Differences between formal constraints on a generative grammar and concepts of efficiency in transforming sentences provide different expectations regarding performance measures if the grammar is taken as a psychologically real model. To contrast these views, subjects were given sentences varying in voice, mood, and modality and asked to transform…

Reviews pertinent research findings in grammar from 1902 to the present. (Author)

Examines the problems of constructing tests and shows how the rules of transformation generative grammar can be used to produce easily understood test questions. (RB)

A summative evaluation of a Program English curriculum which found that the effects of a study of transformational grammar on the language growth of secondary school students was negligible. (DD)

The Agnate Sentences Test was designed to measure awareness of the relationship between sentences that are similar in semantic content but different in syntactic structure. In this study, developmental differences in the ability to decode written syntax are observed by means of this test which was administered to 63 4th graders, 65 8th graders,…

Current transformational linguistic theory holds that there are two levels of sentence structure, derived constituent or surface structure and underlying or deep structure. Both have been proposed as the memory representation of sentences, but recent evidence suggests that the latter is the more likely. However, two recent studies have directly…

Sensitivity to syntactic structure can be increased by direct instruction. (JH)

The inadequacies of traditional and transformational models of grammar are overcome in the systemic-functional approach of Halliday, where meaning is built into the grammar and the text is the basic unit. Here, the functional approach is seen in the stress on the role of social/cultural context and in the importance of the role of register, which…

Though a general study of transformational grammar does not improve writing ability, students can learn to use transformational operations which combine and reduce clauses to make better sentences. Since students already know intuitively how to do the operations, transformational theory in the classroom is largely limited to sentence-combining…

Designed to test the effect upon comprehension of repatterning passages from a tenth grade social studies text by approximating the syntactic patterns found in a transformational analysis of the writing of the tenth grade subjects expected to read the text, this instrument was applied to 34 subjects who were asked to write 1,000 words of prose…

Compositions written by 66 second grade boys and girls in one control and two experimental groups were analyzed to study the effect of 21 instructional sessions in sentence expansion and to determine which of the instructional methods employed was most beneficial to a particular sex group. Lesson plans for the control group were parallel to two…

The research reported here tests the question: Does the black child have a difficult time comprehending the Standard English speaking teacher or vice versa? The results are seen to have implications for educational planning and research. (Author/JH)

Designed to analyze and describe the transformational operations in sentences in written compositions, this test contains a list of 27 possible transformations, all variations of four basic transformational operations: addition, deletion, reordering, and combining. The developer reports an interrater reliability coefficient of .94. [This document…

Discusses the continuing controversy over how to teach grammar. Finds that the traditional, structural, and transformational approaches each have their strengths and weaknesses, with none clearly better than the others. Suggests that the teaching of grammar, while not the key to improvement in written English, will always have a place in the…