Syntactic Structures

1. Introduction

Syntactic Structures (1957) presents a compact, formally explicit proposal for how human languages can be described by generative grammars. Chomsky frames the central task of linguistics as constructing a system of rules that generates “all and only” the grammatical sentences of a language, thereby modeling a speaker’s tacit linguistic competence rather than merely cataloguing observable utterances.

The book introduces a distinction between a finite grammar and the infinite set of sentences it generates, and it suggests that this distinction is crucial for understanding creativity in language use. Chomsky argues that grammatical well-formedness is not reducible to semantic plausibility or statistical frequency, and uses constructed examples to illustrate this claim.

Within the work, syntax is treated as an autonomous level of representation that can be investigated with methods akin to those of formal logic and mathematics. Phrase-structure rules provide a hierarchical backbone for sentences, while transformational rules relate simple “kernel” sentences to more complex surface forms.

The monograph is deliberately programmatic and highly compressed. It presents a specific formal model for a fragment of English, but also proposes more general methodological criteria for evaluating grammars—simplicity, explicitness, and empirical coverage—which later discussions treat as foundational for generative linguistics and for broader theorizing about mind and language.

2. Historical Context and Intellectual Background

2.1 American Structuralism and Behaviorism

Syntactic Structures appeared against the backdrop of mid‑20th‑century American structuralism, associated with Leonard Bloomfield and his successors. Structuralists emphasized distributional analysis of corpora and often adopted behaviorist psychology, focusing on observable verbal behavior and eschewing reference to mental structures. Many accounts treated syntax as a system of linear patterns discoverable through segmentation and classification procedures applied to recorded speech.

Chomsky’s project presupposes familiarity with this tradition but challenges its guiding assumptions about data, method, and explanation. He takes over certain formal tools (e.g. rewrite rules) while rejecting the idea that discovery procedures over corpora can, in themselves, yield an adequate grammar.

2.2 Formal Logic, Mathematics, and Earlier Grammars

The work is also informed by developments in formal logic and the theory of formal languages (e.g. Post, Kleene), where sets of strings are generated by explicit rule systems. Chomsky adapts this perspective to natural language, treating grammars as mathematically specifiable generative mechanisms.

Comparative grammarians and descriptive linguists had long relied on informal notions of structure and transformation, and some transformational ideas appear in earlier work (e.g. Zellig Harris’s transformations, traditional active–passive relations). Chomsky systematizes such ideas into a general theory of phrase-structure plus transformations, aiming to integrate them with a precise notion of generative capacity.

2.3 Emerging Cognitive Perspectives

Finally, Syntactic Structures participates in a broader mid‑century shift toward mentalist and cognitive explanations. While behaviorist models of learning and language dominated American psychology, alternative traditions in philosophy of language, logic, and European structuralism had explored more abstract, mentalistic accounts. Chomsky’s proposal positions linguistics within this emerging cognitive framework by treating grammatical knowledge as an internal system to be formally characterized.

3. Author, Composition, and Publication

3.1 Chomsky’s Early Career

When composing Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky was a young linguist affiliated with MIT, having completed a PhD thesis (1955) titled The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (LSLT). That thesis, largely unpublished at the time, developed an extensive formal framework for generative grammar. The book distills and selectively presents key elements of this broader project in a much more accessible format.

3.2 From Lecture Notes to Monograph

The text grew out of lecture notes for a 1955 MIT course on linguistic analysis. These notes were revised into a short manuscript intended for linguists and philosophers already acquainted with structuralist methods but not necessarily with advanced formal logic. The emphasis on clarity and brevity reflects both the lecture origin and the constraints of the series in which it appeared.

3.3 Publication Circumstances

Syntactic Structures was published in 1957 by Mouton (The Hague) as volume 4 of the Janua Linguarum series, edited by Roman Jakobson and others. The series aimed to disseminate innovative work in linguistics, often with a theoretical or cross‑linguistic orientation.

The initial print run was modest, and early readership was concentrated in specialist circles. Over subsequent decades, especially after translations (e.g. French, German, Italian, Dutch), the work became widely accessible internationally and a standard reference in discussions of generative grammar.

4. Structure, Method, and Organization of the Work

4.1 Chapter Layout and Progression

Syntactic Structures is a brief monograph organized as a cumulative argument, moving from general methodological issues to a specific formal grammar and then to broader theoretical implications.

