ON THE IRRELEVANCE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR TO SECOND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY

Abstract

Many scholars view transformational grammar as an attempt to represent the structure of linguistic knowledge in the mind and seek to apply transformational descriptions of languages to the development of second language teaching materials. It will be claimed in this paper that it is a mistake to look to transformational grammar or any other theory of linguistic description to provide the theoretical basis for either second language pedagogy or a theory of language acquisition. One may well wish to describe the abstract or logical structure of a language by constructing a transformational grammar which generates the set of sentences identified with that language. However, this attempt should not be confused with an attempt to understand the cognitive structures and processes involved in knowing or using a language. It is a cognitive theory of language within the field of psycholinguistics rather than a theory of linguistic description which should underlie language teaching materials.

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