grammar, generative

n. A generative grammar (also transformational grammar, transformational generative grammar)is a grammar formulated in the tradition developed by Noam Chomsky beginning in the 1950s. This tradition assumes that the grammars of natural languages are subsumed under the principles of universal grammar, which have language-specific settings to account for the cross-linguistic variation in the world's languages. Such formal principles represent the linguistic competence` - knowledge of language - that speakers have about their language, which is put to use through performance mechanisms. The earliest generative grammars included rules of two types: phrase structure rules to generate deep structure and transformations to convert deep structures into surface representations. Transformations account for the relationship between active and passive sentences like The cop arrested the thug and The thug was arrested by the cop, which share underlying deep structure but differ in their surface structure: a transformation has been applied to generate the surface form of the passive. The notion of transformation remains a central component of most theories of grammar formulated in the Chomskyan framework; rule types and levels of representation have evolved dramatically, though.

-EMF