Memory for Syntax

Abstract

THE deep structure of a sentence, according to Chomsky¹, includes (1) a specification of its fundamental grammatical relations, such as its “logical” subject and object; and (2) a series of transformational “footnotes” indicating the form taken by the actual sentence, for example, that it is passive. When a sentence is remembered verbatim, such “footnotes” seem to be separately and independently stored², and to take up a detectable amount of space in short-term memory³. But they may be rapidly forgotten, as Sachs⁴ has shown; and this is likely in ordinary discourse, because utterances are not usually remembered verbatim.