Some Basic Assumptions in Transformational Linguistics

Abstract

The present paper is the first of the four chapters in my unpublished paper "A General Survey of Transformational Model of Linguistic Description". My main aim here is to present some of the fundamental assumptions of transformational linguistics. The discussion throughout the paper is devoted to answering the question: WHAT IS THE NATURE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE AND WHAT THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS DOES THE ANSWER ENTAIL FOR LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION? No attempt has been made to present formal properties of the rules of grammar that supports the discussion in this paper.