Generativism As One of the Modern Schools and Movements and Its Relation to the Previous Linguistic Theories

The term 'generativism' (used by Lyons 1997:297) refers to the theory of language that was developed by Chomsky and his followers. 'Generativism', in this sense, has been enormously influential, not only in linguistics, but also in philosophy, psychology and other disciplines concerned with language.

Generativism is usually presented as having developed out of, and in reaction to, the previously dominant school of post-Bloomfieldian American descriptivism: a particular version of structuralism. But Chomsky himself came to realize later, there are many respects in which generativism constitutes a return to older and more traditional views about language.

Creativity is, in Chomsky's view, a peculiarly human attribute, which distinguishes men from machines and animals. But it is a rule-governed creativity. The utterances we produce have a certain grammatical structure, they have rules of grammaticality and this gives rise to a connection between creativity and productivity. So, our creativity in the use of language manifests itself within the limits set by the productivity of the language system. And the very central component in Chomsky generativism is that the rules that determine the productivity of human languages have formal properties due to the structure of human mind. This brings us to mentalism. Chomsky believes that linguistics has an important role to play in the investigation of the nature of the mind. Chomsky wishes to study language within the framework of concepts and assumptions provided by natural sciences.

The attitude towards linguistic universals in Chomsky's generativism and both Bloomfieldian and post-Bloomfieldian structuralism is quite different. Bloomfield and his followers emphasized the structural diversity of languages. Generativists, in contrast, are more interested in what languages have in common. Another difference is that Chosmky attaches more importance to the formal properties of languages and to the nature of the rules that their description requires than he does to the relations that hold between language and the world.

A further difference between generativism and Bloomfieldian and post-Bloomfieldian structuralism - though in this respect generativism is closer to Saussurian structuralism - relates to the distinction that Chomsky draws between competence and performance. The competence-performance distinction, to be discussed in more detail below, is at the very heart of generativism. The distinction between competence and performance, as drawn by Chomsky, is similar to Saussure's distinction between langue and parole.

But the most controversial aspects of generativism are its association with mentalism and its reassertion of the traditional philosophical doctrine of innate knowledge. Generativism has associated itself with post-Bloomfieldian structuralism, Saussurean structuralism and the Prague school. For example, it continues the post-Bloomfieldian A tradition in syntax by making the morpheme the basic unit of analysis. Its n commitment to the autonomy of syntax may also be attrubuted to its post-Bloomfieldian heritage.

As we have seen, Chomskyan generativism is closer to Saussurian, and post-Saussurian structuralism in the necessity of drawing a distinction between language- pi system and the use of that system in a particular context of utterance. It is also closer to Saussurian structuralism in its attitude towards semantics. Finally, it takes into consideration the Prague School notion on phonology, without accepting the principles of functionalism.

 

Concept of Grammar

 

Grammar is traditionally subdivided into different but inter-related areas of study - morphology and syntax. Morphology is the study of how words are formed out of smaller units (morphemes), and the study of principles which determine the ways the parts are combined together to form the whole. Syntax is concerned with the ways in which words can be combined together to form phrases and sentences, and the study of principles which determine the ways the words can be combined together to form phrases and sentences.

However, grammar is traditionally concerned not just with the principles which determine the formation of words, phrases and sentences, but also with the principles which govern their interpretation - i.e. with the principles which tell us how to interpret (to assign meaning to) words, phrases, sentences. For example, any comprehensive grammar of English will specify that compound words like man-eater and man-made have very different interpretations: in a compound like man-eater, the word man is traditionally said to have a patient interpretation, in the sense that man is the patient on whom the act of eating is going to be performed; by contrast, in compounds like man-made, the word man is said to have an agent interpretation, in the sense that man is the agent responsible for the act of making. Thus, the structural aspect of meaning is traditionally said to be part of the domain of grammar. We might therefore characterize grammar as the study of the principles which govern the formation and interpretation of words, phrases, and sentences.

The aims of linguistics are often summarized by Chomsky in the form of three questions (Chomsky 1991):

1. What constitutes knowledge of language⁷. The linguist's duty is to describe what people know about language - whatever it is that they have in their minds when they know English, Tatar or Russian or any language.

2. How is such language acquired⁷ A second aim is to discover how people acquire this knowledge. Studying acquisition of language knowledge means first establishing what the knowledge that is acquired actually consists of, i.e. on first answering question.

3. How is such knowledge put to use⁷ A third aim is to see how people use this acquired lanhuahe knowledge. Again, investigating how knowledge is used depends on first establishing what knowledge is.

Any native speaker of a language can be said to know the grammar of his or her native language. Native speakers clearly know how to form and interpret words, phrases and sentences in their native language. We might say that native speakers have grammatical competence in their native language - that is, the fluent native speaker's subconscious knowledge of his language. In work dating back to the 1960s, Chomsky has drawn a distinction between competence and performance (what people actually say or understand by what someone else says on a given occasion).

If we say that grammar is the study of grammatical competence, then we are implicitly taking a cognitive view of the nature of grammar. If the term grammatical competence is used to denote what native speakers subconsciously know about the grammar of their language, then grammar is part of the more general study of cognition (i.e. human knowledge). In the terminology adopted by Chomsky (1986), our ultimate goal is to characterize the nature of the internalized linguistic system (or I-language, as Chomsky terms it) which enables humans to speak and understand their native language.

One aim of generative grammar is to make a contribution to the problems of universals (Universal Grammar (UG)). UG is a theory of knowledge, not behavior; its concern is with the internal structure of the human mind. The nature of this knowledge is inseparable from the problem of how it is acquired. A proposal for the nature of language knowledge necessitates an explanation of how such knowledge came into being. UG theory holds that the speaker knows a set of principles that apply to all languages, and parameter that vary from one language to another. The importance of UG theory is its attempt to integrate grammar, mind and language at every moment.

Speaking briefly, from the point of view of generative grammar:

^- A grammar of a language is a model of the grammatical competence of the fluent native speaker of the language, and the grammatical competence is reflected in the native speaker's intuition about grammaticality and interpretation.

- The theory of grammar is concerned with characterizing the general properties and organization of grammars of natural languages.

- Any adequate theory of language should be universal, explanatory and restrictive, and should provide grammars which are minimally complex, and learnable.

- There is an innateness hypothesis put forward by Chomsky, under which the course of language acquisition is genetically predetermined by innate language faculty.

- The language faculty incorporates a set of UG principles (universal grammatical principles), for example structure dependence principle.

- Languages differ in their structure along a range of different grammatical parameters, for example: the wh-parameter. The null subject parameter and the head parameter.