Generative grammar

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Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that considers grammar to be a system of rules that is intended to generate exactly those combinations of words which form grammatical sentences in a given language. The term was originally used in relation to the theories of grammar developed by Noam Chomsky, beginning in the late 1950s. Linguists who follow the generative approach originated by Chomsky have been called generativists. The generative school has focused on the study of syntax, but has also addressed other aspects of a language's structure, including morphology and phonology.

Early versions of Chomsky's theory were called transformational grammar, and this is still used as a general term that includes his subsequent theories, the most recent being the Minimalist Program. Chomsky has said, however, that the first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's Sanskrit grammar,[1] and he has also acknowledged other historical antecedents, such as Humboldt's description of language as a system which "makes infinite use of finite means." Chomsky and other generativists have argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from a universal grammar which is innate to the human brain, rather than being learned from the environment (see the poverty of the stimulus argument).

There are a number of competing versions of generative grammar currently practiced within linguistics. Other theories that have been proposed include dependency grammar, head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, categorial grammar, relational grammar, link grammar, and tree-adjoining grammar. In stochastic grammar, grammatical correctness is taken as a probabilistic variable, rather than a discrete (yes–no) property.



Historical development of models of transformational grammar[edit]

Chomsky, in an award acceptance speech delivered in India in 2001, claimed "The first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar".This work, called the Ashtadhyayi, was composed in the 6th century BC.


Standard Theory (1957–1965)[edit]

The so-called Standard Theory corresponds to the original model of generative grammar laid out in Chomsky (1965).

A core aspect of Standard Theory is a 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)[edit]

The so-called Extended Standard Theory was formulated in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Features are:

  • syntactic constraints
  • generalized phrase structures (X-bar theory)

Revised Extended Standard Theory (1973–1976)[edit]

The so-called Revised Extended Standard Theory was formulated between 1973 and 1976. It contains

Relational grammar (ca. 1975–1990)[edit]

Main article: Relational grammar

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)[edit]


Minimalist Program (1990–present)[edit]

Main article: Minimalist Program

Context-free grammars[edit]

Generative grammars can be described and compared with the aid of the Chomsky hierarchy proposed by Noam 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 grammars (type 3); Chomsky claims that regular grammars are not adequate as models for human language, because all human languages allow the center-embedding of strings within strings.

At a higher level of complexity are the context-free grammars (type 2). The derivation of a sentence by a grammar can be depicted as a derivation tree. Linguists working in generative grammar often view such derivation trees as a primary object of study. According to this view, a sentence is not merely a string of words, but rather a tree with subordinate and superordinate branches connected at nodes.

Essentially, the tree model works something like this example, in which S is a sentence, D is a determiner, N a noun, V a verb, NP a noun phrase and VP a verb phrase:

Basic english syntax tree.svg

The resulting sentence could be The dog ate the bone. 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:


Grammaticality judgments[edit]

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 (grammaticality intuitions). 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.[citation needed]


Generative grammar has been used to a limited extent in music theory and analysis since the 1980s.[3][4] The most well-known approaches were developed by Mark Steedman[5] as well as Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff,[6] who formalised and extended ideas from Schenkerian analysis.[7] More recently, such early generative approaches to music were further developed and extended by several scholars.[8][9][10][11]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ S.S. Chattopadhyay, "An event in Kolkata", Frontline
  2. ^ Chomsky, Noam (1956). "Three models for the description of language" (PDF). IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2 (3): 113–124. doi:10.1109/TIT.1956.1056813. 
  5. ^ Steedman, M.J. (1989). "A Generative Grammar for Jazz Chord Sequences". Music Perception 2 (1): 52–77. JSTOR 40285282. 

Further reading[edit]