Models of Generative Grammar | ||
| Alustath | ||
| Article 1, Volume 0, Issue 203, December 2012, Pages 1-12 | ||
| Author | ||
| Professor Dr. Waria Omar Amin | ||
| Abstract | ||
| The publication of the Chomsky’s Syntactic Structure in 1957 introduced the theory of Generative Grammar. It marked the start of a great revolution in Linguistics. Generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. It is an explicit description of the ideal speaker – hearers intuition. The theory centers on a very simple but essential observation (the native speaker of any language is able to produce and understand utterances he has never heard before).It attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences. Generative Grammar aims at describing the native speaker's tacit grammatical knowledge, which reflects his infinite productive capacity, by a system of rules that specify all of the well-formed or grammatical, sentences of a language . The hypothesis of generative grammar is that, language is a structure of the human mind. Its goal is to make a complete model of this inner language Chomsky has argued that the properties of a generative grammar arise from an "innate" universal grammar, it could be used to describe all human languages. Chomsky believed that there would be considerable similarities between languages' deep structures, and that these structures would reveal properties, common to all languages, which were concealed by their surface structures. Generative Grammar, since its inception in 1950s, has been constantly and dynamically developing and has had a profound influence on linguistics. Its tremendous affects are still being worked out. Chomsky himself and so many linguists throughout the world have been contributing in these developments. It has undergone numerous revisions. | ||
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