Chapter 5 Transformational Syntax of English Simple Sentences: IINADEQUACY OF PHRASE-STRUCTURE RULES jarly in chapter 3, we speculated whether we could describe the syntactic sequences of English merely by making a list of English sentences. We found that such a list would be endless. We then tried to treat syntax as a list of linear patterns of form classes and found that the list of patterns, if not endless, would be unmanageably long. But our principal objection to linear sentence patterns was their failure to even acknowledge, much less explain, the hierarchical constituent structure of sentences. We solved the latter problem in chapter 4 by opting for tree diagrams rather than linear Patterns, but the problem of numbers still remained: even the number of tree structures in English would be very, very large.’ And then another objection to an inventory of tree structures arose: any such inventory would repeat unnecessarily, in diagram after diagram, many generaliza- tions about English sentence structure and thus would violate the canon of simplicity by which grammars, as theories of language structure, must abide. We solved this simplicity problem with phrase-structure rules, wherein each statement about sentence structure is given once, and then applied by convention to the generation of any and all sentences that manifest the structure. PS rules seemed also, and finally, to solve the problem of numbers—they seemed able to account for endless numbers of sentences without the need for endless lists of sentences or of pat- terns or of trees. But now examine each sentence in 5.1, especially the double-lettered 96TRANSFORMATIONAL SYNTAX-OF ENGLISH SIMPLE SENTENCES: | sentences, and ask yourself: (1) Is this an English sentence? (2) Will our PS-rules, as they now:stand, provide a diagram for it? 5.1a Richard sent a message to Henry. ‘aa Richard sent Henry a message. _b The troops came home quietly. °! bb > Quietly, the troops came home. © — Rip is sleeping. ; ce Is Rip sleeping? The answer to the first question is yes for every seritence in 5.1; the answer to the second question is yes for the single-lettered. sentences, but no for the double-lettered sentences: 5.1aa contains two NPs:in a VP, and our rules allow for only one; 5.1bb has an adverb in front of the initial sentence NP, and our rules allow. adverbs only to follow the. VP; 5.1cc contains a form of be (with a -prs inflection) i in front of the initial sentence NP, and-our rules allow. such morphemes to occur only in the AUX, which must follow the initial sentence NP. Thus our PS rules, as they stand, are inadequate because they are not.able to generate these three perfectly acceptable English sentences. Does this mean that we will be.forced to discard PS. rules as‘we did inventories of linear patterns and inventories of trees? Since PS rules have shown themselves to be useful and flexible, we need to examine this problem closely before we decide their fate. Let us see if we can revise our rules to make them capable of generating the double-lettered sentences in 5.1. The PS rules could be made to generate 3. laa by adding another NP to PS rule ii; here is how it would look (the additional NP is italicized and parts.of the rule are left out): 6.2 VP> he NP) + (NP) + (PP) + oP) The rules could be made to generate 5.1bb by adding an optional ADVM in front of the NP in rule i: 5.3.87 (ADV) + NP+ AUX +P. And the PS rules could generate 5.1cc by revising’ rule i to allow is (TNS + be) to precede the initial NP: 5.4 S—> (ADVM) + (INS + be) +NP + AUX+ VP... But we are’ on the wrong track when we attempt to account for the double-lettered sentences in 5.1 by revising the PS rules, and for two reasons. The first has to do with the old problem of numbers, the second with adequacy to a-new kind of linguistic data. First, an examination of 97