A transformational treatment of Indian English syntax

This study attempts to show that language learners who have passed the beginning stages of language learning make errors only on the transformational level of grammar. The corpus for the study is drawn from papers written by native Hindi speakers, who have attained a relatively high level of proficiency in English. Chapter I is devoted to a discussion of the role of the English language in India from its introduction to the present time and to the method and corpus used for the study. Chapter II is the main chapter of the dissertation. It is the analysis of selected, syntactically devient sentences from the corpus to illustrate the level on which the deviency occurs. The system of analysis used is that presented by Noam Chomsky in his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. The analysis concentrates on nominalization, pronominalization, adjectivalization and various aspects of the verb phrase. The comparative, passive, questions, expletive “there”, adverbs and deletions are also discussed. In Chapter III, questions, relatives, nominal modifiers, subject-verb agreement, the comparative and passive in Hindi and English are contrasted. The contrastive analysis is included in an attempt to show that despite differences in the base component, it will be the transformational component that will be the source of difficulty for the language learner.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Teaching English as a Second Language

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

1968

Author dc:creator

• Fox, Robert Paul

Contributors dc:contributor

• Maclay, Howard S.
• Kachru, Braj B.
• Kahane, Henry R.
• Aston, Katharine O.
• Yegerlehner John F.

• Teaching English as Second Language

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright owned by the author.

Language dc:language

eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125883

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/125883