CONTEMPORARY GRAMMATICAL STUDIES

The history of grammatical studies is treated in the following surveys of grammar, both traditional and “new.”

当代语法研究

语法研究的历史会在下列传统语法与“新语法”的调查中进行探讨。

Traditional Grammar.  According to one scholar, “By traditional grammar is meant the basically Aristotelian orientation toward the nature of language as exemplified in the work of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the speculative work of the medieval, and the prescriptive approach of 18^th century grammarians.” It will be noted that, except for the medieval speculative grammars, this grammar is a tradition of textbooks—of school grammars rather than scholarly grammars. Also, as the foregoing historical sketch suggest, it is based on Latin, no matter what language it may be treating.

传统语法。根据一位学者的说法，“传统语法大体上是指亚里士多德对语言本质的取向，就像在古希腊和古罗马的作品中，在中世纪思辨性作品中以及18世纪的语法学家规定性方法中展示的那样”。人们会注意到，除了中世纪思辨性的语法外，这种语法是教科书的传统---是学校语法，而不是学术语法。另外，正如前面的历史概述所描述的那样，它是以拉丁语为基础的，无论它探讨的是什么语言。

Parts of Speech and Parsing.  Traditional grammar usually begins with a morphological section in which the parts of speech are defined and distinguished and their variations of form are indicated as neatly as possible in paradigms. Some traditional grammars of English carry the Latin model to the point of identifying four or more cases by Latin names, although modern English has only two formally distinct cases in the noun (one for subject or objects, as “man”; and one to show possession, as “man’s”), THREE in the pronoun (as “he” for subject, “him” for object, and “his” to show possession), and none in the adjective.

词类与解析。传统语法通常以形态学的部分开始，其中对词类进行了定义和区别，并且尽可能以简洁范式表示它们的形式变化。一些传统的英语语法将拉丁语模式发展到用拉丁语名称来识别四种或更多格的程度，尽管现代英语在名词中只有两种形式上不同的格（一种表示主语或者宾语，如“男人”；另一个表示所有，如“男人的”），三个代词（如“他”表示主语，“他”表示宾语，而“他的”表示拥有），而在形容词中没有这种形式。

Parsing, the identification of each word according to part of speech, is one of the exercises of traditional grammar. The number of parts of speech in English is usually taken to be eight: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. Some grammarians recognize the article (“the,” “an,” “a”) as distinct from the adjective, some omit the interjection, and some include the participle.

解析，根据词类识别每个单词，是传统语法的运用之一。英语中词类的数量通常为八种：名词、代词、动词、形容词、副词、介词、连词和感叹词。一些语法学家认为冠词（“the,” “an,” “a”）有别于形容词，一些人忽略了感叹词，而一些人接纳了分词。

The parts of speech are defined in time-honored ways, partly according to meaning (that is, “notionally”) and partly according to function. The noun is “the name of a person, place, or thing,” and the verb “EXPRESSES action or state of being.” These are semantic definitions. The adjective, though, “modifies a noun,” and the adverb “modifies a verb, adjective, or adverb.” These are functional or syntactic definitions. When a word of one part of speech performs the function assigned to another part of speech, the phrase “used as “or “taking the place of” explains this deviation—in “barn door,” for example, “barn” is a noun used as an adjective.

对词类进行定义由来已久，部分是根据意思（也就是说，表意的），部分是根据功能。名词是“人、地点或事物”的名称，而动词是“表达行为或存在的状态”。这些都是语义学的定义。然而，形容词“修饰名词”，而副词“修饰动词、形容词或者副词”。这些都是功能或句法的定义。当一个词类的单词起到了另一个词类所承担的功能时，短语“用作”或“代替”就解释了这种偏差---例如，在“谷仓门”中，“谷仓”就是用作形容的一个名词。

The Sentence.  Syntactically, the most important unit in traditional grammar is the declarative sentence, defined as “a group of words EXPRESSING a complete thought.” This concentration on one type of utterance may be due historically to the fact that traditional grammar stems from Aristotle’s investigations of the proposition, or predication, in logic. Other types of utterances are taken to be deviations from the basic declarative sentence. Within the sentence, the parts are the subject, the predicate (consisting of a verb and its complement, if any), and the various modifiers. In analysis, the subject, verb, and complements usually are identified as single words (with appended modifiers, if any). Traditional grammar is not disposed to treat noun phrases or verb phrases (that is, complete subjects or complete predicates) as units.

句子。从句法上来说，传统语法中最重要的单元是陈述句，定义为“一组单词表达一个完整的想法”。这种专注于一种类型的话语可能是在历史上传统语法来源于亚里士多德对逻辑学命题、谓词研究的事实。其它类型的话语被认为是对基本陈述句的背离。在句子中，部分是主语、谓语（由动词及其补语组成的，如果有的话），以及各种修饰语。在分析中，主语、动词和补语通常被确定为单个的单词（带有附加的修饰语，如果有的话）。传统语法并不倾向于将名词短语或动词短语处理成（也就是说，完全的主语或完全的谓语）单元。

Sentences are labeled in two ways: as declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, or imperative, depending on intention; and as simple, compound, complex, or compound-complex, depending upon the types and arrangements of the constituent clauses. Clauses are labeled according to the relations of coordination and subordination and according to function—adverbial, adjectival (or relative), and noun (or nominal). Critics of traditional grammar maintain that its concentration on the declarative sentence makes it weak in handling the complexities of units, phrases, and clauses lower than the sentence.

标记句子有两种方法：根据意图，作陈述句、疑问句、感叹句或祈使句；和根据组成从句的类型和安排，作简单句、复合句、复杂句或并列复合句。标记从句，根据协调和隶属关系并根据功能---副词、形容词（或关系代词）和名词（或名词性的词）。传统语法的批评者认为，传统语法专注于陈述句使它在处理单元、短语以及低于句子的从句的复杂性时变得很弱。

Diagramming.  Sentences are structurally displayed by the use of diagrams that show the main elements along a horizontal line and the modifiers hanging from this line in sometimes rather complicated ways. The diagramming system effectively shows the kinds of structures identifiable in traditional grammar and graphically illustrates its tendency to concentrate on single words as functional units. It is, as traditional grammar is, an essentially logical system.

图形表示。句子在结构上是利用沿着水平线，而且有时是以连在这条线上相当复杂的方式所显示的主要元素图表来展示的。该图形表示系统有效地展示了在传统语法中可识别的结构类型，并以图表形式说明了它将单个的单词集中作为功能单元的趋势。正如传统语法一样，它本质上就是一个逻辑系统。

Scholarly Traditional Grammar.  Because traditional grammar has been principally a teaching grammar, it has tended to have a preachy and prescriptive cast, although its bad reputation in this regard probably is based not so much on the books themselves as on the loud complaints of its critics. Also, as has been noted, school grammar has always lagged behind scholarly and scientific grammar.

学术性的传统语法。因为传统语法主要是教学语法，因此它趋向于说教和规定的特性，尽管它在这方面的坏名声可能不是基于书籍本身，而是由于其批评者吵闹的抱怨。另外，如前面提到的，学校语法一直落后于学术性的和细致严谨的语法。

Beginning in the late 19^th century, chiefly in northern Europe, and continuing into the 1930’s, we can distinguish a sort of scholarly culmination of traditional grammar, achieved by men who were writing not textbooks but very careful accounts of English on the traditional basis. The greatest monument of this “scholarly traditional grammar” is Otto Jespersen’s A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (7 vols., 1909—1949). Others are Hendrik Poutsma’s A Grammar of Late Modern English (Part 1, 2d ed., 1928; Part 2, 1914—1926), Etsko Kruisinga’s A Handbook of Present-Day English (1925), and George O. Curme’s unfinished A Grammar of the English Language (vol. 3, 1931; vol. 2, 1935). Full realization and appreciation of scholarly traditional grammar were eclipsed by the growth of structural-descriptive grammar, beginning in the 1930’s.

从19世纪末开始，主要在北欧，并一直持续到20世纪30年代，我们可以区分由那些并非在写作教科书，而是非常细致地阐述传统基础英语的人们所完成的一种传统语法的学术巅峰。这种“学术传统语法”最伟大的典范就是奥托·叶斯柏森的《关于历史原则的现代英语语法》（7卷，1909年至1949年）。其他人有亨德里克·保茨马的《近现代英语语法》（第一部分，第二版，1928年；第二部分，1914年至1926年），埃兹柯·科鲁伊辛加的《现代英语手册》，以及乔治·奥·柯姆未完成的《英语语言文法》（3卷，1931年；2卷，1935年）。从20世纪30年代开始，随着结构型-描述性语法的发展，对学术传统语法的充分认识和欣赏已黯然失色。

Structural-Descriptive Grammar.  The double adjective “structural-descriptive” used to name this truly innovative and primarily American kind of grammar stresses the facts (1) that it concentrates on arrangements—structures or constructions—that signal meaning quite apart from the lexical, or dictionary, meaning of the words and (2) that it is rigorously empirical—based on observation and experience—rather than rule-giving in its spirit. It is the kind of grammar that might have been developed in the 18^th century, when so much else in positivistic science was worked out under the inspiration of Lockean empiricism, but it had to wait 200 years.

结构型-描述性语法。双形容词的“结构型-描述性”用于命名这种真正的创新，而且主要是美式语法强调的事实（1）它专注于结构或构造的安排，该信号的意义与词法的，或词典、单词的意义完全不同。（2）它是严格的经验主义的---基于观察和经验---而不是精神上给予的规则。它是那种可能在18世纪发展起来的语法，当时在洛克经验主义的启发下完成了实证主义学科的许多其它东西，不过要等上200年。

The grandfathers, so to speak, of this new grammar were Saussure and Bloomfield. The fathers were Charles C. Fries, George L. Trager and Henry Lee Smith, Jr., Eugene Nida, and Archibald A. Hill. In the 1950’s, when “linguistics” became the new panacea for English teachers, it meant this sort of grammar and the promise it seemed to hold for redeeming grammar instruction in the schools.

可以这么说，这种新语法的始祖就是索绪尔和布洛姆菲尔德。父亲是查尔斯·C. 弗里斯，乔治·L. 特拉格和亨利·李·史密斯、尢金·奈达，以及阿奇博尔德·A. 希尔。在20世纪50年代，当“语言学”成为英语教师新的灵丹妙药时，它意味着这种语法，并承诺，它似乎是用来弥补学校语法教学的。

Phonology.  It was characteristic of the structural-descriptive movement that it rejected traditional grammar totally and sought to build its superior edifice on simple, observable, and verifiable fact, just as a theory of matter would begin with fundamental particle. The foundation was phonology, which had been of little interest to traditional grammar.

音韵学。它是结构型-描述性运动的特征，因而它完全排斥了传统语法，并试图在简单的，可观察到的，以及可核实事实的基础上建立其更好的大厦，就像物质理论会从基本粒子开始一样。基础就是音韵学，它对传统语法没有什么兴趣。

Phonology in itself has been an absorbing subject for modern linguistics, especially the branch called phonemics, which deals with the set of sounds peculiar to a certain language and by means of which all distinctions between utterances are made. In English, for example, the words “pat,” “pet,” “pit,” “pot,” and “put” are distinguished one from another by a single phoneme. A combination of phonemic units that has meaning is called a morpheme. It may be a word or a part of a word—for example, “chair,” “-ful” (as in “cupful”), or “re-“(as in “refer”).

音韵学本身就是一门现代语言学引人入胜的学科，尤其是称为音位学的分支，它涉及某种语言特定的一组声音，并凭借它区别构成话语之间的所有差别。在英语中，例如，单词“轻拍”，“宠物”，“坑”，“锅”和“放置”都是通过单个音位来区分彼此的。具有意义的单位组合单元被称为词素。它可能是一个单词，或者一个词的一部分---例如，“椅子”，“-充满”（如在“满杯”中），或“重新-”（如在“提及”中）。

The definition of “word” is based on a combination of one or more morphemes with the presence of certain phonemic units called “supra-segmental phonemes” (stress, pitch, and juncture—juncture being a combination of a pause with a rising or falling pitch). Phonemic units such as these are important in distinguishing, for example, between “lighthouse keeping” and “light housekeeping.”

“单词”的定义是基于一个或更多的词素组合，具有称作“超音段音位”（重音、音调以及连接音---连接音是一种具有上升或下降音调的停顿组合）所呈现的某种音位单元。例如，像这样的音位单元在区别“灯塔守卫”与“轻松的家务”时是很重要的。

Parts of Speech, or form Classes.  In this kind of grammar all the primary assertions and distinctions are based on spoken rather than written language, speech being prior to (and quite different from) the set of conventions used in writing. When the phonological groundwork has been established and extended into morphemics so that meaningful units can be dealt with unambiguously, such a grammar typically turns to a definition of the parts of speech, or “form classes.” Although variation in approach is considerable among the exponents of structural-descriptive grammar, it is fair to say that they all attempt first to define the parts of speech according to form, or morphology—that is, according to regular distinctive and contrastive patterns of sound. For example, “fineness’ is a noun because the “-ness” suffix cannot occur with any other class of word. But in English such formal distinctions are few and not very helpful.

词类，或形式类。在这种语法中，所有主要的断言和区别都是基于口语，而不是书面语，说话先于（而且相当不同）书写中使用的一套惯例。当建立了音韵学的基础，并扩展到语素学中，这样就可以明白地处理有意义的单元，这样的语法通常会转向对词类，或“形式类”的定义。尽管在结构型-描述性语法的倡导者中，方法变化是相当大的，但公平地说，它们都试图根据形式，或词法来首先定义词类---也就是说，根据有规则的，独特的和对比的声音模式。例如，“精致’是一个名词，因为“-表性质”的后缀无法与任何其它类的单词一起出现。但在英语中，这样的正式区别是很少的，而且也没什么帮助。

The next and most powerful way of defining word classes is by distribution and position. Any word, for example, that can occur in the test frame “The ________was good” is a noun. By a combination of these means and with great diversity of terminology, the structural-descriptive grammarians set up systems of classes that are more complicated and much more rigorous and precise than the parts of speech in traditional grammar.

定义单词类的下一个和最有力的方式是按分布和位置。例如，任何能够出现在测试框“________是好的”中的单词就是名词。通过这些手段的结合和拥有的众多术语，结构型-描述性语法家建立了比在传统语法中的词类更为复杂，更加严格和精确的类系统。

Structures, or syntax.  In spite of their keenness for precision in form classes, these grammarians spend little time on parsing, since they are much more interested in structures—that is, in syntax. The basic tool for investigating syntax is “immediate-constituent analysis” (usually called “IC” analysis). This is a process of determining the limits of structures by examining the patterns of supra-segmental phonemes that signal such units (that is, signal what words go together to form a unit distinct from other words nearby) and then, in each case, cutting the structure in two if possible until the uncuttable ultimate constituents are reached, or marking how each structure pairs with another to form a larger and “higher level” structure. Unlike the diagramming procedure of traditional grammar, IC analysis proceeds by phonological rather than logical (meaning-based) distinctions, and it does not rearrange the words of the structure and thus distort the very important part played by word order in English grammar.

结构，或句法。尽管他们热心于形式类的准确性，但这些语法家们在解析上却很少花时间，因为他们对结构更感兴趣---也就是说，对句法更感兴趣。研究句法的基本工具是“直接-成分分析”（通常称为“IC”分析）。这是通过检查标记这些单元的超音段音位的模式来确定结构界限的过程（换言之，标记那些词组合在一起形成一个不同于附近其它词的单元），然后，在每种的情况下，如果可能的话将结构切在两部分，直至达到不可切的最终成分，或者标记每个结构如何与另一个结构配对，以形成更大的和“更高层次”的结构。与传统语法的图形表示过程不同，IC分析是通过音韵学，而不是通过逻辑学（基于词意）的区别进行的，而且它不会改变该结构中的单词，从而扭曲词序在英语语法中所承担的非常重要的部分。

Only after a thorough account of “smaller,” or “lower level,” syntactic structures does this grammar turn to the sentence, where the syntax of traditional grammar begins and focuses. A sentence then can be seen to consist of a combination of syntactic structures bounded and distinguished by certain intonation patterns (combinations of pitch and juncture) and regularly reducible by IC analysis, morphemic analysis, and phonological analysis to the most basic units of structure and sound.

只有对“较小的”或“较低的层次”进行全面的阐述后，句法结构这种语法才能变成句子，而传统语法的句法就是从句子开始并成为焦点的。因此，句子就可被视为包括了有界限的一种句法结构的结合体，通过特定的语调模式（音调与连接音的组合）进行区别，并通过IC分析、语素分析以及音位分析，有规律地还原最基本的结构和声音单元。

Structural-descriptive grammar has also made use of abstract notations to show recurrent or particular patterns in syntax, as in the following example (N stands for noun, be for a form of the verb be, Adj for adjective and TrV for transitive verb):

结构型-描述性语法也利用过抽象的符号来展示循环或特定的句法模式，如下所示（N代表名词，be代表动词be的一种形式，Adj代表形容词，而TrV代表及物动词）：

N     be     Adj             N¹      TrV      N²       N³

Stars   are    bright           Dan     gave    Nora     a rose.

星星   是    明亮的           丹      给     诺拉   一束玫瑰

These are but 2 among 8 to 10 such formulas showing the “basic sentence patterns” of English in a typical structural-descriptive grammar. This kind of formula notes form (noun, adjective, and so on). Such formulas also have a form indicating function, as in the following example, where S stand for subject, IO for indirect object, and DO for direct object:

在典型的结构型-描述性语法中，这些只是展示英语“基本句型”的8到10个这样公式中的2个。这种公式说明了形式（名词、形容词等）。这样的公式也有表明形式的功能，如下所示，这里的S代表主语，IO代表间接宾语，而DO代表直接宾语：

       S       TrV        IO           DO

      Dan     gave       Nora         a rose.

       丹      给        诺拉       一束玫瑰

Some structural-descriptive grammars have separate terms for parts of speech depending upon whether they are defined by form or by function. Often the traditional terms are used for the form-determined classes, and the traditional term plus the suffix “-al” for the function-determined classes. Thus they have nouns (for words inflected according to the pattern “boy, boy’s, boys, boys’”) and nominals (for words that do not fit the pattern but function as nouns in a particular instance, as “poor” in “This plan benefits the poor”), verbs and verbals, adjective and adjectivals, and the like.

一些结构型-描述性语法对词类有单独的术语，这取决于它们是由形式，还是由功能定义的。通常传统术语用于形式-确定类，而传统术语加上后缀“-al”则用于功能-确定类。因此，它们有名词（根据模式“男孩，男孩的，男孩们的”单词屈折）以及名词性单词（不符合模式，但在特定例子中具有名词功能的那些词，如在“这项计划让穷人受益”中的“穷人”），动词与动词性单词，形容词与形容词化的单词，诸如此类。

Tagmemic Analysis.  Reflections on the interplay of form and function led Kenneth L. Pike, who had previously done definitive work in phonology, to devise during the 1940’s and 1950’s a means of grammatical analysis based on the “tagmeme”—a unit defined as “the correlation of a grammatical function, or slot, with the class of mutually substitutable items that can fill that slot.” The notion of simultaneity in the treatment of form and function was proposed in Pike’s book Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior (1954). It has been elaborated by Pike and his associates into a comprehensive theory—called “tagmemic analysis,” or “tagmemics”—that includes the mapping of tagmemes into “strings” at THREE specific levels of grammar: sentence level, clause level, and phrase level.

法位学分析。对形式和功能相互作用的深思使肯尼思·L. 派克，他以前在音韵学上做出过最好的工作成果，在20世纪40年代和20世纪50年代基于“法位”---一种定义为“语法功能，或槽的关联性，可填充那个槽，具有可相互替换项的类别”单元，设计了一种语法分析方法。在派克《语言与人类行为结构的统一理论的关系》一书中，在处理形式和功能时提出了同时性的概念。派克和他的同事们将其精心设计成一个综合性理论---称为“法位学分析”，或“法位学”---在三个语法特定层面上将包括法位的映现纳入“字符串”中：句子层面，从句层面以及短语层面。

Tagmemics has not yet been widely studied in the universities and schools, partly because Pike and his group have concentrated largely on describing and recording exotic foreign languages for Christian missionary purposes and partly because transformational-generative grammar has taken the center of the stage.

在大学和学院中，法位学还未被广泛研究，部分原因是因为派克和他的团队主要将注意力集中在描述和记录用于基督教传教士的外来语言上，还有部分原因是因为转换-生成语法已登上了舞台的中央。

Transformational-Generative Grammar.  In the 20^th century both traditional and structural-descriptive grammar have been criticized for their lack of penetration and of theoretical power. For example, C. K. Ogden and I.A. Richards say in their influential book The Meaning of Meaning (1923), “What is wrong with Grammar is not its defective terminology but the lack of interest displayed by Grammarians in the less arid and familiar portions of the field which it professes to cover.” These portions involve “a searching inquiry into the psychology of language.”

转换生成语法。在20世纪，传统的和结构型-描述性语法因它们缺乏渗透力和理论力量受到了批评。例如，C. K. 奥格登和I.A. 理查德在他们有影响力的《意义的含义》（1923年）一书中说“语法的问题不是其有缺陷的述语，而是语法家们对它声称涉及的不那么乏味和熟悉的领域部分表现出的缺乏兴趣”。这些部分涉及“对语言心理学的透彻探究”。

Noam Chomsky says in Language and Mind (1968) that structural-descriptive grammar “was a failure because [its] techniques are at best limited to the phenomena of surface structure and cannot, therefore, reveal the mechanisms that underlie the creative aspect of language use and the EXPRESSION of semantic content.” Chomsky, the chief figure of the transformational-generative movement, explicitly associates himself with the philosophy of Descartes and the universal or general grammar of Port Royal. Thus, in the historical sense, transformational-generative grammar can be seen as a reassertion of the speculative and philosophical aspirations that were the source of grammar in Greece, the motive of the medieval modistae, and the basis of the Port Royal Grammar.

诺姆·乔姆斯基在《语言与心智》（1968年）中说，结构型-描述性语法“是失败的，因为[它的]方法充其量局限于表面结构的现象，所以不能揭示构成语言使用的创造性方面和语义内容表达的机制”。乔姆斯基，转换-生成运动的主要人物，清楚明确地将他自己与笛卡尔的哲学和波尔·罗瓦雅尔的通用或普通语法联系地一起。因此，在历史意义上，转换-生成语法可以被视为一种对思辨性和哲学抱负的重申，这些抱负源自希腊语法，中世纪摩迪斯泰学派的动机，以及波尔·罗瓦雅尔语法的基础。

The aim of Transformational-Generative Grammar.  Whereas structural-descriptive grammar is content with an exhaustive objective description of completed language acts, transformational-generative grammar attempts to account for the ability of the human mind to produce language—and, in fact, to produce an infinite number of language acts (utterances) from a finite number of units (sounds, words, prefixes, and the like). The aim is to state with precision the set of rules that, if followed, will produce all of the grammatically well-formed utterances of a language—and none that are not grammatically well formed.

转换-生成语法的目的。鉴于结构型-描述性语法满足了对完整语言行为的详尽，客观描述，而转换-生成语法试图对产生语言的人类心智的能力进行解释，而事实上，从有限数量的单元（声音、单词、前缀等，到产生无限数量的语言行为（话语）。目的是精确地陈述一套规则，如果遵循的话，将会产生一种所有语法都符合语法规则的语言话语---而在语法上没有不符合语法规则的。

To put it another way, the rules would be an account of the “linguistic competence” of a native speaker of the language. This task is enormous for any living language, and in fact it has not been achieved, although since the mid-1950’s Chomsky and many others have been refining the theory and method and making more or less extensive applications of the method to various languages, chiefly English.

从另一个角度说，规则是对该语言为母语的人“语言能力”的描述。这项任务对于任何存在的语言来说都是巨大的，而事实上，它并未达成，尽管从20世纪50年代中期开始，乔姆斯基和许多其他的人一直在改善理论和方法，并或多或少地使该方法的扩展应用于各种语言中，但主要是英语。

The Rules.  Simple transformational-generative grammar has four parts: phrase-structure rules, transformation rules, lexical rules, and morphophonemic rules. These rules are applied very strictly in a prescribed order to produce, or “generate,” grammatical sentences. The phrase-structure rules are formulaic EXPRESSIONS showing the possible arrangements of grammatical elements into phrasal units. The first rule might have this appearance: S → NP+VP. Here S stands for sentence, the arrow means “consists of” (or more strictly, “rewrite as”), NP stands for noun phrase (all the word that belong to the subject part of the sentence), and VP for verb phrase (all the words that belong to the predicate). The rule for the verb phrase seems formidable to the uninitiated, since it includes such terms as “auxiliary” and “verbal” with meanings quite different from the traditional ones.

规则。简单的转换-生成语法有四个部分：短语-结构规则，转换规则，词法规则和形态音位规则。这些规则在规定产生或“生成”语法句子的顺序时应用的非常严格。短语-结构规则是展示语法元素在短语单元中可能安排的公式化表达。第一个规则可能有这样的样貌：S →NP+VP。这里的S代表句子，箭头意味着“由…..组成”（或更严格地，“改写为”），NP代表名词短语（所有的单词都属于句子的主语部分），而VP代表动词短语（所有的词都属于谓语）。对于门外汉来说，代表动词短语的规则似乎很难对付，因为它包括像“助动词”和“动词性的单词”这样的术语，拥有的含义与传统意义完全不同。

Transformation rules, which have the same general appearance, show how the EXPRESSION preceding the arrow is to be changed, or Transformed, to yield a new EXPRESSION in which, for example, the passive rather than the active form of the verb phrase is used or in which an attributive adjective is derived from an “embedded” structure (that is, how the adjective in “green table” is derived from the proposition “The table is green”). Lexical rules specify how these abstract symbols are to be replaced with morphemes or words from the lexicon (dictionary, or vocabulary.) Morphophonemic rules prescribe the forms and sounds required for the complete utterance.

具有相同的一般样貌的转换规则，显示了如何改变或转换箭头前面的表达式来产生一个新的表达式，例如，使用动词短语的被动语态，而不是主动语态，或者从一个“嵌入”结构派生出一个定语形容词（就是说，如何从命题“桌子是绿色的”派生出“绿色桌子”中的形容词。词法规则具体说明了如何用词素或词典（词典或词汇）中的单词来替换这些抽象的符号。形态音位规则规定了完整的话语所需要的形式或声音。

Thus, in a way much more complicated than this sketch suggests, the grammar accounts step by step for the “deep structure” underlying every language act and yields the “surface structure,” which is the utterance as apprehended. (The steps, it might be added, are somewhat like those used in programming a computer.) Each derivation can be displayed either by the algebra-like series of rule applications or by a matching diagram that looks like tree with the trunk at the top and the branches at the bottom. Transformational-generative grammar has been adapted for classroom teaching in the elementary schools, in particular by Paul Roberts, much more quickly than was structural-descriptive grammar.

因此，语法以一种比这种概述所暗示的更复杂的方式，一步步地解释了潜藏在每种语言行为下的“深层结构”，进而产生了被理解的“表层结构”的话语。（补充一句，那些步骤就像在计算机程序编程中使用的那些程序）。每种推导都可以通过类似代数系列的应用来展示，也可以通过一个看上去像树一样的，树干在顶部，分支在底部的配图来展示。在小学的课堂教学中已应用了转换-生成语法，尤其是通过保罗·罗伯茨，要比结构型-描述性语法快得多。

Stratificational  Grammar.  Sydney M. Lamb and his associates have worked for years on a system of linguistic analysis called stratificational grammar. The name signals the emphasis they place on the fact that language is a layered, or leveled, system. Structural-descriptive grammar, it will be recalled, takes account of the phonemic, morphemic, “smaller structure,” and sentence levels. Tagmemic analysis similarly entails structural levels. In stratificaitonal grammar each of the six kinds of levels—called “strata” or “stratal systems”—is more or less analogous to the total system of levels in the other kinds of analysis. Each of the strata has the same subset of ranked patterns, one of which is tactics, or syntax, and another is a “sign pattern” analogous to the morphemic level of structural-descriptive grammar.

阶层语法。西德尼 M. 兰姆和他的同事多年来一直致力于一种称为阶层语法的语言分析系统。该名称表示了他们对事实的强调，即语言是一种分等级或分层次的系统。我们还记得，结构型-描述性语法考虑了音位、语素、“较小的结构”以及句子层面。法位学分析同样需要结构的层面。在阶层语法中，六种层次的每一种---称为“阶层”或“阶层系统”---或多或少类同于其它分析类型的总层次系统。每个层次都有相同的排列模式子集，其中之一就是策略，或句法，而另一种是类同于结构型-描述性语法的语素层面的一种“符号模式”。

Lamb characterized stratificational grammar as a synthesis between the doctrines of the Danish linguistic scientist Louis Hjelmslev, which previously had been little noticed in the United States, and a standard version of structural-descriptive grammar. With its interest in process as well as finished utterance (surface structure), this sort of grammar must be classed with the transformational-generative variety as an attempt to transcend the limitations of the totally objective and empirical grammar deriving from Bloomfield. See also Index entry Grammar.

兰姆将阶层语法描述为先前在美国很少被关注的丹麦语言学家路易斯·叶尔姆斯列夫与结构型-描述性语法标准版本之间的学说。随着其对过程和完成话语的兴趣（表层结构），作作为一种超越派生于布洛姆菲尔德完全客观和经验主义语法局限性的尝试，这种语法必须归入转换-生成语法的种类。

                                    ROBERT L. CHAPMAN, Drew University

                                       罗伯特·L. 查普曼，德鲁大学

 

                                             2022年8月11日译

（译者注：该部分词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第13卷，第154页至157页）