Due

Read: Understanding English Grammar, Chapter 5

Meeting Place

We will meet in our usual classroom, Dial 153.  Please bring Understanding English Grammar.

March 12-16, 2001

Now that we have examined the basic components and structures of English sentences, we are ready to explore some of the most common ways we transform these sentences to create questions, exclamatory sentences, and other variations.

Before we go very far with transformations, you will want to make sure that you have mastered the material we have covered so far.  Try doing Quiz 2 without using your text book.  Check your answers against the Quiz 2 answer key.
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Terms 

Resources

Understanding English Grammar describes the ten basic sentence patterns covered here.

A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language presents detailed descriptions of numerous aspects of English grammar.

Updated March 12, 2001
© Mark Canada, 2001
mark.canada@uncp.edu
 

Transformations

By Mark Canada
English professor, University of North Carolina at Pembroke

Conversations have two levels.  On one level are the thoughts in our heads.  On the other are the actually words we speak.  Sometimes, if we are "speaking our minds," the levels come together; that is, our thoughts and our words are the same.  In other cases, however, those thoughts undergo some changes before they come out of our mouths. 

We can think of sentences in a similar fashion.  Every English sentence has something called a deep structure, or underlying structure, which we might think of as the blueprint for the sentence.  It also has a surface structure--the form of the sentence that we actually see or hear.  In many sentences, these two structures are the same: 

  1. Underlying structure: She swims.
  2. Surface structure: She swims.
Note that the underlying structure obeys the conventions of the standard sentence patterns.  In this example, the surface structure also obeys those conventions.  Often--and without thinking--however, we change the underlying structure before actually saying or writing the sentence.  In other words, the underlying sentence undergoes a transformation.  Notice what happens when we ask a question, as in the second sentence below: 
  1. Underlying structure: She swims.
  2. Surface structure: Does she swim?
The underlying structure and the surface structure are not the same in this instance.  When we ask questions in English, we make certain changes to the underlying structure.  What's more, these changes have their own set of rules.  Adult native English speakers with normal linguistic abilities all know these rules and unconsciously follow them when they ask questions.  We also have rules for forming imperative, exclamatory, and cleft sentences. 

Exercise

Read each of the following sentences and decide whether its underlying structure has undergone a transformation. 
  1. Susan gave her dog a bath.
  2. They enjoy traveling around the country.
  3. We made him an honorary member.
  4. Where did you go?
  5. There is no excuse for that.
  6. Please bring me a book.