Linguistic Turns in Syntax Students' Attitude Towards Chomskyiam Approach
Authors: ADISA Akinkorede
Journal: GRADIVA
ISSN Number: 03638057
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Abstract
Linguistic or discursive turns are the innovative changes in relation to language and philosophy; they focus mainly on the linguistic landmarks and remarkable changes that leave indelible marks in linguistic circles and other humanities in relation to language, its uses, and the society at large. Flourishing in the Western philosophy of the 20th century, linguistic turns spun through all fields of human language, philosophy, and politics. The dynamic turns at the syntactic, semantic, phonological, and morphological at all levels of human language and their uses and interactions with other fields of human endeavors had unprecedented imprints in relation to language and philosophy. This research focuses on the ineliminable marks of Chomskyian Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) and the student's attitude towards the teaching and learning of its phrase structure rules, transformational rules, morphophonemic rules, context-free rules, context-sensitive rules, etc. The convenience sampling technique was adopted for data collection, and this entails the random selection of students who constituted a focus group. A focus group of 200 and 400 level students of Mountain Top University in Ogun State, Nigeria, was used to elicit information on students’ attitude towards TGG. Data were analyzed using Chomsky’s Phrase Structure rule, the Transformational rule, and Roman Jacobson’s Theory of Communication. One of the major findings was that students were always irritated once TGG teaching was done. They explained that the approach is complex and burdening and wished that a course that has anything to do with Chomsky’s generative grammars should not be introduced or, if taught already, should be removed from the curriculum. This paper concludes that since TGG is very necessary (especially) in linguistic history, teachers should encourage the students to develop possible attitudes towards the grammar in question and adopt a simplified method of teaching it so that students can benefit maximally from it.
