Conditions on Transformations

Conditions on Transformations is an influential linguistics article by Noam Chomsky, published in 1973. In it, Chomsky attempted to formulate constraints on transformational rules used in Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG), a new kind of syntactic theory that Chomsky first proposed in the 1950s. These constraints, or "conditions", helped decrease the number of possible generative grammars, with a goal to account for the process of language acquisition in children.

Chomsky's attempt to greatly constrain the power of transformational rules found a common ground with a new generation of Generativist linguists in Europe, as evidenced by the quote below:

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