Depth Grammar

It’s already April, and at Experience Writing that means it’s time for NaPoWriMo (National (Global) Poetry Writing Month) and the A-Z Challenge. Continuing this year’s theme, I’m writing about the A to Z of Depth.

While searching for aspects of depth, I got really excited when I came across “Depth Grammar.” Could there be a more perfect topic for a writer exploring depth? However, it has turned out to be rather elusive and complicated. Here is what I’ve dug up from the depths.

Depth Grammar (Ludwig Wittgenstein) distinguishes the surface grammar of words—how words are used in a sentence, the sound of the word to the ear—from the atmosphere or feeling that words carry in different contexts. Resource: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)

Deep Grammar (Charles F. Hockett): “It is as though the whole network of structural relationships between forms, overlapping sometimes into the non-speech context, constituted a complex intertwining of various kinds of valences, only one layer of which is immediately apparent to the analyst. This most apparent layer constitutes, we shall say, surface grammar. Beneath it lie various layers of deep grammar, which have much to do with how we speak and understand but which are still largely unexplored, in any systematic way, by grammarians.” Resource: A Course in Modern Linguistics (1958)

Deep Structure (Noam Chomsky): is a theoretical construct in linguistics that grammar has layers. The surface structure is the many sentences with similar meaning. Below the surface structure are the rules of making those sentences. And below that layer are all the things trying to be expressed in the sentence: where the idea for the sentence originated.
Resource: Syntactic Structures (1957)

I have been reading, and reading, searching out original sources, trying to get to the depths of Depth Grammar. The one thing I’ve learned is that I’m not a linguist, and reading texts on linguistics is slow-going and challenging. Though I did not get to a deep understanding of Depth Grammar to reveal to you, I did find some interesting things to share:

A slide show on Universal Grammar.

An interesting sketch of a Wittgenstein pinball machine design.

A Noam Chomsky interview at the University of Washington:

Fun synchronicity: When asked about poetry in the interview, Noam Chomsky mentions Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson. I found a copy and started reading, and right there in the introduction I read:

“In this way such a passage has to be treated as if it were ambiguous, even though it may be said that for a good reader it is only ambiguous (in the ordinary sense of the term) while he is going through an unnecessary critical exercise. Some critics do not like to recognise this process because they connect it with Depth Psychology, which they regard with fear.”

What a surprising round-about connection between Depth Grammar and Depth Psychology which I will be talking about later in the week.

Today’s Poem

The Call of the Wild in Spring

Your voice on the wind is irresistible
a familiar tune of home, irresistible

Sweet as birthday cake and resonant
as fuzzy bunny slippers, irresistible

A lit lantern when the lights go out
the comfort that lures to trust, irresistible

The glimmer in the storm, steering hope
out of the churning dark, irresistible

Maria, It’s not time yet. Don’t go into the light.
But its sparkling and its siren song is irresistible.

This poem was inspired by today’s prompts at NaPoWriMo and Writer’s Digest’s April Poem a Day (PAD) Challenge.

Thank you so much for coming by and reading my post. Any thoughts or questions about Depth Grammar? Come back tomorrow for more depth exploration and poetry.