Transformational generative grammar - American Education

Ineducation, a term borrowed from linguisticsand applied to a “bottom-up” approach tounderstanding and teaching grammar by usingthe deep structure of a sentence—a simplenoun and simple verb—as a base, or foundation,on which a wide variety of surface structuresmay be constructed. The opposite ofDIAGRAMMING, or parsing, sentences, transformationalgrammar uses an almost mathematicalapproach, based on strict, explicit rules, togenerate sentences and transform their meaning.Thus, “cat plays” may constitute the deepstructure of a sentence, whose superficial structuremight consist of any of a wide variety ofadjectives, adverbs and other words such as“the,” “soft,” “hungry” and “vicious,” whichcan transform the meaning of the deep structureas they generate a complex sentence structure.“The cat plays with its food,” for example,is a structure based on the same deep structureas “The cat plays with the mouse.” A traditionalform of teaching grammar, along with diagramming,transformational generative grammarhas largely been replaced by the WHOLELANGUAGE approach to teaching grammar inmost American schools.