Abstract

One of Noam Chomsky's earliest contributions is the idea that a theory of the unbounded construction of hierarchical structures should incorporate a computational system that generates the structures. This chapter focuses on the structure building system, what is sometimes called the computational system, as a source of explanation. In some sense it is the fundamental source of explanation in generative grammar, as it accounts for the central question of the unbounded hierarchical nature of the syntax of human language. The architecture of the computational system of early generative grammar involves a device that carries out elementary operations following a procedure that maps strings of symbols to strings of symbols in two passes (a phrase structure sub‐procedure and a transformational sub‐procedure).