Generative Grammar

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Tarald Taraldsen
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Richard Montague

This article presents different types of generative grammar that can be used as models of natural languages focusing on a small subset of all the systems that have been devised. The central idea behind generative grammar may be rendered in the words of Richard Montague: “I reject the contention that an important theoretical difference exists between formal and natural languages” (“Universal Grammar,” Theoria, 36 [1970], 373–398).

scholarly journals The Linguistic Philosophy of Noam Chomsky

2014 ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Binoy Barman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Human Child ◽  
Mental Exercise ◽  
Linguistic Philosophy

Noam Chomsky, one of the most famous linguists of the twentieth century, based his linguistic works on certain philosophical doctrines. His main contribution to linguistics is Transformational Generative Grammar, which is founded on mentalist philosophy. He opposes the behaviourist psychology in favour of innatism for explaining the acquisition of language. He claims that it becomes possible for human child to learn a language for the linguistic faculty with which the child is born, and that the use of language for an adult is mostly a mental exercise. His ideas brought about a revolution in linguistics, dubbed as Chomskyan Revolution. According to him, the part of language which is innate to human being would be called Universal Grammar. His philosophy holds a strong propensity to rationalism in search of a cognitive foundation. His theory is a continuation of analytic philosophy, which puts language in the centre of philosophical investigation. He would also be identified as an essentialist. This paper considers various aspects of Chomsky’s linguistic philosophy with necessary elaborations.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/pp.v51i1-2.17681

UG or not UG, that is the question: a reply to Clahsen and Muysken

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean duPlessis ◽  
Doreen Solin ◽  
Lisa Travis ◽  
Lydia White
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
German Word ◽  
Germanic Languages

In a recent paper, Clahsen and Muysken (1986) argue that adult second lan guage (L2) learners no longer have access to Universal Grammar (UG) and acquire the L2 by means of learning strategies and ad hoc rules. They use evidence from adult L2 acquisition of German word order to argue that the rules that adults use are not natural language rules. In this paper, we argue that this is not the case. We explain properties of Germanic word order in terms of three parameters (to do with head position, proper government and adjunc tion). We reanalyse Clahsen and Muysken's data in terms of these parameters and show that the stages that adult learners go through, the errors that they make and the rules that they adopt are perfectly consistent with a UG incor porating such parameters. We suggest that errors are the result of some of the parameters being set inappropriately for German. The settings chosen are nevertheless those of existing natural languages. We also discuss additional data, from our own research on the acquisition of German and Afrikaans, which support our analysis of adult L2 acquisition of Germanic languages.

Andrés Bello

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-348
Author(s):  
Enrique Obediente ◽  
Francesco D’Introno
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Symbolic System ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Independent System ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Grammatical Analysis ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Andres Bello

Summary In this article we will analyze two aspects of Andrés Bello’s (1781–1865) grammatical thought: its relation to the English empiricists and its similarity with generative grammar. His relation to the English empiricists is due to the fact that Bello spent 19 years in London, where he became familiar with the work of Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Reid. In fact his philosophical work, Filosofía del entendimiento, sounds like some of those philosophers’ essays. From the empiricists Bello derives the idea that there is no innate universal grammar with rules present in all languages, as well as his concept of language as an independent system of arbitrary and conventional signs. From Reid he derived his interpretation of the evolution of the language: signs start as ‘natural’ (i.e., they allow humans to communicate without any particular language), and then they become ‘artificial’, i.e., arbitrary and conventional, particular to each grammatical system. Because of his philosophical position, Bello has been compared to structuralist linguists. Here we will show that some of Bello’s grammatical thoughts can be compared with those of Chomsky. The reason for this is that in his grammatical analysis Bello uses concepts reminiscent of generative grammar. For example, Bello proposes the notion of an ‘latent proposition’ similar to that of ‘deep sttaicture’. And when he analyzes for example relative clauses and elliptical constructions, he uses concepts that are familiar to generative grammarians. In other words, the paper tries to show that methodologically and analytically Bello shares some concepts present in Chomsky’s linguistic theory. It also shows differences between Bello and Chomsky, and concludes by pointing out that the major difference between the two linguists is that Bello assumes language can be learned through a symbolic system, while Chomsky assumes language to be innate and independent of other cognitive systemsof the mind.

