Generative linguistics
Generative linguistics is a branch of linguistics that the concept of generative grammar uses. The term " generative grammar " is used in different meanings, and so the term " generative linguistics " has partly different and partly similar meanings.
Formally called a grammar then generative, when it is fully explicit: it contains a limited number of rules with which an unlimited number can be produced in grammatical sentences. Any irregular sets it excludes it. This definition of generative grammar is derived from Noam Chomsky, by which the term has become known. Today, even most linguistic dictionaries relate to that effect on the generative grammar. The concept of " generating " grammatical sentences is used in rather a theoretical sense. That is, a grammar " generates grammatical sentences " in which she lays a structural description of why the respective set.
In general, the term is also used for those mindset of linguistics, which is preferred by Chomsky and his followers. This has met with both Chomsky himself, as well as other linguists with little enthusiasm. Characteristic of Chomsky's approach is the use of the generative transformational grammar, a theory that has changed significantly since their formation in Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957). Furthermore, this approach is directed to the linguistic nativism a great importance, which states that certain features are common to all human languages . " Generative Linguistics " says often the earliest version of Chomsky'schen transformational grammar, the difference between a linguistic deep structure and a surface structure.
Chomsky published his theory with simultaneous violent attacks on alternative theories, especially behaviorism, as he had been presented by BF Skinner in 1957 in his book Verbal Behavior. Therefore, another meaning of the concept of generative linguistics as an "anti - Skinner - linguistics ", or, more generally, as "anti - behaviorism " are understood.
The psycholinguistics, which developed as part of the general approach to cognitive psychology in the early 1960s, took up this anti- behaviorist attitude to be positive and quickly took over many of the ideas of Chomsky - as well as those of generative grammar. In the course of its further development, however, both cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics found little use for the generative linguistics, not least because Chomsky repeatedly stressed that he was never intended, the mental processes that produced on the basis of which the person sets or or read sentences analyzed to identify accurately.
The cognitive linguistics developed in the later years of the 20th century as an alternative to generative linguistics. The cognitive linguistics tries to unite the understanding of language with knowledge about the biological functioning of specific neural networks. The main difference here lies more in practical research than in philosophy: principle neurological facts have always generative linguists of importance, but in practice they often saw as too indecisive and interpreted in order to be of too great value to. Nevertheless, some scientists publish ( among them about Alec Marantz ) their work both in the field of generative linguistics and neurolinguistics.
Chomsky and his followers as the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker use the generative grammar for general statements about human existence. For example, Chomsky posits that technological discoveries are similar to grammatical rules universally limited and that modern art appears therefore derivatively, because the possibility of artistic expression such as the structure of language is limited. Pinker developed in his book The Language Instinct, the theory that there is next to a universal grammar, a universal culture. People therefore have a culture that differs only superficially locally as well as all the languages according to Chomsky on a grammar, each with superficial differences is based.