Generative grammar, or generativism , is a
linguistic theory
Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the n ...
that regards
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
as the study of a hypothesised
innate grammatical structure. It is a
biological
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary in ...
or
biologistic modification of earlier
structuralist theories of linguistics, deriving ultimately from
glossematics.
Generative grammar considers
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...
as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. It is a system of explicit rules that may apply repeatedly to generate an indefinite number of sentences which can be as long as one wants them to be. The difference from
structural and
functional
Functional may refer to:
* Movements in architecture:
** Functionalism (architecture)
** Form follows function
* Functional group, combination of atoms within molecules
* Medical conditions without currently visible organic basis:
** Functional sy ...
models is that the
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
is base-generated within the
verb phrase in generative grammar. This purportedly cognitive structure is thought of as being a part of a
universal grammar
Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible hu ...
, a syntactic structure which is caused by a genetic
mutation
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, m ...
in humans.
Generativists have created numerous theories to make the NP VP (NP) analysis work in natural language description. That is, the
subject and the
verb phrase appearing as independent constituents, and the
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
placed within the verb phrase. A main point of interest remains in how to appropriately analyse
Wh-movement
In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between ''what'' and the object position ...
and other cases where the subject appears to separate the verb from the object. Although claimed by generativists as a cognitively real structure,
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the science, scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a Multidisciplinary approach, multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, an ...
has found no evidence for it.
In other words, generative grammar encompasses proposed models of linguistic cognition; but there is still no specific indication that these are quite correct.
Frameworks
There are a number of different approaches to generative grammar. Common to all is the effort to come up with a set of rules or principles that formally defines each and every one of the members of the set of well-formed expressions of a
natural language. The term ''generative grammar'' has been associated with at least the following schools of linguistics:
*
Transformational grammar (TG)
** Standard theory (ST)
** Extended standard theory (EST)
** Revised extended standard theory (REST)
**
Principles and parameters theory (P&P)
***
Government and binding theory (GB)
***
Minimalist program (MP)
* Monostratal (or non-transformational) grammars
**
Relational grammar (RG)
**
Lexical-functional grammar (LFG)
**
Generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG)
**
Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG)
**
Categorial grammar
**
Tree-adjoining grammar
**
Optimality Theory (OT)
Historical development of models of transformational grammar
Leonard Bloomfield
Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalis ...
, an influential linguist in the American Structuralist tradition, saw the ancient Indian grammarian
Pāṇini
, era = ;;6th–5th century BCE
, region = Indian philosophy
, main_interests = Grammar, linguistics
, notable_works = ' ( Classical Sanskrit)
, influenced=
, notable_ideas= Descriptive linguistics
(Devana ...
as an antecedent of structuralism. However, in ''Aspects of the Theory of Syntax'',
Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
writes that "even Panini's grammar can be interpreted as" a fragment of a generative grammar, a view that he reiterated in an award acceptance speech delivered in India in 2001, where he claimed that "The first generative grammar in something like the modern sense is Panini's grammar of Sanskrit".
Military funding to generativist research was influential to its early success in the 1960s.
Generative grammar has been under development since the mid 1950s, and has undergone many changes in the types of rules and representations that are used to predict grammaticality. In tracing the historical development of ideas within generative grammar, it is useful to refer to the various stages in the development of the theory:
Standard theory (1956–1965)
The so-called standard theory corresponds to the original model of generative grammar laid out by Chomsky in 1965.
A core aspect of standard theory is the distinction between two different representations of a sentence, called
deep structure and surface structure. The two representations are linked to each other by
transformational grammar.
Extended standard theory (1965–1973)
The so-called extended standard theory was formulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Features are:
* syntactic constraints
* generalized phrase structures (
X-bar theory
In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In: R. Jacobs and P. Rosenbaum (eds.) ...
)
Revised extended standard theory (1973–1976)
The so-called revised extended standard theory was formulated between 1973 and 1976. It contains
* restrictions upon
X-bar theory
In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In: R. Jacobs and P. Rosenbaum (eds.) ...
