Advance Linguistics : Mental Grammar

 Mental Grammar

1.          Introduction

Psycholinguistic involves mental grammar which is the grammar exists in our mind.It concerns with the discussion of how we produce and understand sentences, what is the process of sentence patterns.Chomsky·s theory is presented as the highest priority.

Generative grammar

                 In linguistics, a grammar (or set of rules) that indicates the structure and interpretation of sentences which native speakers of a language accept as belonging to the language.

                       We can say in other way that mental grammar is the generative grammar stored in the brain that allows a speaker to produce language that other speakers can understand. A kind of generative grammar (Chomsky), the innate basis for learning, speaking and understanding any (verbal) language

2.        The Summary

Chomsky’s Competence and Performance Distinction

-          Definition of Competence

The knowledge that people have of the grammar of ther language.

The activities involved in producing and understanding sentences are

called as performance processes.

Major goals of psycholinguistics according to Chomsky:

1.  To specify how people use competence sothat they are able to produce and understand the sentences.

2.  To specify how people acquire competence (grammatical knowledge)

            Performance processes is the activities involved in producing and understanding sentences.A theory of performance should explain:

-          Sentence production, i.e. how speakers take ideas and make them into sentences which are rendered into speech sounds.

-          Sentence comprehension, i.e. how speakers, on receiving speech sounds, recover ideas from those sounds.

The relationship of competence to performance for Chomsky is that the competence being  a part or component of the whole which is performance. Competence is the knowledge that persons have of their grammar while performance involves knowledge for using competence so that the process of sentence production and understanding can be realized.

A.    The standard theory

Theory of grammar become known as the standard theory(ST) which is has been revised in government/binding theory. The standard theory grammar consists of syntax, semantic, and phonological.

Four different level of linguistic description:

1.      Sound level (phonetic interpretation), the phonetic sound pattern of a sentence is represented.

2.      Meaning level (semantic interpretation), the meaning and logical relations in a sentence are represented.

3.      Deep structure, Deep structure represents the underlying syntactic form of the sentence

4.      Surface structure, various syntactic aspects of a sentence are represented. Surface structure represents its more overt form.

Syntactic component consist of two types of syntactic rules:

-          Phrase structure rules(base rules) provides deep structure

-          Transformational rules provide surface structure. 

The various components of the grammar Standar Theory

a.       Phrase structure rules, lexicon, and deep structure.

Phrase structure(PS) rules provide the basic constituent the structure of a sentence. Essentialy, they provide an analysis of a sentnece into its underlying phrases which are further analysis into words and word parts.

b.      Transformational rules and surface structure

Surface structure is the outcome of transformational rules operating on the deep structure.

e.g : open the door

On the surface, this sentence consists of a single VP. Here;

VP       V + NP, then NP      D + N, where     V ‘open’,      D ‘the’ and N‘door’

 Open the door

c.       Phonological rules and phonetic interpretation.

Phonetic interpretation of the sentence is a process of surface structure to interpret structure into a sequence of some symbols

e.g : Mares eat oats

When it spoken at a natural speed, this sentence is pronounced [merziydowts].

By the Phonological rule , the /i/ gets a ‘y’· glide, the /o/ gets a ‘w’· glide, the /t/ of eat change to /d/

d.      Semantic rules and semantic interpretation.

In this case the Semantic rule is the Surface Structure which comes to the rules of Semantic Component to interpret the structure into meaning elements and logical relations.

e.g : The shoe hurts· 

* The shoe is in some predicate condition(the shoe may be tight)

* Some living creature is in pain

B. The Government/Binding (GB) theory of grammar

     It was first synthesized in 1981. The conception is the underlying relationship of syntax, meaning and sound remains the same only syntax is generative

Linguistic challenges to Chomsky·s grammar

-          Disagreement with the organization of his grammar where syntax is given a primary role over semantics. (This one that we will be dealt with)

-          Disagreement with the adequacy of his structural characterization of such basis syntactic relations and constituents,particularly Subject, Direct Object, IndirectObject and Verb Phrase

Meaning-based grammars

Chomsky begins his description of grammar with the specification of syntax, a syntax which functions independently with the meaning and sound forms of the sentence being the output of that syntax.

This was strongly attacked by a Generative Semanticists in 1970. They regarded meaning or semantics as the basis for grammatical theorizing. Logical semantic served as the conceptual starting point for grammar.

3.      Conclusion

Mental grammar is the generative grammar stored in the brain that allows a speaker to produce language that other speakers can understand.

There are two conceptions thatChomsky·s notion for grammar:

-  The Standard Theory

-  The Government/Binding (GB)