Generativism
Generativism
Generativism
The basis to Chomsky's linguistic theory is that the principles underlying the
structure of language are biologically determined in the human mind and hence
genetically transmitted. He therefore argues that all humans share the same
underlying linguistic structure, irrespective of socio-cultural difference. In this he
opposes the radical behaviourist psychology of B.F. Skinner, instead arguing that
human language is unlike modes of communication used by any other animal
species.
Chomsky built on earlier work of Zellig Harris to formulate the generative theory of
language. According to this theory the most basic form of language is a set of
syntactic rules universal for all humans and underlying the grammars of all human
languages. This set of rules is called Universal Grammar, and for Chomsky
describing it is the primary objective of the discipline of linguistics.
Generative grammar
Chomsky has argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise
from an "innate" universal grammar. Proponents of generative grammar have
argued that most grammar is not the result of communicative function and is not
simply learned from the environment. In this respect, generative grammar takes a
point of view different from cognitive grammar, functional, and behaviorist theories.
. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal
Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages
in so little time.
Most versions of generative grammar characterize sentences as
either grammatically correct (also known as well formed) or not. The rules of a
generative grammar typically function as an algorithm to predict grammaticality as
a discrete (yes-or-no) result.
Chomsky and other generativists have demonstrated that every native speaker of a
language has an internal grammar that allows them to instinctively know what is a
possible sentence in their language and what is not, and to only speak or write in a
way that fits this grammar. This means that a native speaker cannot use their
language in a wrong way. To demonstrate, here is a grammatical English sentence:
But for some reason, (2), (3) and (4) are not utterances that an English speaker
would produce in place of (1) or (5). These example sentences would look very
different in another language, but there would always be sentences that are part of
the language and possible sentences that are not. Generative grammar theory tries
to figure out how this works, how native speakers structure language.
Perhaps Chomskys most influential and time-tested contribution to the field is the
claim that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for
the "productivity" or "creativity" of language. In other words, a formal grammar of a
language can explain the ability of a hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an
infinite number of utterances, including novel ones, with a limited set of
grammatical rules and a finite set of terms.
The first task of Chomsky's syntax is to account for the speaker's understanding of
the internal structure of sentences. Sentences are not unordered strings of words,
rather the words and morphemes are grouped into functional constituents such as
the subject of the sentence, the predicate, the direct object, and so on. Chomsky
and other grammarians can represent much, though not all, of the speaker's
knowledge of the internal structure of sentences with rules called "phrase structure"
rules.
The rules themselves are simple enough to understand. For example, the fact that a
sentence (S) can consist of a noun phrase (NP) followed by a verb phrase (VP) we
can represent in a rule of the form: S - NP + VP. The so-called rewrite rules tell us
that the initial symbol S can be replaced by NP + VP. Other rules will similarly
unpack NP and VP into their constituents. In a very simple grammar, a noun phrase
might consist of an article (Art) followed by a noun (N); and a verb phrase might
consist of an auxiliary verb (Aux), a main verb (V), and a noun phrase (NP). A very
simple grammar of a fragment of English, then, might look like this:
1. S - NP + VP
2. NP - Art + N
3. VP - Aux + V + NP
If we keep applying the rewrite rules to generate strings until we have no elements
in our strings that occur on the left-hand side of a rewrite rule, we have arrived at a
"terminal string." For example, starting with S and rewriting according to the rules
mentioned above, we might construct the following simple derivation of the
terminal string underlying the sentence "The boy will read the book":
NP + VP (by rule 1)
Art + N + VP (by rule 2)
(by rule 2)
Criticism
When generative grammar was first proposed, it was widely hailed as a way of
formalizing the implicit set of rules a person "knows" when they know their native
language and produce grammatical utterances in it. However Chomsky has
repeatedly rejected that interpretation; according to him, the grammar of a
language is a statement of what it is that a person has to know in order to recognize
an utterance as grammatical, but not a hypothesis about the processes involved in
either understanding or producing language.
Development of the generative linguistics
In the 60s, the generative grammar became one of the central disciplines of the
modern linguistics. This method was also used in semantics and morphology, and
the first to introduce it in the phonological description of language was American
linguist Morris Halle.
In the past 50 years many followers of Chomsky gave their own theories, and even
Chomsky himself changed and improved his original ideas.
The whole development of the generative grammar insured the close connection
between the semantic and syntactic studies nowadays.