166 CHAPTER 5
viewed as quirkiness. In addition, the revisions made the grammar more ab-
stract and thus more difficult to understand for anyone without significant
training in linguistics.
This chapter cannot provide an in-depth analysis of the grammar and all of
its permutations; instead, it will offer an overview that traces some of the signif-
icant features of the grammar from the initial formulation in 1957, concluding
with an examination of Chomsky’s latest version.
Deep Structure and Surface Structure
InSyntactic Structures,Chomsky (1957) hinted that grammatical operations
related to language production work in the background. We do not really see
them at work; we see only the consequences of their application on an underly-
ing structure. InAspects of the Theory of Syntax(1965), Chomsky developed
this proposal by resuscitating the prestructuralism idea that there is something
underneath language, some universal feature of the human mind, such as logic,
that determines the substance of utterances. This argument effectively ad-
dressed the problem presented by actives and passives. A passive sentence like
Fritz was kissed by Macarenawill have its corresponding active,Macarena
kissed Fritzas an underlying structure. This structure is then transformed to the
passive through a grammatical transformation rule.
Chomsky identified a basic grammatical structure inSyntactic Structuresthat
he referred to askernel sentences. Reflecting mentalese, orlogical form,kernel
sentences were where words and meaning first appeared in the complex cogni-
tive process that resulted in an utterance. However, the overall focus inSyntactic
Structureswas syntax, not meaning. In fact, Chomsky indicated that meaning
was largely irrelevant, as he illustrated in the sentence, “Colorless green ideas
sleep furiously” (1957, p. 15).^1 It means nothing but is nevertheless grammatical.
As impressive asSyntactic Structureswas, the idea that any theory of lan-
guage could ignore meaning was difficult to accept. Chomsky (1965) re-
sponded to the criticism inAspects of the Theory of Syntax,in which he
abandoned the notion of kernel sentences and identified the underlying constit-
uents of sentences asdeep structure.Deep structure was versatile: It contained
the meaning of an utterance and provided the basis for transformation rules that
turned deep structure intosurface structure,which represented what we actu-
ally hear or read. Transformation rules, therefore, connected deep structure and
surface structure, meaning and syntax.
(^1) Chomsky (1957) wrote: “the notion ‘grammatical’cannot be identified with ‘meaningful’or ‘signif-
icant’ in any semantic sense” (p. 15).