"transformational grammar"的定义和意义

What is "transformational grammar"?

Transformational grammar is a theory of grammar that focuses on the rules and processes used to generate and transform sentences within a language. Developed by Noam Chomsky, this approach emphasizes the distinction between deep structure, which represents the underlying meaning of a sentence, and surface structure, which reflects how that meaning is expressed in a specific sentence form. Transformational grammar analyzes how various transformations, such as movement and deletion, can change sentence structure while preserving meaning. This framework helps to explain the complexity of sentence formation and the relationships between different sentence types in a language.