1973 THE UNANSWERED QUESTION Lecture 2 "Musical Syntax"

Syntax refers to the study of the structural organization of a sentence, or as Bernstein summarizes, "the actual structures that arise from that phonological stuff" (p. 9). In addition to syntax, lecture 2 relies on Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, which states that innate mental processes take place to transform sounds and words into meaningful structures. The theory seeks to explain the transformational processes small units of language take to become larger structures. Grammar is a key aspect in this process, because through the use of underlying grammatical rules, the mind is capable of combining phonemes into syntax. These resulting syntactic structures include linguistic material such as words, clauses, and sentences.

The transformational process can be represented by a transformation from deep structure to surface structure. Deep structure comprises underlying phonemes and word parts, while surface structure is the spoken sentence.

To demonstrate the innovations transformational grammar has provided linguistics, Bernstein diagrams the sentence "Jack loves Jill" (p. 67). The diagram shows the underlying processes transforming the bottom row, or deep structure, into the spoken words, or surface structure.

Although this transformation is innate, it requires many complex subtleties of language. Examples of transformational processes in language include passive transformation, negative transformation, interrogative transformation, and pronominal substitution.

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