical rule, 84, 85, 87, 110, 112, 121,
Grammars 123, 186, 188
justification of, 18-27, 33' 4°> 4l Lexicon, 84-88, 94, 98, 107, 110, 112,
recursive property of, 136, 137, 142, 120, 122, 123, 136, 141, 142,
225 154, 198, 214
simplicity of, 37, 40 structure of, 164-192, 219, 222
Grammaticalness, 3, 11, 19, 75-79, 88, Linguistic data, primary, 25, 30-35,
195, 212, 213, 227, 228 37- 38. 4°. 47. soi, 203, 205,
degrees of, 148-153 207, 208, 226
Grice, A. P., 224 Linguistic theory, 3-6, 9, 203
Linguistics
Hall, Barbara, 216, 228 mathematical, 62, 208
Halle, M., 45, 232 structural, 16, 47, 51, 52, 54, 57,
Harman, G. H., 210 88, 172-174, 202, 205, 208-210,
Held, Richard, 33 223
Herbert of Cherbury, 49 Locke, John, 49, 203
Humboldt, W. von, 4, 8, 9, 51, 198, Long components, 213
199, 205, 209
Hume, David, 51 Main-verb, 71, 72
Matthews, G. H., 79, 213
Iconic elements of discourse, 11, 225 Memory
Ideas, theory of, 199, 200, 203 finiteness of, 14, 197
Immediate constituent analysis, 17, organization of, 14, 196
205 Mentalism, 4, 193, 204, 206
Inflection Models
processes, 170-184 acquisition, 25
systems, 173, 174, 176, 232 performance, 9, 15, 198
Inner form, 198 see also Perceptual model
Inversion, stylistic, 222, 223, 228 Morphological properties, 87

Jakobson, R., 28, 55, 224 Natural order, 6, 7

Nesting, 197, 198
Katz, J. J., 132, 135, 154, [61, 213, 214 Notational conventions, 42-45
Kernel sentences, 17, 18 Nouns, proper, 217

Lancelot, C, 6 Object words, 201

250 INDEX

Operational procedure, tested, 19-21 Representation, levels of, 222

Operationalism, 194 Restriction, selectional, 95, 139, 216
Ordering of rules, 39, 40, 67, 107, 123, strict subcategorial, 139
133, 2u, 223 Rosenbaum, P., 160, 200, 228
Outer or external form, 199 Rule schemata, 99, 224, 225
Rules
Perceptual model, 9, 13-15, 51, 136, branching, 112, 120, 122, 134, 135,
194, 201, 207 136, 188
Performance, 3, 4, 9, 18, 127 categorial, 123-127, 142
theory of, 10-15 context-free, 112, 114, 120, 121
see also Models, performance
context-sensitive, 112, 120, 121
Phones, 16 projection, 136, 144, 154, 157
Phonetic interpretation, 135, 136,
redundancy, 121, 142, 182, 215, 222
141, 197 phonological, 168-170, 214, 231
Phonetics, universal, 28 syntactic, 168-170
Phonological admissibility, 45, 169, rewriting, 66, 67, 70, 72, 74, 79, 84,
231 86-90, 98, 111, 112, 119, 123,
Phonological interpretation, 186 134, 142, 154, 155
Phonology, 79-83 context-free, goff, 120, 121, 141
Phrase-marker, 65-67, 84, 85, 88, 110, context-sensitive, 91, 188
117, 124, 131, 222
selectional, 95-97, 99, 111, 113-
base, 17, 18, 65, 70, 72, 125, 128,
120, 123, 149-160, 227
130, 131, 134-136, 139, 142,
context-sensitive, 114
143. 235 subcategorization, 90-106, 113,
derived, 104, 128, 131, 144
120-123
generalized, 134, 135, 137-140. >4*.
context-free, 121
•43. 177. **7 context-sensitive, 219
Plato, 24, 51
excluded from categorial com-
Post, E., 9
ponent, 128
Postal, P. M., 127, 132, 135, 154, 210
strict, 95-100, 103, 105, 106, 111,
Predicate, 71, 106, 211, 221
Processes 112, 120, 123, 149, 150, 153,
derivational, 184-192 "55. '57. '58- *'6. "9
quasi-productive, 186, 235 transformational, 87, 89, 90, 98,
Proper name, 201 117, 122, 128, 141, 217
Psychology, physiological, 205 Rules of agreement, 174, 175, 179,
180
Quantifiers, 224 Ryle, G., 8
Quine, W. V., 51, 203, 204
Rationalism, 48-54, 205-207 Sahlin, G., 5
Redundancy, 164-170 Sapir, E., 193
Reflexivization, 145, 146 Saumjan, S. K., 221
Reid, Thomas, 199, 200 Saussure, F. de., 4, 8, 47
Relations, grammatical, 73, 74, 99, Schachter, P., 213
113-120, 123-125, 136, 141, Schlegel, A. W., 209
144, 162, 163, 220, 221 Semantic interpretation, 70, 71, 75,
selectional, 74, 113 79, 87, 88, 99, 117, 132, 135,
Relative clause, 137, 138, 145, 177, 136, 138, 140, 141, 144, 151, 159,
180 161, 177, 186, 197, 220, 221,
restrictive, 217 223, 224, 229
INDEX 251

