GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

In linguistics, generative grammar generally refers to a proof-theoretical approach to the study of syntax partially inspired by formal grammar theory and pioneered by Noam Chomsky. A generative grammar is a set of rules that recursively "specify" or "generate" the well-formed expressions of a natural language. This encompasses a large set of different approaches to grammar. The term generative grammar is also broadly used to refer to the school of linguistics where this type of formal grammar plays a major part.
Generative grammar should be distinguished from traditional grammar, which is often strongly prescriptive, rather than purely descriptive, is not mathematically explicit, and has historically investigated a relatively narrow set of syntactic phenomena. In the "school of linguistics" sense it should be distinguished from other linguistically descriptive approaches to grammar, such as various functional theories.
The term generative grammar can also refer to a particular set of formal rules for a particular language; for example, one may speak of a generative grammar of English. A generative grammar in this sense is a formal device that can enumerate ("generate") all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. In an even narrower sense, a generative grammar is a formal device (or, equivalently, an algorithm) that can be used to decide whether any given sentence is grammatical or not.
In most cases, a generative grammar is capable of generating an infinite number of strings from a finite set of rules. These properties are desirable for a model of natural language, since human brains are of finite capacity, yet humans can generate and understand a very large number of distinct sentences. Some linguists go so far as to claim that the set of grammatical sentences of any natural language is indeed infinite.
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; Chomsky claims that regular languages are not adequate as models for human language, because all human languages allow the embedding of strings within strings in a hierarchical way.

(Rishi Kumar Nagar)