Exam Based MCQs – Grammar: Traditional & Transformational Generative
1. Traditional grammar in English was largely modelled on the grammar of: (UGC NET 2016)
A) Sanskrit and Pali
B) Latin and Greek
C) German and French
D) Arabic and Persian
Ans: B) Latin and Greek
2. Traditional grammar is primarily described as: (PGTRB 2018)
A) Descriptive
B) Prescriptive
C) Experimental
D) Historical
Ans: B) Prescriptive
3. Which of the following is NOT commonly treated as a part of speech in traditional school grammar? (SET 2019)
A) Noun
B) Verb
C) Phoneme
D) Preposition
Ans: C) Phoneme
4. The typical traditional grammar division of English words is into: (UGC NET 2015)
A) 5 parts of speech
B) 8 parts of speech
C) 10 parts of speech
D) 3 parts of speech
Ans: B) 8 parts of speech
5. In traditional grammar, “syntax” mainly deals with: (PGTRB 2019)
A) Word formation
B) Sound system
C) Sentence structure
D) Word meaning
Ans: C) Sentence structure
6. The traditional distinction between “subject” and “predicate” refers to: (SET 2018)
A) Sound and sense
B) Topic and comment in a sentence
C) Written and spoken forms
D) Tense and aspect
Ans: B) Topic and comment in a sentence
7. Traditional grammar often treats English case system on the model of: (UGC NET 2017)
A) German
B) Sanskrit
C) Latin
D) Chinese
Ans: C) Latin
8. Which term is central to traditional grammar but re-analysed in modern syntactic theories? (PGTRB 2020)
A) Clause
B) Morpheme
C) Phoneme
D) Allophone
Ans: A) Clause
9. Traditional grammar typically classifies sentences according to: (SET 2020)
A) Frequency
B) Intonation
C) Meaning and structure (declarative, interrogative, etc.)
D) Speaker’s age
Ans: C) Meaning and structure (declarative, interrogative, etc.)
10. A major criticism of traditional grammar is that it is often: (UGC NET 2018)
A) Too experimental
B) Too corpus-based
C) Normative rather than descriptive
D) Focused on spoken language
Ans: C) Normative rather than descriptive
11. “Parsing” in traditional grammar refers to: (PGTRB 2017)
A) Writing essays
B) Dividing a sentence into its grammatical parts
C) Translating poetry
D) Learning vocabulary
Ans: B) Dividing a sentence into its grammatical parts
12. Which of the following belongs more naturally to traditional grammar than to TG grammar? (SET 2017)
A) Deep structure
B) Surface structure
C) Diagramming sentences into subject and predicate
D) Transformational rules
Ans: C) Diagramming sentences into subject and predicate
13. Traditional grammar usually divides verbs into: (UGC NET 2019)
A) Finite and non-finite
B) Major and minor
C) Lexical and functional
D) Bound and free
Ans: A) Finite and non-finite
14. Traditional grammar speaks of “voice” mainly in terms of: (PGTRB 2020)
A) Pitch and loudness
B) Active and passive forms
C) Dialect variation
D) Stylistic features
Ans: B) Active and passive forms
15. The rule “A sentence should not end with a preposition” belongs to: (SET 2016)
A) Transformational grammar
B) Traditional prescriptive grammar
C) Phonological theory
D) Sociolinguistics
Ans: B) Traditional prescriptive grammar
16. Transformational Generative Grammar was introduced by: (UGC NET 2015)
A) M.A.K. Halliday
B) Noam Chomsky
C) Leonard Bloomfield
D) Roman Jakobson
Ans: B) Noam Chomsky
17. The book “Syntactic Structures” (1957) is a foundational text for: (PGTRB 2018)
A) Traditional grammar
B) Transformational Generative Grammar
C) Structural phonology
D) Functional grammar
Ans: B) Transformational Generative Grammar
18. A central goal of TG grammar is to: (SET 2018)
A) List all sentences in a language
B) Generate all and only grammatical sentences
C) Describe only written language
D) Prescribe correct usage based on Latin
Ans: B) Generate all and only grammatical sentences