Each chapter builds on earlier definitions, so that formal devices introduced in one section are used in subsequent derivations and comparisons.

4.2 Formal and Empirical Methods

Methodologically, the work combines:

• Formalization: Grammars are defined as explicit sets of rules. Chomsky uses symbolic notation (rewrite arrows, category labels, transformation schemata) to specify how sentences are generated.
• Fragment analysis: Instead of attempting a full grammar of English, the book examines carefully chosen fragments (e.g. simple declaratives, passives, negatives, questions) to illustrate general principles.
• Intuitive judgments: Native-speaker intuitions about grammaticality are treated as primary data, supplemented by limited corpus examples.

4.3 Use of Idealization and Evaluation

A recurrent methodological feature is the use of idealization: the grammar targets an idealized, homogeneous language community and ignores performance errors. Within this idealized setting, different grammars for the same fragment are explicitly compared according to simplicity, generality, and empirical fit. The organization of the book reflects this comparative approach, repeatedly presenting alternative rule systems and then analyzing their relative merits in a quasi-formal, theory-testing style.

5. Central Arguments and Key Concepts

5.1 Generative Grammar and Infinite Use of Finite Means

A central claim is that a natural language can be modeled by a generative grammar: a finite set of rules capable of generating an infinite number of sentences. Chomsky distinguishes:

Proponents emphasize that strong generation captures speakers’ knowledge of hierarchical structure, not just possible word sequences.

5.2 Independence of Grammar from Meaning and Frequency

Chomsky argues that grammaticality is distinct from semantic plausibility and from frequency of occurrence. The famous contrast:

"

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
*Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.

is used to illustrate that a sentence can be grammatical yet semantically anomalous, while a statistically similar string can be ungrammatical. This underpins criticism of distributional and behaviorist approaches that tie grammaticality to observed corpora or learned associations.

5.3 Phrase-Structure Rules and Transformations

The work introduces phrase-structure rules (e.g. S → NP VP) to account for hierarchical organization, and transformational rules to relate simple kernel sentences to more complex forms (passives, negatives, questions). Chomsky argues that phrase structure alone undergenerates and cannot capture systematic relations among sentence types, whereas transformations provide a unified explanation of these patterns.

5.4 Evaluation and Levels of Adequacy

Chomsky distinguishes different standards for theories:

The argument is that only an explicit generative grammar aimed at explanatory adequacy can serve as a serious scientific theory of linguistic competence, though critics later question aspects of this hierarchy and its underlying assumptions.

6. Legacy and Historical Significance

6.1 Role in the “Cognitive Revolution”

Syntactic Structures is widely cited as a landmark in the mid‑20th‑century cognitive revolution. It helped shift linguistics from taxonomy of utterances toward a theory of internal mental representations. Many historians argue that the book, together with Chomsky’s later work and his critique of behaviorism, encouraged parallel reorientations in psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

6.2 Impact on Linguistics and Adjacent Fields

The monograph introduced a vocabulary and toolkit—generative grammar, transformations, kernel sentences, deep vs. surface structure (developed more fully later)—that shaped several decades of research. Generative syntax, formal semantics, and some strands of computational linguistics drew directly on its methods and distinctions. Proponents see it as foundational for formal, explicitly stated theories of grammar.

At the same time, usage-based, functional, and cognitive linguists often treat Syntactic Structures as a key point of departure for alternative paradigms, defining their own approaches partly in contrast to its emphasis on an autonomous, formal syntax and on idealized speaker competence.

6.3 Revisions, Extensions, and Critiques

Within generative linguistics, the specific model of phrase-structure plus transformations in Syntactic Structures was later revised in the Standard Theory, Government and Binding, and Minimalist Program. Some commentators view this as normal theoretical progress; others see it as evidence that the original framework was limited or ad hoc.

Critics have raised concerns about reliance on introspective judgments, the treatment of semantics and pragmatics, and the sharp separation between competence and performance. Alternative traditions—structuralist, functionalist, construction‑grammar, and probabilistic models—draw on different assumptions about language learning, frequency, and usage.

Despite divergent evaluations, there is broad agreement that Syntactic Structures played a central role in transforming the questions linguists ask, the kinds of explanations they seek, and the formal tools regarded as appropriate for theorizing about language.