The sentences in (1) contain the same words, but differ in word order. Nevertheless, the sentences have very similar, if not identical, meanings.
(1a) I am home today.
(1b) Today, I am home.
Although the sentences differ in surface form, I understand that syntacticians usually say that there is a deeper level of representation ('deep structure') at which both sentences have the same syntactic structure? For instance, would people invoke some type of (optional) movement and hold that ‘today’ was moved in either (1a) or (1b), so that pre-movement, they have the same structure?
What would this mean cross-linguistically? For instance, there’s no German sentence with the same surface structure as (1a) or (1b). Sentence (2c) and (2d) are grammatical in German, but their English counterparts are not.
(2a) *Ich bin daheim heute.
..........I...am...home...today
(2b) *Heute ich bin daheim.
.........Today...I...am...home
(2c) Heute bin ich daheim.
.......Today..am..I....home
(2d) Ich bin heute daheim.
.......I.....am..today..home
Although no common surface structure exists, would people still want to say that there is a level of representation at which the German and English sentences have the same structure?
I realise this a rather broad question, but perhaps people could point me in the right direction for further research.