Sentences Transformational history, 130

acceptability of, 10, 11, 195, 196 Transformations
and performance, 11-14 elementary, 143, 144, 147
constituent, 132, 133, 135 grammatical, 55, 63, 89, 125, 127-
deviant, 10, 77, 141, 148, 157, 227, •47. 175
23°. 235 deletion, 138, 144, 177, 179-182,
matrix, 132, 133, 135 208, 222, 234
Sequence, hierarchic, 165, 166 erasure, 145, 146, 177, 179, 182,
Set-systems, 124-126 191, 226
Simplicity measure, see Evaluation filtering function of, 139, 141,
measures; Grammars, sim- 191, 224
plicity of generalized, 132-137, 224
Skinner, B. F., 51, 204 local, 89, 99, 215
Soboleva, P. A., 221 passive, 103-106, 223
Stockwell, R., 213 relative clause, 234
Strings singulary, 133-135, 139, 142
basic, 17, 18 strictly local, 100, 101, 105, 106,
preterminal, 84, 85, 88, 122, 142 113, 122, 215
terminal, 66, 84, 143 and meaning, 132, 225
Structure index, 122, 143, 144, 147, Translation, 30
Turing machines, 62
Structures, innate, 25-27, 30, 32-34, Twaddell, W. F., 193, 194
36, 37, 48-54, 58, 59, 117, 160,
202, 204, 206, 207 Uhlenbeck, E. M., 194
Subject Universals, linguistic, 35, 36, 41, 55,
grammatical, 23, 70, 163 73, 118, 181, 209, 210
logical, 23, 70, 163, 221 formal, 27-30, 36, 46, 53, 55, 207,
Surface structure, 16-18, 23, 24, 29, 231
70, 118, 123, 125, 128, 131, 135, phonetic, 160
138, 140, 141, 162, 163, 199, semantic, 28, 77, 160, 201
221, 224 substantive, 27-30, 46, 53, 55, 65,
defined, 198, 199, 220, 221 73, 117, 207, 231
Syntax, semantic basis for, 32, 33, 75, Usage, statistics of, 195, 212
78, 203, 214, 220, 226
Systems of belief, 160 Verificationism, 194

Topic-comment, 221, 225 Wilson, J. C, 163

Transformation-marker, 131, 132, Wittgenstein, L., 51
133. »34> 135. «3°. «37. "39. Word, 235
222 Word order, 126
Transformational cycle, 29, 35, 89,
143, 186, 212, 215, 233 Yngve, V., 197, 198, 213
(continued from front flap)
Contents: The first chapter presents the
backgrounds that have remained un-
changed during the past ten years. The
author reviews the general orientation of
all work in generative grammar since its
inception-or revival-in the middle fif-
ties. The specific intent is to determine
exactly how this work is related-in its
divergencies as well as its connections-to
earlier developments in linguistics and to
see how this work relates to traditional
issues in psychology and philosophy.
Chapter 2 extends earlier transforma-
tional theory to enrich its expressive
power. In this section there is a discus-
sion, centering primarily on lexical struc-
ture, of problems that earlier formula-
tions of transformational theory were in-
capable of dealing with in an appropriate
way. The author suggests an extension
of the mechanisms of this theory to over-
come the defect.
Chapter 3 offers- a modification of ear-
lier theory in the opposite direction, i.e.,
in the imposition of stronger constraints
that limit its expressive power while still,
apparently, preserving empirical ade-
quacy.
Chapter 4 is concerned with problems
on the borders of present research that
are still essentially unsolved and that have
so far resisted adequate treatment within
the framework of any explicit theory of
linguistic structure.

About the Author

Noam Chomsky is Professor in the De-

partment of Modern Languages and the
Research Laboratory of Electronics, M.I.T.
He is currently a research fellow, Center
for Cognitive Studies, Harvard. He re-
ceived his Ph.D. in linguistics from the
University of Pennsylvania.
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