NOAM CHOMSKY AND GENERATIVISM

Noam Chomsky and Generativism

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

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

• 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.

What is generative grammar?

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

Competence vs performance

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• 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".

Grammaticality and acceptability

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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.

Deep structure and surface structure

Two surface structures, one deep stucture

one surface structure, two deep stuctures

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

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.

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

"VISITING AUNTS CAN BE A BORE"

CONSIDER THESE SENTENCES

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

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

to share in the classroom

• 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)?

Let's think of more examples of

THANK YOU!