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Generative grammar

Revised Extended Standard Theory (REST)

In theoretical linguistics, a generative grammar refers to


a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative
grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that
will generate exactly those combinations of words which
form grammatical sentences in that language. The term
was originally used in relation to the theories of grammar developed by Noam Chomsky, beginning in the late
1950s, although Chomsky has said that the rst generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's Sanskrit
grammar.,[1] and has also acknowledged other historical
antecedents, such as Humboldt's description of language
as a system which makes innite use of nite means.

Principles and Parameters Theory (P&P)


Government and Binding Theory (GB)
Minimalist Program (MP)
Monostratal (or non-transformational) grammars
Relational Grammar (RG)
Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG)
Generalized
(GPSG)

Phrase

Structure

Grammar

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar


(HPSG)

Early versions of Chomskys theory were called


transformational grammar, and this is still used as a
general term that includes his subsequent theories,
the most recent being the Minimalist program. There
are a number of competing versions of generative
grammar currently practiced within linguistics. Other
theories that have been proposed include dependency
grammar, head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical
functional grammar, categorial grammar, relational
grammar, link grammar, and tree-adjoining grammar.
In stochastic grammar, grammatical correctness is taken
as a probabilistic variable, rather than a discrete (yesno)
property.

1.1 Historical development of models of


transformational grammar

1.1.1 Standard Theory (19571965)

Categorial Grammar
Tree-Adjoining Grammar

Main article: Transformational grammar

Chomsky, in an award acceptance speech delivered in India in 2001, claimed The rst generative grammar in the
Chomsky has argued that many of the properties of a gen- modern sense was Panini's grammar.This work, called
erative grammar arise from an innate universal gram- the Ashtadhyayi, was composed in the 6th century BC.
mar. Proponents of generative grammar have argued that Generative grammar has been under development since
most grammar is not the result of communicative func- the late 1950s, and has undergone many changes in the
tion and is not simply learned from the environment (see types of rules and representations that are used to predict
the poverty of the stimulus argument). In this respect, grammaticality. In tracing the historical development of
generative grammar takes a point of view dierent from ideas within generative grammar, it is useful to refer to
cognitive grammar, functional, and behaviorist theories. various stages in the development of the theory.

Frameworks

The so-called Standard Theory corresponds to the original model of generative grammar laid out in Chomsky
(1965).

There are a number of dierent approaches to generative grammar. Common to all is the eort to come up
with a set of rules or principles that formally denes each
and every one of the members of the set of well-formed
expressions of a natural language. The term generative
grammar has been associated with at least the following
schools of linguistics:

A core aspect of Standard Theory is a distinction between


two dierent representations of a sentence, called Deep
structure and Surface structure. The two representations
are linked to each other by transformational grammar.

Transformational grammar (TG)

1.1.2 Extended Standard Theory (19651973)

Standard Theory (ST)

The so-called Extended Standard Theory was formulated


in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Features are:

Extended Standard Theory (EST)


1

4 MUSIC
syntactic constraints
generalized phrase structures (X-bar theory)

1.1.3

with subordinate and superordinate branches connected


at nodes.

Essentially, the tree model works something like this example, in which S is a sentence, D is a determiner, N a
Revised Extended Standard Theory (1973 noun, V a verb, NP a noun phrase and VP a verb phrase:
1976)
S

The so-called Revised Extended Standard Theory was


formulated between 1973 and 1976. It contains
restrictions upon X-bar theory (Jackendo (1977)).
assumption of the COMP position.
Move

NP
D

VP
N

NP

the dog ate D

the bone

1.1.4

Relational grammar (ca. 19751990)

The resulting sentence could be The dog ate the bone.


Such a tree diagram is also called a phrase marker.
They can be represented more conveniently in text form,
(though the result is less easy to read); in this format the
An alternative model of syntax based on the idea that above sentence would be rendered as:
notions like Subject, Direct Object, and Indirect Object [S [NP [D The ] [N dog ] ] [VP [V ate ] [NP [D the ] [N
play a primary role in grammar.
bone ] ] ] ]
Main article: Relational grammar

Chomsky has argued that phrase structure grammars are


Government and binding/Principles and pa- also inadequate for describing natural languages, and forrameters theory (19811990)
mulated the more complex system of transformational
grammar.[2]
Main article: Government and binding
1.1.5

Chomskys Lectures on Government and Binding (1981)


and Barriers (1986).
1.1.6

3 Grammaticality judgments

Minimalist Program (1990present)

When generative grammar was rst proposed, it was


widely hailed as a way of formalizing the implicit set
Main article: Minimalist Program
of rules a person knows when they know their native language and produce grammatical utterances in it
(grammaticality intuitions). However Chomsky has repeatedly rejected that interpretation; according to him,
the grammar of a language is a statement of what it is that
2 Context-free grammars
a person has to know in order to recognize an utterance
as grammatical, but not a hypothesis about the processes
Generative grammars can be described and compared
involved in either understanding or producing language.
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 (type
3); Chomsky claims that regular grammars are not ade- 4 Music
quate as models for human language, because all human
languages allow the center-embedding of strings within Generative grammar has been used to a limited exstrings.
tent in music theory and analysis since the 1980s.[3][4]
At a higher level of complexity are the context-free grammars (type 2). The derivation of a sentence by a grammar
can be depicted as a derivation tree. Linguists working in
generative grammar often view such derivation trees as a
primary object of study. According to this view, a sentence is not merely a string of words, but rather a tree

The most well-known approaches were developed by


Mark Steedman[5] as well as Fred Lerdahl and Ray
Jackendo,[6] who formalised and extended ideas from
Schenkerian analysis.[7] More recently, such early generative approaches to music were further developed and
extended by several scholars.[8][9][10][11]

See also
Formal grammar

Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of


syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Phrase structure rules

Hurford, J. (1990) Nativist and functional explanations in language acquisition. In I. M. Roca (ed.),
Logical Issues in Language Acquisition, 85136.
Foris, Dordrecht.

Cognitive linguistics
Parsing
Linguistic competence

7 Further reading

References

[1] S.S. Chattopadhyay, An event in Kolkata, Frontline


[2] Chomsky, Noam (1956). Three models for the description of language. IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2 (3): 113124. doi:10.1109/TIT.1956.1056813.
[3] Baroni, M., Maguire, S., and Drabkin, W. (1983). The
Concept of Musical Grammar. Music Analysis, 2:175
208.
[4] Baroni, M. and Callegari, L. (1982) Eds., Musical grammars and computer analysis. Leo S. Olschki Editore:
Firenze, 201218.
[5] Steedman, M.J. (1989). A Generative Grammar for
Jazz Chord Sequences. Music Perception 2 (1): 5277.
JSTOR 40285282.
[6] Lerdahl, Fred; Ray Jackendo (1996). A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 9780-262-62107-6.
[7] Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition. (Der Freie Satz)
translated and edited by Ernst Ostler. New York: Longman, 1979.
[8] Tojo, O. Y. & Nishida, M. (2006). Analysis of chord progression by HPSG. In Proceedings of the 24th IASTED
international conference on Articial intelligence and applications, 305310.
[9] Rohrmeier, Martin (2007). A generative grammar approach to diatonic harmonic structure. In Spyridis,
Georgaki, Kouroupetroglou, Anagnostopoulou (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 4th Sound and Music Computing Conference, 97100. http://smc07.uoa.gr/SMC07%
20Proceedings/SMC07%20Paper%2015.pdf
[10] Giblin, Iain (2008). Music and the generative enterprise.
Doctoral dissertation. University of New South Wales.
[11] Katz, Jonah; David Pesetsky (2009) The Identity Thesis for Language and Music. http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/
000959

Isac, Daniela; Charles Reiss (2008). I-language: An


Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953420-3.

8 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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Generative grammar Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative%20grammar?oldid=651748856 Contributors: Damian Yerrick,


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Images

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