Generative grammar

Noam Chomsky first used the term in relation to the theoretical linguistics of grammar that he developed in the late 1950s.

He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program.

Early versions of Chomsky's theory were called transformational grammar, a term still used to include his subsequent theories, the most recent of which is the minimalist program theory: Chomsky and other generativists have argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from a universal grammar that is innate to the human brain, rather than being learned from the environment (see the poverty of the stimulus argument).

In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages.

Early versions of Chomsky's theory were called transformational grammar, a term still used to include his subsequent theories, the most recent of which is the minimalist program theory: Chomsky and other generativists have argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from a universal grammar that is innate to the human brain, rather than being learned from the environment (see the poverty of the stimulus argument).

In linguistics, the minimalist program (MP) is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky.

Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that regards grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language.

The main proponent of such a theory is Noam Chomsky, the originator of the generative theory of grammar, who has defined language as the construction of sentences that can be generated using transformational grammars.

A contrasting approach is that of constraint-based grammars.

Model-theoretic grammars, also known as constraint-based grammars, contrast with generative grammars in the way they define sets of sentences: they state constraints on syntactic structure rather than providing operations for generating syntactic objects.

Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that regards grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language.

Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific parameters (i.e. markers, switches) that for particular languages are either turned on or off.

The generative school has focused on the study of syntax and addressed other aspects of a language's structure, including morphology and phonology.

In 1968 Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle published The Sound Pattern of English (SPE), the basis for generative phonology.

Although Leonard Bloomfield, whose work Chomsky rejects, saw the ancient Indian grammarian Pāṇini as an antecedent of structuralism, Chomsky, in an award acceptance speech delivered in India in 2001, claimed "The first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar".

The influence of Bloomfieldian structural linguistics declined in the late 1950s and 1960s as the theory of generative grammar developed by Noam Chomsky came to predominate.

In linguistics (especially generative grammar), complementizer or complementiser (glossing abbreviation: ) is a lexical category (part of speech) that includes those words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject or object of a sentence.

Move α is a feature of the Revised Extended Standard Theory (REST) of transformational grammar developed by Noam Chomsky in the late 1970s.

Noam Chomsky first used the term in relation to the theoretical linguistics of grammar that he developed in the late 1950s. Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that regards grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language.

The derivation of a sentence by such a grammar can be depicted as a derivation tree.

Tree structures can depict all kinds of taxonomic knowledge, such as family trees, the biological evolutionary tree, the evolutionary tree of a language family, the grammatical structure of a language (a key example being S → NP VP, meaning a sentence is a noun phrase and a verb phrase, with each in turn having other components which have other components), the way web pages are logically ordered in a web site, mathematical trees of integer sets, et cetera.

At a higher level of complexity are the context-free grammars (type 2).

In Chomsky's generative grammar framework, the syntax of natural language was described by context-free rules combined with transformation rules.

The most well-known approaches were developed by Mark Steedman as well as Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, who formalized and extended ideas from Schenkerian analysis.

He has always straddled the boundary between generative linguistics and cognitive linguistics, committed to both the existence of an innate universal grammar (an important thesis of generative linguistics) and to giving an account of language that is consistent with the current understanding of the human mind and cognition (the main purpose of cognitive linguistics).

Because of its emphasis on usage, communicative function, and the social context of language, functional grammar differs significantly from other linguistic theories which stress purely formal approaches to grammar, notably Chomskyan generative grammar.

As a result, the first step to describing the meaning of an utterance in language is to break it down part by part and look at its analyzed form (known as its parse tree in computer science, and as its deep structure in generative grammar).

The verb ate combines with the second noun phrase, the bone, to create the verb phrase ate the bone.

In phrase structure grammars such as generative grammar, the verb phrase is one headed by a verb.

Noam Chomsky introduced this concept in his elaboration of generative grammar, where it has been widely adopted and competence is the only level of language that is studied.

When the X-bar schema was introduced and generally adopted into generative grammar in the 1970s, it was replacing a view of syntax that allowed for exocentric structures with one that views all sentence structure as endocentric.

This stands in contrast to the stance adopted by Noam Chomsky and others in the field of generative grammar.

The generative school has focused on the study of syntax and addressed other aspects of a language's structure, including morphology and phonology.

The generative school has focused on the study of syntax and addressed other aspects of a language's structure, including morphology and phonology.