(Jackendoff (1977)).
* assumption of the
complementizer position.
*
Move α
Relational grammar (ca. 1975–1990)
An alternative model of syntax based on the idea that notions like subject, direct object, and indirect object play a primary role in grammar.
Government and binding/principles and parameters theory (1981–1990)
Chomsky's ''Lectures on Government and Binding'' (1981) and ''Barriers'' (1986).
Minimalist program (1990–present)
The minimalist program is a line of inquiry that hypothesizes that the human
language faculty
The language module or language faculty is a hypothetical structure in the human brain which is thought to contain innate capacities for language, originally posited by Noam Chomsky. There is ongoing research into brain modularity in the fiel ...
is optimal, containing only what is necessary to meet humans' physical and communicative needs, and seeks to identify the necessary properties of such a system. It was proposed by Chomsky in 1993.
Context-free grammars
Generative grammars can be described and compared with the aid of the
Chomsky hierarchy (proposed by Chomsky in the 1950s). This sets out a series of types of formal grammars with increasing expressive power. Among the simplest types are the
regular grammar
In theoretical computer science and formal language theory, a regular grammar is a grammar that is ''right-regular'' or ''left-regular''.
While their exact definition varies from textbook to textbook, they all require that
* all production rule ...
s (type 3); Chomsky claims that these are not adequate as models for human language, because of the allowance of the
center-embedding of strings within strings, in all natural human languages.
At a higher level of complexity are the
context-free grammars (type 2). The derivation of a sentence by such a grammar can be depicted as a derivation
tree
In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...
. Linguists working within generative grammar often view such trees as a primary object of study. According to this view, a sentence is not merely a string of words. Instead, adjacent words are combined into ''constituents'', which can then be further combined with other words or constituents to create a hierarchical tree-structure.
The derivation of a simple tree-structure for the sentence "the dog ate the bone" proceeds as follows. The
determiner ''the'' and noun ''dog'' combine to create the
noun phrase ''the dog.'' A second noun phrase ''the bone'' is created with determiner ''the'' and noun ''bone''. The verb ''ate'' combines with the second noun phrase, ''the bone,'' to create the
verb phrase ''ate the bone''. Finally, the first noun phrase, ''the dog,'' combines with the verb phrase, ''ate the bone,'' to complete the sentence: ''the dog ate the bone''. The following tree diagram illustrates this derivation and the resulting structure:
Such a tree diagram is also called a
phrase marker. They can be represented more conveniently in text form, (though the result is less easy to read); in this format the above sentence would be rendered as:
S_[NP_[D_The_">sub>S_[NP_[D_The_[
N_dog_.html" ;"title="sub>NP_[
D_The_.html" ;"title="sub>S [
NP [
D The ">sub>S [
NP [
D The [
N dog ">sub>NP_[
D_The_.html" ;"title="sub>S [
NP [
D The ">sub>S [
NP [
D The [
N dog ] [
VP [
V ate ] [
NP [
D the ] [
N bone ] ] ] ]
Chomsky has argued that phrase structure grammars are also inadequate for describing natural languages, and formulated the more complex system of
transformational grammar.
Evidentiality
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
, the main proponent of generative grammar, believed he had found linguistic evidence that syntactic structures are not learned but ‘acquired’ by the child from universal grammar. This led to the establishment of the
poverty of the stimulus argument in the 1980s. However, critics claimed Chomsky's linguistic analysis had been inadequate.
Linguistic studies had been made to prove that children have innate knowledge of grammar that they could not have learned. For example, it was shown that a child acquiring English knows how to differentiate between the place of the verb in main clauses from the place of the verb in relative clauses. In the experiment, children were asked to turn a declarative sentence with a relative clause into an interrogative sentence. Against the expectations of the researchers, the children did not move the verb in the relative clause to its sentence initial position, but to the main clause initial position, as is grammatical. Critics however pointed out that this was not evidence for the poverty of the stimulus because the underlying structures that children were proved to be able to manipulate were actually highly common in children's literature and everyday language.