Procedural theories of linguistic performance

1981 ◽  
Vol 295 (1077) ◽  
pp. 297-304 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Computer Programs ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Adequate Model ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Numeral Systems ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Effective Procedures ◽  
The Ideal

In the modern theory of language it has been found useful to distinguish between questions of ‘competence’ and questions of ‘performance’. The distinction has at least two aspects. First, it recognizes that the description of a language as such is logically distinct from an account of the way in which particular people use that language, but, secondly, it separates questions of grammaticality from questions about naturalness or intelligibility. It is argued that, while the former distinction is valuable, the latter has now outlived its usefulness. A generative grammar can be regarded as an adequate model of the ideal speaker’s competence only if it is accompanied by a specification of processes by which ideas could be encoded in words, and these words subsequently decoded by the hearer. Examples are given of effective procedures, implemented as computer programs, for the performance of specific linguistic tasks; one of these, due to A. C. Davey, is a model of the production of connected English discourse; another, due to R. J. D. Power and myself, is a device that learns, from representative number—numeral pairs, the numeral systems of a variety of natural languages.

scholarly journals Chomsky's Contribution to Linguistics: A Review

2018 ◽  
Vol I (I) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Sonia Touqir ◽  
Amna Mushtaq ◽  
Touqir Nasir
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Acquisition Process ◽  
Principles And Parameters

This review seeks to highlight Chomsky's major contributions to the field of linguistics. He changed linguists' conception about the nature of language from an externalized to internalized approach. This shift also resulted in the language being thought of as a cognitive phenomenon rather than as a set of structures to be analyzed for their correctness or incorrectness to prove his stance introduced the concept of language faculty, its workings, Universal Grammar, Principles and Parameters, and Transformational and Generative Grammar. The TGG also significantly overhauled the existent phrase structure rules. These rules were brought to follow binarity principles that dictated that a node cannot have less than or more than two branches. Besides the concept of Universal Grammar, along with its principles and parameters, Chomsky simplified how the language acquisition process can be understood: instead of learning hundreds of rules, the human mind has to install a handful of principles and parameters.

scholarly journals Generative Syntax

Linguistics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Tarald Taraldsen
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Recursive Structure ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Core System ◽  
Form Complex ◽  
Generative Syntax ◽  
Early 21St Century

Generative syntax is a major subfield of generative grammar, an outgrowth of American structuralism in its insistence on rigorous formal modeling of linguistic patterns. Generative syntax breaks with the structuralist tradition by attaching no significance to discovery procedures and by not seeing accurate description of individual languages as the ultimate goal of linguistics. Rather, the goal is to extract cross-linguistic commonalities in order to characterize a core system of grammar shared by all natural languages. This core system, called Universal Grammar, is seen as a system of primitives and principles that determine how these primitives can be put together to form complex linguistic structures by recursive structure-building operations that will construct an infinite set of sentences and characterize the relations between them. The most interesting and controversial feature of generative grammar lies on the conceptual side. By seeing Universal Grammar as rooted in an innate language faculty specific to humans, generative grammar places the study of language within the cognitive sciences. Since its inception in the 1950s, the generative theory of syntax has spawned a number of approaches that differ from one another with respect to many theoretical assumptions but still seem to agree that natural language syntax is rooted in a species-specific cognitive capacity dedicated to language. These various theoretical developments can be grouped into two major categories for expository purposes. On the one hand, lexical-functional grammar (LFG) and head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) develop architectures sufficiently different from that of Chomskyan generative syntax to be regarded as distinct branches of the generative enterprise. On the other hand, five different stages can be identified within the line of development that has continued to be informed by Noam Chomsky’s own work: early generative syntax, 1957–1965; the aspects theory (also known as the standard theory), 1965–1973; the (revised) extended standard theory, roughly 1973–1981; government and binding theory, 1981–1993; and minimalism, 1993 onward, which must in the early 21st century be regarded as the mainstream paradigm. The research questions that arise concern both the internal organization of the syntactic component (levels of representation) and the interaction between syntax and other components of grammar, such as morphology, phonology, and semantics. These questions are intimately linked to the effort to isolate the essential properties of syntactic structures and of the syntactic operations and the general principles that govern their application.

scholarly journals A AQUISIÇÃO DA POSIÇÃO DO VERBO EM INGLÊS E ALEMÃO: UM ESTUDO COMPARATIVO | THE ACQUISITION OF VERBS IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

2016 ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Carolina Lacerda Medeiros
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
The Other ◽  
Crucial Point ◽  
Comparative Syntax ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
De Se ◽  
Individual Entity ◽  
The Moment