19. In TG grammar, “deep structure” is mainly associated with: (UGC NET 2016)
A) Phonetic form
B) Underlying syntactic and semantic relations
C) Orthographic spelling
D) Stylistic variation
Ans: B) Underlying syntactic and semantic relations
20. “Surface structure” in TG grammar refers to: (PGTRB 2019)
A) Abstract mental syntax
B) Actual spoken or written form of the sentence
C) Dictionary meaning
D) Historical etymology
Ans: B) Actual spoken or written form of the sentence
21. The distinction between “competence” and “performance” is central to: (SET 2019)
A) Traditional grammar only
B) Transformational Generative Grammar
C) Lexicography
D) Phonetics
Ans: B) Transformational Generative Grammar
22. In Chomsky’s terms, “competence” is: (UGC NET 2017)
A) Actual speech behaviour
B) Ideal speaker-hearer’s knowledge of language
C) Only writing ability
D) Only reading ability
Ans: B) Ideal speaker-hearer’s knowledge of language
23. In TG grammar, the rule “S → NP VP” is a: (PGTRB 2017)
A) Transformational rule
B) Phrase structure rule
C) Phonological rule
D) Semantic rule
Ans: B) Phrase structure rule
24. A transformation in TG grammar converts: (SET 2020)
A) One set of phrase markers into another
B) Speech into writing
C) Phonemes into morphemes
D) Syntax into semantics only
Ans: A) One set of phrase markers into another
25. “Passivization” in TG grammar is an example of: (UGC NET 2018)
A) Phonetic change
B) Semantic shift
C) Syntactic transformation
D) Orthographic rule
Ans: C) Syntactic transformation
26. Traditional grammar would treat “I shall go” vs “I will go” mainly as a matter of: (PGTRB 2018)
A) Phonology
B) Tense and modality prescription
C) Deep structure
D) Tree diagrams
Ans: B) Tense and modality prescription
27. TG grammar would focus on “I shall go / I will go” primarily as: (SET 2018)
A) Orthographic variants
B) Different deep structures with subtle semantic features
C) Unacceptable forms
D) Historical spellings
Ans: B) Different deep structures with subtle semantic features
28. Which of the following belongs more naturally to Transformational grammar than to traditional grammar? (UGC NET 2019)
A) Agreement of subject and verb
B) Case of nouns
C) Deep and surface structure
D) Types of conjunctions
Ans: C) Deep and surface structure
29. Traditional grammar often explains correctness by appealing to: (PGTRB 2020)
A) Native speaker intuition
B) Spoken corpora
C) Rules modelled on classical languages
D) Psycholinguistics
Ans: C) Rules modelled on classical languages
30. TG grammar explains acceptability largely in terms of: (SET 2017)
A) Social prestige
B) Native speaker competence and rule system
C) Literary tradition
D) Orthographic conventions
Ans: B) Native speaker competence and rule system
31. “Recursiveness” as a property of grammar is stressed by: (UGC NET 2020)
A) Traditional prescriptive grammar
B) Transformational Generative Grammar
C) Rhetorical grammar
D) Orthographic grammar
Ans: B) Transformational Generative Grammar
32. The idea of an innate “Language Acquisition Device” (LAD) is connected with: (PGTRB 2021)
A) Traditional grammar
B) Behaviourist psychology
C) Chomsky’s Generative grammar
D) Structural phonology
Ans: C) Chomsky’s Generative grammar
33. Traditional grammar is often criticised for ignoring: (SET 2020)
A) Written language
B) Spoken usage and variation
C) Latin rules
D) Classical literature
Ans: B) Spoken usage and variation
34. TG grammar is mainly concerned with: (UGC NET 2018)
A) Social functions of language
B) Underlying mental grammar and rule systems
C) Only phonetics
D) Orthographic reform
Ans: B) Underlying mental grammar and rule systems
35. “Kernel sentences” in TG grammar are: (PGTRB 2019)
A) Highly embedded structures
