Junction grammar is a descriptive model of language developed during the 1960s by Eldon G. Lytle (1936–2010). Junction grammar is based on the premise that the meaning of language can be described and precisely codified by the way language elements are joined. The model was used during the 1960s and 1970s in the attempt to create a functional computer-assisted translation system. It has also been used for linguistic analysis in the language instruction field.
Background Early generative grammars dealt with language from a syntactic perspective, i.e. as the problem presented by the task of creating rules able to combine words into well-formed (i.e., grammatical) sentences. The rules used by these grammars were referred to as phrase-structure rules (P-rules). It was soon apparent, however, that a generative component composed solely of P-rules could not generate a wide variety of commonly occurring sentence types. In response to this dilemma, Harris proposed an explanation:
Some of the cruces in descriptive linguistics have been due to the search for a constituent analysis in sentence types where this does not exist because the sentences are transformationally derived from each other Chomsky's model of syntax - transformational grammar -picked up on this line of reasoning and added a supplementary set of transformations (T-rules). T-rules effected combinations and permutations of words in step-wise fashion to fill in structural gaps where P-rules alone could not generate the sentences which Harris had pointed out as problems. The structural forms generated by P-rules alone were said to constitute deep structure. Surface structure was then derived transformationally by T-rules from the kernel structures first generated by the operation of P-rules. In this way, Chomsky proposed to generate an infinite number of sentences using finite means (the closed sets of P-rules and T-rules). Syntax-based models of this vintage set semantics and phonology apart as linguistic processes to be approached separately.
Advent of junction grammar Enter from the sidelines under these circumstances junction grammar (JG), a model of natural language created by Eldon Lytle in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Junction grammar did not propose an amendment to Chomsky’s model of syntax, but purported to eliminate the need for transformations altogether through theoretical innovation and a novel design for generative grammars. Innovations fundamental to the new approach rejected common-place reliance on existing mathematics and formal language theory as tools for linguistic modeling and description "in deference to the intuition of more fundamental structuring in the body and in natural language itself", which appeared to provide a "universal base for linguistic description" - not only for natural language but also for the synthetic notation systems employed at the time for linguistic description. Implementation of the novelties in question entailed:
Recasting the generative component in a semantic mold. This entailed dispensing with all operationally-deprived (and hence meaningless) concatenations of P-rules and replacing them with junction rules (J-rules). J-rules operationalized for the first time a set of structural relations having universal syntacto-semantic significance and were based on the proposition that natural language "has its own math". Indeed, the position of JG was that lucubrations advanced by Chomsky and others as to whether this or that rung of a given formal language hierarchy was in principle capable of generating the sentences of natural language were ultimately circular, natural language being the thing which had created them all. Lytle held, in effect, that natural language is the meta-language upon which all forms of synthetic notation (including mathematics) supervene. Complementing the base with biologically-oriented tracts (sometimes referred to in early JG literature as levels of representation) specializing in the distinct data types required to support lexicalization, articulation, orthography, etc. Junction theory explicitly prohibited the intermingling of distinct data types in a single representation, noting, for example, that one could not reasonably expect the vocal tract to have use for semantic data nor would the tract executing movements in the writing hand have any use for data driving the musculature of the vocal tract. Implementing Saussure's concept of signified-signifier linkages by constructing coding grammars to transpose the structuring of one tract to the data type of another, as for example the transposition of J-rule structuring into the lexical strings required for writing or articulation. The essence of the departure from Chomsky's model in this case was that coding between biologically grounded tracts supplanted interpretation of deep structure in the abstract. In sum, the junction grammar model of language moved the base into a sub-verbal semantic domain, added universally relevant linguistic operators to generation rules - thus, for example, solving the quandary of how to handle conjunction - incorporated auxiliary tracts together with specialized data types for voice, audition, etc., and added coding grammars to physically interface between tracts.
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