Re: "Writing Transformational Grammars" Book

Here's one of the sample excersises from that book. The goal is to use the
given data about what is (and isn't) grammatical to figure out the grammar
of this language. This is the first example in the book, and as such it is
pretty simple. Its also based on "artificial data", in other words it
doesn't correspond to any natlang. I guess that makes it a sort of micro
conlang. Most of the examples in the book are taken directly from natlangs,
though.

By "figure out the data" I mean that you should write a series of 'rules'
that describe the data. For example. In English we might have:

S  -> NP VP
NP -> Det N
VP -> V NP
Det -> a, an, the
etc...

These rules can be of two types, generative, which generate a sentence, and
transformational, which take a generated sentence and transforms it.
Transformational rules can be required or optional. For example, to
optionally switch the order of the subject and predicate in English, you
might have a rule like this:

opt: NP VP -> VP NP

To always replace 'past-tense'+'be' with was, you might have a rule like:

req: past-tense+be -> was

The first step below, though, is to write out all the individual morphemes
along with a "guess" as to there meanings.

Thanks,
~Caleb


Data:
---------------------------------------------

1)  gal tasupa bod.
"The girl hits the dog."
2)  ped tagrup buntu bod.
"The boy caresses the big dog."
3)  tagapa umu buntu ped.
"The big boy loves the mother."
4)  bod tagapa umu.
"The dog loves the mother."
5)  tasupa buntu gal ped.
"The boy hits the big girl."
6)  buntu gal tagapa buntu ped.
"The big girl loves the big boy."
7)  ma buntu samak pso..
"The man eats the big fish."
8)  umu ma samak.
"The mother eats the fish."
9)  buntu pso tagapa bod.
"The big man loves the dog."
10) buntu samak tagrup.
"The big fish caresses the fish."

But not:
*umu buntu ped
*gal tagapa
*umu ma
*bod tasupa
*gal tagrup
*Any sentence produced by shifting the subject so that it immediately
follows the verb.
*Any sentence containing a verb other than 'ma' (eats) without the prefix
'ta-'.
*Any sentece with the order OVC or SOV.

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