Complete list of Transformational Grammar rules...

Question

Can anyone point me to a complete, or semi-complete, set of Transformational Grammar rules as applied to English. The ones I have come across have all been obviously imcomplete. I hope I am using the right terminology here.

For example, something like the following:
S -> NP + VP
NP -> (DET) + N
.
.
.
Thanks again,
John Smith
= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News = http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! == Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Can anyone point me to a complete, or semi-complete, set of Transformational Grammar rules as applied to English. The ones ... here. For example, something like the following: S -> NP + VP NP -> (DET) + N . . .[/nq]
Those aren't transformation rules. Those are phrase structure rules. Different thing entirely; they are essentially a Post production system and specify the well-formedness conditions for phrase structures.

Transformations, by contrast, change one phrase structure into another, and have names, like Passive, Subject-Raising, Tough-Movement, Slifting, Extraposition, Equi-NP-Deletion, There-Insertion, or Sluicing, to name only a few.
You can get a pretty decent list of one kind of transformations (cyclic verb-governed alternations) in Beth Levin's book "English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation", University of Chicago Press
1993.

-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler Michigan Linguistics "The relation between having a language and a set of sentences is not unlike the relation between having a car and a set of trips to the supermarket." James D. McCawley

Usenet · Answer

Thanks for the help.
[nq:2]Can anyone point me to a complete, or semi-complete, set ... + VP NP -> (DET) + N . . .[/nq]
[nq:1]Those aren't transformation rules. Those are phrase structure rules. Different thing entirely; they are essentially a Post production system and ... unlike the relation between having a car and a set of trips to the supermarket." James D. McCawley[/nq]
= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News = http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! == Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Can anyone point me to a complete, or semi-complete, set ... + VP NP -> (DET) + N . . .[/nq]
[nq:1]Those aren't transformation rules. Those are phrase structure rules. Different thing entirely; they are essentially a Post production system and specify the well-formedness conditions for phrase structures.[/nq]
Thanks for the correction. How about a complete list of phrase structure rules applied to English?
= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News = http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! == Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Transformational[/nq]
[nq:2]Those aren't transformation rules. Those are phrase structure rules. Different ... production system and specify the well-formedness conditions for phrase structures.[/nq]
[nq:1]Thanks for the correction. How about a complete list of phrase structure rules applied to English? = Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News = http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! == Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! = [/nq]
How about a complete list of the different types of grammar? Including what they're for, and they are (mis)applied. I mean, some of these are of use to linguists who are figuring out how the language has evolved, yes? but of no use to someone who is trying to figure out how to use the language, yet they are taught to small children and to adults learning English as a second language. Or at least, small unrelated bits are, mixed with small unrelated bits of other types.

In the '50s, I was taught a descriptive grammar (I don't know its official name), with parts of speech and clauses and phrases, diagramming sentences (which has come in useful since), proper punctuation, principle parts of verbs, mood, all that sort of thing. In the late '60s, diagramming was gone, and children were taught to draw big circumflexes above the sentence, these supposedly showing how the words related to each other but if the sentence was at all complex, the lines would have to overlap, including chunks that didn't belong.
Pogo

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Thanks for the correction. How about a complete list of phrase structure rules applied to English?[/nq]
There really is no such thing. The formalism isn't up to it. For a practical approximation, I seem to recall that Pereira and Shieber's Prolog and Natural-Language Analysis built up a pretty good set.

Bresnan and Kaplan's Lexical Functional Grammar used annotated phrase structure rules. You might take a look at one of those books, although the early ones (the only ones available when I took her course in the mid '80s) tended to cover narrow treatments of phenomena in lots of languages rather than a comprehensive attempt to do any one language.

Evan Kirshenbaum + HP Laboratories >We never met anyone who believed in
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 >fortune cookies. That's astounding.Palo Alto, CA 94304 >Belief in the precognitive powers

Complete list of Transformational Grammar rules...

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions