Generative linguistics
The generative linguistics is a branch of the linguistic extending the concept of the generative grammar operated. The term “generative grammar” is used in different meanings, and so the term “generative linguistics” has partly different and partly similar meanings.
From a formal point of view, a grammar is called generative if it is completely explicit: it contains a limited number of rules with which an unlimited number of grammatical sentences can be produced. She excludes incorrect sentences. This definition of generative grammar comes from Noam Chomsky , who made the term famous. Most linguistic dictionaries today also refer to generative grammar in this sense. The term “generating” grammatical sentences is used in a more theoretical sense. This means that a grammar “generates grammatical sentences” by basing the respective sentence on a structural description.
In general, however, the term is also used for the linguistic school of thought favored by Chomsky and his followers. Both Chomsky himself and other linguists met with little enthusiasm. Chomsky's approach is characterized by the use of generative transformation grammar , a theory that has changed significantly since its inception in Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957). Furthermore, this approach gives great importance to linguistic nativism , which states that certain features are common to all human languages. “Generative linguistics” often means the earliest version of Chomsky's transformational grammar, which differentiated between a linguistic deep structure and a surface structure.
Chomsky published his theory with simultaneous violent attacks on alternative theories, especially behaviorism , as presented by BF Skinner in his 1957 book Verbal Behavior . Hence, another meaning of the term generative linguistics can be understood as "anti-Skinner linguistics", or more generally, as "anti-behaviorism".
The psycholinguistics , which in the early 1960s as part of the general approach on the cognitive psychology developed, attacked this anti-behaviorist attitude as positive, and took over many of the ideas quickly Chomsky - including those of generative grammar. In the course of their further development, however, both cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics found little use for generative linguistics, not least because Chomsky repeatedly emphasized that he never intended the mental processes on the basis of which humans produced or heard sentences or read sentences analyzed and named more precisely.
The cognitive linguistics developed in the later years of the 20th century as an alternative to generative linguistics. Cognitive linguistics tries to combine 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: in principle, neurological facts have always been important to generative linguists, but in practice they were often viewed as too inconclusive and interpretable to be of much use. Nonetheless, some scholars (including Alec Marantz) publish their work in both generative linguistics and neurolinguistics .
Chomsky and his followers such as evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker use generative grammar for general statements about human existence. For example, Chomsky posits that technological discoveries, like grammatical rules, are universally limited and that modern art appears derivative because the possibility of artistic expression, like the structure of language, is limited. In his book The Language Instinct, Pinker developed the theory that there is also a universal culture in addition to a universal grammar. According to Chomsky, people have a culture that differs only superficially locally, just as all languages, according to Chomsky, are based on a grammar with superficial differences.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Geoffrey Sampson: Minds in Uniform: How generative linguistics regiments culture, and why it shouldn't (PDF; 263 kB). In: Marion Grein and Edda Weigand (eds.): Dialogue and Culture . Benjamin Publishing Company, Amsterdam 2007, ISBN 978-90-272-1018-0 , pp. 3-25.
literature
- Christoph Gutknecht, Klaus Uwe Panther: Generative Linguistics . Kohlhammer, 1973, ISBN 3-17001-501-X