NOAM CHOMSKY AND GENERATIVISM

Noam Chomsky and Generativism

Remember this other guy we talked about last lesson, Noam Chomsky?

He introduced another paradigm in linguistics: GENERATIVE GRAMMAR, or GENERATIVISM

What is generative grammar?

01

• Generative grammar is a theory of grammar, first developed by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s, that is based on the idea that all humans have an INNATE LANGUAGE CAPACITY.
• It is interested in uncovering the foundational principals that guide all language production.
• Generative grammar accepts as a basic premise that native speakers of a language will find certain sentences grammatical or ungrammatical and that these judgments give insight into the rules governing the use of that language.

02

Competence vs performance

Chomsky distinguishes between the speakers’ actual knowledge of the language: COMPETENCE and the use of that knowledge, which is PERFORMANCE

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03

Grammaticality and acceptability

• A sentence is GRAMMATICAL if it is generated by the grammar
• A sentence is ACCEPTABLE if it is judged by native speakers to be part of their language.
• "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" is possibly grammatical, but may not be acceptable (it does not make sense)
• "There’s lots of people here today" is certainly acceptable, but it might not be grammatical if the grammar in question requires the verb to agree with the "lots".

have a laugh!

04

Deep structure and surface structure

The DEEP STRUCTURE is the abstract structure that allows the native speaker of a language to know what the sentence means. It may then be said that the deep structure expresses the semantic contents of a sentence, whereas THE SURFACE STRUCTURE of a sentence determines its phonetic form.

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CONSIDER THESE SENTENCES

"VISITING AUNTS CAN BE A BORE"

This might convey 2 different messages: either that the aunts that visit you are a bore or that you visiting aunts can be a bore.

one surface structure, two deep stuctures

"A NEW SCHOOL WAS BUILT" "THEY BUILT A NEW SCHOOL"

These two sentences are different in form but they convey the same meaning

Two surface structures, one deep stucture

Generative Grammar: Definition and ExamplesBy Richard Nordquist Updated March 22, 2020

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The Linguistics student´s handbook, by Laurie Bauer, Ch. 8: Chomsky's influence

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to share in the classroom

Let's think of more examples of

• Sentence which is acceptable but not grammatical
• Sentence which is grammatical but not acceptable
• Deep structure with two (or more) surface structures (same meaning, two different sentences)
• What about, a surface structure with two deep structures (same sentence, two meanings)?

THANK YOU!