Central to the idea that transformation rules serve as a bridge between deep
structure and surface structure was the notion that transformations do not alter
meaning. If they did, it would be difficult to justify the rules. Not only would
they interfere with understanding, but they also would fail to realize
Chomsky’s goal of developing a grammar that looks into the history of a sen-
tence. Deep structure was a convenient means of countering an alternative and
nagging argument: that meaning is in the surface structure, that the words we
hear and read mean pretty much what the person who created them intended.
Understanding the consequences of this argument is important. If meaning
is in the surface structure, there is no need for a mediating structure between
mind and utterances. Transformation rules become irrelevant. However, it was
clear that some transformationsdidchange meaning. In the early version of the
grammar, negatives are generated from an underlying affirmative through a
transformation rule. That is, the negative transformation turns a positive state-
ment into a negative one, as in these sentences:
- Maria wanted to dance with Raul.
4a. Maria did not want to dance with Raul.
The deep structure of 4a is 4, and the meanings are clearly different. The
question transformation results in a similar change, turning an assertion into a
question. Sentences like these presented a big problem for T-G grammar. Just
prior to the publication ofAspects,Lees (1962) and Klima (1964) proposed that
such difficulties could be eliminated by specifying certain phrase-structure
markers in the deep structure of sentences like 4a, which triggered transforma-
tion. These markers—governing, for example, negatives and questions—were
hypothesized to reside in the deep structure of all utterances and were said to be
activated by contextual cues. Once activated, they triggered the transformation.
The result is that sentence 4a would not have sentence 4 as its deep structure but
instead would have sentence 4b:
4b. neg Maria wanted to dance with Raul.This approach solved the problem in a clever way, and Chomsky adopted it.
But the solution was highly artificial and not very satisfactory. In fact, it created
more problems than it solved. Markers for questions and negatives seem
straightforward, but we have no way of determining what kind of markers
would govern such sentences as the following, which also undergo a change in
meaning as a result of transformation:^2
NOAM CHOMSKY AND GRAMMAR 167
(^2) Taken from Lee (2001).