H. P. Grice's Minimal Transformationalism

Minimal transformationalism. Grice was proud that his system PIROTESE "allowed for the most minimal transformations." transformational grammar Philosophy of language The most powerful of the three kinds of grammar distinguished by Chomsky. The other two are finite-state grammar and phrasestructure grammar. Transformational grammar is a replacement for phrase-structure grammar that (1) analyzes only the constituents in the structure of a sentence; (2) provides a set of phrase-structure rules that generate abstract phrase-structure representations; (and 3) holds that the simplest sentences are produced according to these rules. Transformational grammar provides a further set of transformational rules to show that all complex sentences are formed from simple elements. These rules manipulate elements and otherwise rearrange structures to give the surface structures of sentences. Whereas phrase-structure rules only change one symbol to another in a sentence, transformational rules show that items of a given grammatical form can be transformed into items of a different grammatical form. For example, they can show the transformation of negative sentences into positive ones, question sentences into affirmative ones and passive sentences into active ones. Transformational grammar is presented as an improvement over other forms of grammar and provides a model to account for the ability of a speaker to generate new sentences on the basis of limited data. “The central idea of transformational grammar is determined by repeated application of certain formal operations called ‘grammatical transformations’ to objects of a more elementary sort.” Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax