Cartesian Linguistics

by Noam Chomsky

  The Grammar goes on to point out that indirect discourse can be analyzed in a similar way.74 If the underlying embedded proposition is interrogative, it is the particle “if” rather than “that” that is introduced by the transformational rule, as in “They asked me if I could do that,” where the “discourse which is reported” is “Can you do that?” Sometimes, in fact, no particle need be added, a change of person being sufficient, as in “He asked me: Who are you?” as compared with “He asked me who I was” (p. 113; PRG 140–141).

  Summarizing the Port-Royal theory in its major outlines, a sentence has an inner mental aspect (a deep structure that conveys its meaning) and an outer, physical aspect as a sound sequence. Its surface analysis into phrases may not indicate the significant connections of the deep structure by any formal mark or by the actual arrangement of words. The deep structure is, however, represented in the mind as the physical utterance is produced. The deep structure consists of a system of propositions, organized in various ways. The elementary propositions that constitute the deep structure are of the subject-predicate form, with simple subjects and predicates (i.e., categories instead of more complex phrases). Many of these elementary objects can be independently realized as sentences. It is not true, in general, that the elementary judgments constituting the deep structure are affirmed when the sentence that it underlies is produced; explicative and determinative relatives, for example, differ in this respect. To actually produce a sentence from the deep structure that conveys the thought that it expresses, it is necessary to apply rules of transformation that rearrange, replace, or delete items of the sentence. Some of these are obligatory, further ones optional. Thus “God, who is invisible, created the world, which is visible” is distinguished from its paraphrase, “Invisible God created the visible world,” by an optional deletion operation, but the transformation that substitutes a relative pronoun for the noun and then preposes the pronoun is obligatory.

  This account covers only the sentences based exclusively on judgments. But these, although the principal form of thought, do not exhaust the “operations of our minds,” and “one must still relate to what occurs in our mind the conjunctions, disjunctions, and other similar operations of our minds, and all the other movements of our souls, such as desires, commands, questions, etc.” (p. 29; PRG 67). In part, these other “forms of thought” are signified by special particles such as “and,” “not,” “or,” “if,” “therefore,” etc. (pp. 137–138; PRG 168). But with respect to these sentence types as well, an identity of deep structure may be masked through divergence of the transformational means whereby actual sentences are formed, corresponding to intended meanings. A case in point is interrogation. In Latin, the interrogative particle ne “has no object outside the mind, but only marks the movement of the soul, by which we wish to know a thing” (p. 138; PRG 168). As for the interrogative pronoun, “it is nothing more than a pronoun to which the signification of ‘ne’ is added; that is to say, which, beyond taking the place of a noun like the other pronouns, further marks this movement of the soul which desires to know something and which demands to be instructed about it” (p. 138; PRG 168). But this “movement of the soul” can be signified in various ways other than by the addition of a particle, for example, by vocal inflection or inversion of word order, as in French, where the pronominal subject is “transported” to the position following the person marker of the verb (preserving the agreement of the underlying form). These are all devices for realizing the same deep structure (pp. 138–139; PRG 168–169).

  Notice that the theory of deep and surface structure as developed in the Port-Royal linguistic studies implicitly contains recursive devices and thus provides for infinite use of the finite means that it disposes, as any adequate theory of language must. We see, moreover, that, in the examples given, the recursive devices meet certain formal conditions that have no a priori necessity. In both the trivial cases (e.g., conjunction, disjunction, etc.) and the more interesting ones discussed in connection with relatives and infinitives, the only method for extending deep structures is by adding full propositions of a basic subject-predicate form. The transformational rules of deletion, rearrangement, etc., do not play a role in the creation of new structures. The extent to which the Port-Royal grammarians may have been aware of or interested in these properties of their theory is, of course, an open question.

  In modern terms, we may formalize this view by describing the syntax of a language in terms of two systems of rules: a base system that generates deep structures and a transformational system that maps these into surface structures. The base system consists of rules that generate the underlying grammatical relations with an abstract order (the rewriting rules of a phrase-structure grammar); the transformational system consists of rules of deletion, rearrangement, adjunction, and so on. The base rules allow for the introduction of new propositions (that is, there are rewriting rules of the form A → . . .S. . ., where S is the initial symbol of the phrase-structure grammar that constitutes the base); there are no other recursive devices. Among the transformations are those which form questions, imperatives, etc., when the deep structure so indicates (i.e., when the deep structure represents the corresponding “mental act” in an appropriate notation).75

  The Port-Royal grammar is apparently the first to develop the notion of phrase structure in any fairly clear way.76 It is interesting, therefore, to notice that it also states quite clearly the inadequacy of phrase-structure description for the representation of syntactic structure and that it hints at a form of transformational grammar in many respects akin to that which is being actively studied today.

  Turning from the general conception of grammatical structure to specific cases of grammatical analysis, we find many other attempts in the Port-Royal Grammar to develop the theory of deep and surface structure. Thus adverbs are analyzed as (for the most part) arising from “the desire that men have to abbreviate discourse,” thus as being elliptical forms of preposition-noun constructions, for example, “wisely” for “with wisdom” or “today” for “on this day” (p. 88; PRG 121). Similarly, verbs are analyzed as containing implicitly an underlying copula that expresses affirmation; thus, once again, as arising from the desire to abbreviate the actual expression of thought. The verb, then, is “a word whose principal use77 is to signify affirmation or assertion, that is, to indicate that the discourse where this word is employed is the discourse of a man who not only conceives things, but who judges and affirms them” (p. 90; PRG 122). To use a verb, then, is to perform the act of affirming, not simply to refer to affirmation as an “object of our thought,” as in the use of “a number of nouns which also mean affirmation, such as ‘affirmans’ and ‘affirmatio’” (p. 90; PRG 122). Thus the Latin sentence “Petrus vivit” has the meaning “Peter is living” (p. 90; PRG 123), and in the sentence “Petrus affirmat” “‘affirmat’ is the same as ‘est affirmans’” (p. 98; PRG 128). It follows, then, that in the sentence “Affirmo” (in which subject, copula, and attribute are all abbreviated in a single word), two affirmations are expressed: one regarding the act of the speaker in affirming, the other the affirmation that he attributes (to himself, in this case). Similarly, “the verb ‘nego’ . . . contains an affirmation and a negation” (p. 98; PRG 128).78

  Formulating these observations in the framework outlined above, what the Port-Royal grammarians are maintaining is that the deep structure underlying a sentence such as “Peter lives” or “God loves mankind” (Logic, p. 108; PRL 83) contains a copula, expressing the affirmation, and a predicate (“living,” “loving mankind”) attributed to the subject of the proposition. Verbs constitute a subcategory of predicates; they are subject to a transformation that causes them to coalesce with the copula into a single word.

  The analysis of verbs is extended in the Logic, where it is maintained (p. 117) that, despite surface appearances, a sentence with a transitive verb and its object “expresses a complex proposition and in one sense two propositions.” Thus w
e can contradict the sentence “Brutus killed a tyrant” by saying that Brutus did not kill anyone or that the person whom Brutus killed was not a tyrant. It follows that the sentence expresses the proposition that Brutus killed someone who was a tyrant, and the deep structure must reflect this fact. It seems that this analysis would also apply, in the view of the Logic, if the object is a singular term; e.g., “Brutus killed Caesar.”

  This analysis plays a role in the theory of reasoning developed later on in the Logic. It is used to develop what is in effect a partial theory of relations, permitting the theory of the syllogism to be extended to arguments to which it would otherwise not apply. Thus it is pointed out (pp. 206–207; PRL 159–160) that the inference from “The divine law commands us to honor kings” and “Louis XIV is a king” to “The divine law commands us to honor Louis XIV” is obviously valid, though it does not exemplify any valid figure as it stands, superficially. By regarding “kings” as “the subject of a sentence contained implicitly in the original sentence,” using the passive transformation79 and otherwise decomposing the original sentence into its underlying prepositional constituents, we can finally reduce the argument to the valid figure Barbara.

  Reduction of sentences to underlying deep structure is resorted to elsewhere in the Logic, for the same purpose. For example, Arnauld observes (p. 208; PRL 160) that the sentence There are few pastors nowadays ready to give their lives for their sheep, though superficially affirmative in form, actually “contains implicitly the negative sentence ‘Many pastors nowadays are not ready to give their lives for their sheep.” In general, he points out repeatedly that what is affirmative or negative “in appearance” may or may not be in meaning, that is, in deep structure. In short, the real “logical form” of a sentence may be quite different from its surface grammatical form.80

  The identity of deep structure underlying a variety of surface forms in different languages is frequently stressed, throughout this period, in connection with the problem of how the significant semantic connections among the elements of speech are expressed. Chapter VI of the Port-Royal Grammar considers the expression of these relations in case systems, as in the classical languages, or by internal modification, as in the construct state in Hebrew, or by particles, as in the vernacular languages, or simply by a fixed word order,81 as in the case of the subject–verb and verb–object relations in French. These are regarded as all being manifestations of an underlying structure common to all these languages and mirroring the structure of thought. Similarly, Lamy comments in his rhetoric on the diverse means used by various languages to express the “relations, and the consequence and interconnexion between all the ideas that the consideration of things excites in our mind” (De L’Art de Parler, pp. 10–11). The encyclopedist Du Marsais also stresses the fact that case systems express relations among the elements of discourse that are, in other languages, expressed by word order or specific particles, and he points out the correlation between freedom to transpose and wealth of inflection.82

  Notice that what is assumed is the existence of a uniform set of relations into which words can enter, in any language, these corresponding to the exigencies of thought. The philosophical grammarians do not try to show that all languages literally have case systems, that they use inflectional devices to express these relations. On the contrary, they repeatedly stress that a case system is only one device for expressing these relations. Occasionally, they point out that case names can be assigned to these relations as a pedagogic device; they also argue that considerations of simplicity sometimes may lead to a distinction of cases even where there is no difference in form. The fact that French has no case system is in fact noted in the earliest grammars. Cf. Sahlin, p. 212.

  It is important to realize that the use of the names of classical cases for languages with no inflections implies only a belief in the uniformity of the grammatical relations involved, a belief that deep structures are fundamentally the same across languages, although the means for their expression may be quite diverse. This claim is not obviously true – it is, in other words, a nontrivial hypothesis. So far as I know, however, modern linguistics offers no data that challenge it in any serious way.83

  As noted above, the Port-Royal theory of grammar holds that for the most part, adverbs do not, properly speaking, constitute a category of deep structure but function only “for signifying in a single word what could otherwise be indicated only by a preposition and a noun” (p. 88; PRG 121). Later grammarians simply drop the qualification to “for the most part.” Thus for Du Marsais, “what distinguishes adverbs from other kinds of words is that adverbs have the value of a preposition and a noun, or a preposition with its complement: they are words which abbreviate” (p. 660). This is an unqualified characterization, and he goes on to analyze a large class of items in this way – in our paraphrase, as deriving from a deep structure of the form: preposition–complement. This analysis is carried still further by Beauzée.84 He, incidentally, maintains that, although an “adverbial phrase” such as “with wisdom” does not differ from the corresponding adverb “wisely” in its “signification,” it may differ in the “accessory ideas” associated with it: “when it is a matter of contrasting an action with a habit, the adverb is more appropriate for indicating the habit and the adverbial phrase for indicating the action; thus I would say ‘A man who conducts himself wisely cannot promise that all his actions will be performed with wisdom’” (p. 342).85 This distinction is a particular case of “the antipathy that all languages naturally show towards a total synonymity, which would enrich an idiom only with sounds that do not subserve accuracy and clarity of expression.”

  Earlier grammarians provide additional instances of analysis in terms of deep structure, as, for example, when imperatives and interrogatives are analyzed as, in effect, elliptical transforms of underlying expressions with such supplementary terms as “I order you . . .” or “I request. . .”86 Thus “Come see me” has the deep structure “I order/beg you to come see me”; “Who found it?” has the meaning of “I ask who found it?” etc.

  Still another example that might be cited is the transformational derivation of expressions with conjoined terms from underlying sentences, in the obvious way; for example, in Beauzée, op. cit., pp. 399f. Beauzée’s discussion of conjunctions also provides somewhat more interesting cases, as, for example, when he analyzes “how” [comment] as based on an underlying form with “manner” [manière] and a relative clause, so that the sentence “I know how it happened” has the meaning of “I know the manner in which it happened”; or when he analyzes “the house which I acquired.” In this way, the underlying deep structure with its essential and incident propositions is revealed.

  An interesting further development, along these lines, is carried out by Du Marsais in his theory of construction and syntax.87 He proposes that the term “construction” be applied to “the arrangement of words in discourse,” and the term “syntax,” to “the relations which words bear to one another.” For example, the three sentences “accepi litteras tuas,” “tuas accepi litteras,” and “litteras accepi tuas” exhibit three different constructions, but they have the same syntax; the relations among the constituent elements are the same in all three cases. “Thus, each of these three arrangements produces the same meaning [sens] in the mind: ‘I have received your letter’.” He goes on to define “syntax” as “what brings it about, in every language, that words produce the meaning we wish to arise in the minds of those who know the language . . . the part of grammar that provides knowledge of the signs established in a language to produce understanding in the mind” (pp. 229–231). The syntax of an expression is thus essentially what we have called its deep structure; its construction is what we have called its surface structure.88

  The general framework within which this distinction is developed is the following. An act of the mind is a single unit. For a child, the “idea” [sentiment] that sugar is sweet is at first an unanalyzed, single experience (p. 181); f
or the adult, the meaning of the sentence “Sugar is sweet,” the thought that it expresses, is also a single entity. Language provides an indispensable means for the analysis of these otherwise undifferentiated objects. It provides a

  means of clothing our thought, so to speak, of rendering it perceptible, of dividing it, of analyzing it – in a word, of making it such that it is communicable to others with more precision and detail.

  Thus, particular thoughts are each an ensemble, so to speak, a whole that the usage of language divides, analyzes and distributes into parts by means of different articulations of the speech organs which form the words. (p. 184)

  Similarly, the perception of speech is a matter of determining the unified and undifferentiated thought from the succession of words. “[The words] work together to produce the whole sense or the thought we wish to arise in the minds of those who read or hear them” (p. 185). To determine this thought, the mind must first discover the relations among the words of the sentence, that is, its syntax; it must then determine the meaning, given a full account of this deep structure. The method of analysis used by the mind is to bring together those words that are related, thus establishing a “meaningful order” [ordre significatif] in which related elements are successive. The actual sentence may, in itself, have this “meaningful order,” in which case it is called a “simple construction (natural, necessary, meaningful, assertive)” (p. 232). Where it does not, this “meaningful order” must be reconstructed by some procedure of analysis – it must be “re-established by the mind, which grasps the meaning [sens] only by this order” (pp. 191–192). To understand a sentence of Latin, for example, you must reconstruct the “natural order” that the speaker has in his mind (p. 196). You must not only understand the meanings of each word, but, furthermore,