B) Basic simple active declarative sentences
C) Only interrogatives
D) Only imperatives
Ans: B) Basic simple active declarative sentences
36. Traditional grammar tends to classify words by: (SET 2019)
A) Distribution and function only
B) Meaning, form and function in a broad way
C) Only phonetic features
D) Only semantic roles
Ans: B) Meaning, form and function in a broad way
37. In TG grammar, “phrase markers” are represented by: (UGC NET 2019)
A) Phonetic symbols
B) Tree diagrams
C) Italic fonts
D) Punctuation marks
Ans: B) Tree diagrams
38. Traditional grammar often uses the term “clause” to refer to: (PGTRB 2017)
A) Any phrase
B) A group of words with a subject and a predicate
C) A single word
D) Only subordinate units
Ans: B) A group of words with a subject and a predicate
39. TG grammar would see structural ambiguity (e.g. “Flying planes can be dangerous”) as resulting from: (SET 2018)
A) Two different spellings
B) One surface structure with two possible deep structures
C) Incorrect grammar
D) Morphological variation only
Ans: B) One surface structure with two possible deep structures
40. Traditional grammar explains ambiguity mostly through: (UGC NET 2020)
A) Transformational rules
B) Context and lexical meanings
C) Phrase markers
D) Innate principles
Ans: B) Context and lexical meanings
41. A key difference is that traditional grammar is largely: (PGTRB 2020)
A) Theory-neutral
B) School-based and rule-teaching
C) Psycholinguistic
D) Corpus-driven
Ans: B) School-based and rule-teaching
42. TG grammar is more concerned with: (SET 2021)
A) Classroom exercises
B) Underlying cognitive mechanisms of grammar
C) Rhetorical style
D) Punctuation rules
Ans: B) Underlying cognitive mechanisms of grammar
43. In the classroom, traditional grammar often appears as: (UGC NET 2018)
A) Sentence diagramming and rule recitation
B) Syntax trees and derivations
C) Corpus analysis only
D) Phonetic transcription only
Ans: A) Sentence diagramming and rule recitation
44. In TG grammar, “wh-movement” is a type of: (PGTRB 2021)
A) Phonological change
B) Syntactic movement transformation
C) Lexical replacement
D) Semantic shift
Ans: B) Syntactic movement transformation
45. Traditional grammar texts often arrange material under: (SET 2019)
A) Phonology, syntax, semantics
B) Parts of speech, sentence kinds, parsing
C) Experimental and corpus methods
D) Cognitive and neurolinguistic aspects
Ans: B) Parts of speech, sentence kinds, parsing
46. TG grammar typically represents “John will go” vs “Will John go?” as: (UGC NET 2017)
A) Different languages
B) Related structures via inversion transformation
C) Unrelated sentences
D) Only stylistic variants
Ans: B) Related structures via inversion transformation
47. Traditional grammar would mainly treat “John will go / Will John go?” as: (PGTRB 2019)
A) Deep and surface forms
B) Statement and question types
C) Ill-formed sentences
D) Different tenses
Ans: B) Statement and question types
48. The contrast between traditional and TG grammar can be summarised as: (SET 2020)
A) Schoolroom rules vs formal generative theory
B) Phonology vs morphology
C) Speech vs writing
D) Style vs rhetoric
Ans: A) Schoolroom rules vs formal generative theory
49. In TG grammar, “generative” mainly means: (UGC NET 2019)
A) Producing electricity
B) Generating sentences from a finite set of rules
C) Creating dictionaries
D) Writing essays
Ans: B) Generating sentences from a finite set of rules
50. Both traditional and TG grammar share the concern of: (PGTRB 2022)
A) Explaining poetic meter
B) Describing the structure of sentences in a language
C) Recording etymology only
D) Designing orthographies
Ans: B) Describing the structure of sentences in a language
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