Kernel sentence or transformed sentence

Question

i was wondering if you could give me a couple of examples of a kernel sentence and a few transformed ones so that I can see the difference between the 2.

Andriy Lapin · Accepted Answer

Dear teal book 907:

I don't know which grammatical framework you are using, but the notion of kernel sentences and transformations first gained popularity (which does not mean, though, that it hadn't existed before) due to the works on classical generative grammar by Noam Chomsky and his colleagues. According to them, a kernel sentence corresponds to a simple, active, affirmative declarative (SAAD) sentence, such as

John stroked the cat.

Now that we have this kernel sentence (the alternative term is kernel clause) we are in a position to apply certain transformations, e. g.

Negation: John didn't stroke the cat.

Passivization: The cat was stroked (by John).

The topic is a huge one, with numerous later developments, but something you might need to know at this stage is that the very idea of transformations was later all but abandoned in Chomsky's later writings, and you won't find any substantial references to them in the currently popular Minimalist Programme, which basically said goodbye to syntax as such.

If you want to do some serious reading on the subject, I suggest you start with Chomsky's Syntactic Structures, which, as is often claimed, revolutionized linguistics in the 20th century. My advice, however, is to take it with a pinch of salt.

Respectfully,

A

Kernel sentence or transformed sentence

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