User:Zaheen/Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures is an important book in the science of language. Noam Chomsky, an American expert on language studies, wrote the book. The book first came out in 1957. It presented the idea of transformational generative grammar. This grammar is a collection of rules about structures of sentences (groups of words that have a meaning). The rules in Chomsky's system are formal, like the ones in mathematics and logic. In the center of this system are phrase structure rules. These are rules about how words group together. They can break down a sentence into smaller parts. Chomsky then joins these with a new kind of rules: "transformations". These change one sentence structure into another. Such a system can give rise to different sentence structures. Using this system, Chomsky wanted to "generate" or explain all sentences of a given language. But they all have to be right from the point of view of grammar.

Syntactic Structures is Chomsky's first book. It is a short book of about a hundred pages. Chomsky wrote it for experts in the science of language. He based it on class notes he had prepared for people who studied at MIT. In it, he presented the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." This is a sentence with no clear meaning. Yet, from the point of view of grammar, it still seems natural and right to a native English speaker. So, for Chomsky, the study of sentence structures is separate from the study of meaning.

Chomsky wrote Syntactic Structures when he was still not well known in his field. Mouton, a small printing house in the Netherlands, brought out the book. Still, professionals of the science of language gave a nice welcome to this work at start. They even thought that it was a good addition to the common way of doing language study. But, older professionals with experience soon started to find fault with it. They did not like its strong new views. Unlike them, the young generation of language professionals liked Chomsky's way of doing language study. This gave language science a new direction in the second half of the 20th century. The study of sentence structures was at the center of such theories. These theories were also more formal, like mathematics and logic. In this way of doing study, language's place in the mind came to be more important than language as behavior.

Syntactic Structures had an effect on fields other than the science of language. It had a big effect on the study of knowledge and mind. It also had a smaller effect on the study of computers and brain. Some professionals have called into question Chomsky's theory. They think it is wrong to think of language as a perfect system. They also say it gives less value to the gathering and testing of data. Still, around the year 2000, both language science professionals and others had good words to say about the book. They saw it as one of the most important books of the 20th century.