<p><strong>Resumo:</strong> A literatura que discute a sintaxe do verbo nas línguas naturais em geral assume que as línguas V2 são aquelas em que o verbo flexionado ocupa a segunda posição na sentença, sendo a primeira posição ocupada por qualquer outro elemento. O alemão, assim como outras línguas germânicas, é caracterizado como uma língua de tipo V2. O inglês, por outro lado, não apresenta a ordenação de constituintes segundo a qual o verbo obrigatoriamente ocupa a segunda posição na sentença, tendo sido considerado uma língua V2 apenas em seu período arcaico. Este artigo procura fazer um breve estudo comparativo analisando a fala de duas crianças, uma adquirindo o alemão e uma adquirindo o inglês britânico, em diferentes momentos (1;9 até 3;3). Com base na tipologia de Vikner (1995) temos como objetivo verificar até que ponto as duas línguas se assemelham, no âmbito da sintaxe, e em que momento passam a se comportar como línguas distintas no que respeita à posição do verbo uma vez que, linearmente, o inglês apresenta o verbo em segunda posição nas sentenças simples. Como hipótese, temos que um ponto decisivo para a diferenciação das duas gramáticas seria a aquisição de encaixadas. Desse modo, a criança que adquire o alemão começaria a apresentar traços de uma gramática V2 a partir do momento em que adquire sentenças encaixadas, dado que, diferentemente do inglês, esta língua não apresenta verbo em segunda posição nas subordinadas. A criança adquirindo o inglês, por outro lado, mantém a ordem V2 linear nas encaixadas.  O <em>corpus </em>utilizado neste trabalho é oriundo da base CHILDES e pode ser acessado <em>online</em>. O quadro teórico se baseia na noção de Gramática de Chomsky (1985), convencionada como Língua-I, que remete à possibilidade de se gerarem estruturas linguísticas e não, por exemplo, a um certo inventário de estruturas. Tais possibilidades são limitadas pela Gramática Universal, parte das faculdades inatas do ser humano, que dispõe de princípios imutáveis e parâmetros que podem ser fixados diferentemente em gramáticas particulares, determinando, assim, os limites de variação entre essas gramáticas (Chomsky &amp; Lasnik 1993). Cada gramática particular, neste sentido, representa uma determinada parametrização dos princípios da Gramática Universal. A gramática do falante, na teoria gerativa, será, portanto, uma entidade individual: uma gramática particular internalizada na mente de cada indivíduo.</p><p><strong>Abstract:</strong> <em>The literature usually assumes that V2 languages are those in which the finite verb is on second position on the sentence, like it is in German. English, on the other hand, does not present the same linearization, so Vikner (1995) classified it as a residual V2-language. This paper aims to provide a comparative study analyzing the speech of two children, one acquiring German and the other acquiring European English, in different moments (1;9-3;3). Based on Vikner's typology, we try to verify how these two languages are syntactically alike and in which moment they begin to behave like different grammars, in what concern verb position, since, linearly, English also presents the verb in second position in matrix sentences. As a hypothesis, we believe that a crucial point in this differentiation would be the acquisition of subordinate sentences. In this sense, the child acquiring German would start presenting  V2 grammar traces on the moment s/he acquires subordinate sentences, since, unlike English, this grammar do not present V2 in subordinate structures. The child acquiring English, on the other hand, would maintain the V2 linearization on subordinate sentences. This work is based on the CHILDES corpus, which can be accessed online. The theoretic framework is based on Chomsky's (1985) notion of Grammar as I-Language, that refers to the possibility to generate language structures and not, for example, a certain inventory of structures. Those possibilities are limited by the Universal Grammar, part of human's innate faculties, that is formed by immutable principles and parameters that can be differently fixed by different particular grammars determining the limits of language variation between those grammars. In this sense, each particular grammar represents a different parametrization of the Universal Grammar's principles. Each speaker's grammar, in this sense, will be an individual entity: a particular grammar internalized in the individual's mind</em><em>.</em></p><p>Keywords: <em>Language Acquisition; V2; Comparative Syntax; Generative Grammar.</em></p><p> </p>

Roger Bacon and Martin Joos

2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Inverse Function ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
The Past ◽  
Generative Theory ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context

Summary Expositions of the history of western linguistics, especially those designed for a novice readership, often refer to a passage from the writings of the twelfth-century scholar Roger Bacon. That passage is conventionally interpreted as an assertion of the existence of universal grammar, framed in the terms of early medieval language science. Among generative grammarians, the text from Bacon has been construed as evidence for the longevity of a concept which Chomskyan linguistics now reformulates in modern guise. Generativists also sometimes cite another passage, in this case taken from a 1957 text by the American descriptivist Martin Joos. The quotation from Joos performs an inverse function compared to that from Bacon, in that it is taken to epitomize the anti-universalism of early twentieth-century descriptivism. As such, Joos’ words are employed to distinguish generative grammar from the intellectual context of the immediately preceding school of linguistics. There are reasons to doubt the historical accuracy of the conventional readings of both these passages. This article re-opens the question of what Bacon meant and what Joos meant, then examines how their words have been incorporated into recent generative literature. As a case study in the historical orientation of modern linguistics, I find generative theory to be less interested in understanding other cultures’ ideas about language than in using historical material to advance its own self-representation. Is this a legitimate use of the past?

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