This led to a heated debate which resulted in the rejection of generative grammar from mainstream
psycholinguistics and
applied linguistics
Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, communication res ...
around 2000.
In the aftermath, some professionals argued that decades of research had been wasted due to generative grammar, an approach which has failed to make a lasting impact on the field.
There is no evidence that syntactic structures are innate. While some hopes were raised at the discovery of the ''
FOXP2''
gene
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a b ...
,
there is not enough support for the idea that it is 'the grammar gene' or that it had much to do with the relatively recent emergence of syntactical speech.
Neuroscientific studies using
ERPs have found no scientific evidence for the claim that human mind processes grammatical objects as if they were placed inside the verb phrase. Instead, brain research has shown that sentence processing is based on the interaction of semantic and syntactic processing.
However, since generative grammar is not a theory of
neurology
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...
, but a theory of
psychology
Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
, it is completely normal in the field of
neurology
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...
to find no concreteness of the verb phrase in the brain. In fact, these rules do not exist in our brains, but they do model the external behaviour of the mind. This is why GG claims to be a theory of
psychology
Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
and is considered to be real cognitively.
Generativists also claim that language is placed inside its own mind module and that there is no interaction between first-language processing and other types of information processing, such as mathematics.
This claim is not based on research or the general scientific understanding of how the brain works.
Chomsky has answered the criticism by emphasising that his theories are actually counter-evidential. He however believes it to be a case where the real value of the research is only understood later on, as it was with
Galileo
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...
.
Music
Generative grammar has been used in
music theory and
analysis
Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (3 ...
since the 1980s. The most well-known approaches were developed by
Mark Steedman as well as
Fred Lerdahl
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin) is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar an ...
and
Ray Jackendoff
Ray Jackendoff (born January 23, 1945) is an American linguist. He is professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and, with Daniel Dennett, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has always s ...
, who formalized and extended ideas from
Schenkerian analysis Schenkerian analysis is a method of analyzing tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The goal is to demonstrate the organic coherence of the work by showing how it relates to an abstracted deep structure, the ''Urs ...
. More recently, such early generative approaches to music were further developed and extended by various scholars.
[Katz, Jonah; David Pesetsky (2009) "The Identity Thesis for Language and Music". http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000959] French Composer
Philippe Manoury applied the systematic of generative grammar to the field of contemporary classical music.
See also
*
Cognitive linguistics
*
Cognitive revolution
*
Digital infinity Digital infinity is a technical term in theoretical linguistics. Alternative formulations are "discrete infinity" and "the infinite use of finite means". The idea is that all human languages follow a simple logical principle, according to which a li ...
*
Formal grammar
*
Functional theories of grammar
*
Generative lexicon
*
Generative metrics
*
Generative principle
In foreign language teaching, the generative principle reflects the human capacity to generate an infinite number of phrases and sentences from a finite grammatical or linguistic competence. This capacity was captured in Wilhelm von Humboldt's fa ...
*
Generative semantics
*
Generative systems
Generative systems are technologies with the overall capacity to produce unprompted change driven by large, varied, and uncoordinated audiences. When generative systems provide a common platform, changes may occur at varying layers (physical, netwo ...
*
Linguistic competence
*
Parsing
Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from ...
*
Phrase structure rules
* ''
Syntactic Structures''
Notes
References
Further reading
* Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
* Hurford, J. (1990) ''Nativist and functional explanations in language acquisition''. In I. M. Roca (ed.), Logical Issues in Language Acquisition, 85–136. Foris, Dordrecht.
* Cipriani, E. (2019). Semantics in Generative Grammar. A Critical Survey. Lingvisticae Investigationes, 42, 2, pp. 134–85
*
*
*
{{Authority control
Grammar
Grammar frameworks
Noam Chomsky
Cognitive musicology