Generative Linguistics
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In the 19th and early 20th centuries, linguists were concerned primarily with codifying languages as they were spoken and/or written--they limited themselves to what we today call "descriptive" linguistics, or the study of words and sentences that have been produced by native speakers of a given language. Since the 1950s, however, beginning with MIT scholar Noam Chomsky, linguists have largely focussed their attention on trying to discover the range of words and sentences that could be produced by native speakers. This latter approach is referred to as "generative" linguistics; its goal is to account for words and sentences which do exist and, in addition, for all words and sentences which do not, but are grammatically possible. This paper will further explore and explain the differences between these two approaches to the study of language. The potency of generative linguistics hinges on one seemingly minor point in the above paragraph, namely that it also aims to account for words and phrases which do not currently exist but are grammatically possible. Generative linguists acknowledge that language is limitless in terms of native-speaker creativity--new words are coined daily in every language, whether as slang terms or brand names, and close to 100 percent of the sentences a native speaker uses in his or her lifetime are completely original. These facts make two things clear: 1) people do not merely memorize language, or such creativity would be impossible; "langu
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liquid or glide rule is not violated, it also predicts that pmoix is impossible, since /m/ is neither a liquid nor glide. This ability to account for what already exists as well as generate what could and rule out what could not makes generative linguistics a powerful, useful approach.
Were generative linguists merely concerned with accounting for the range of what is and is not possible only in English, their task would seem awesome enough. But they are concerned with accounting for what is and is not possible in any naturally-occurring human language (as opposed to an invented language, such as Esperanto)--not just English, but also other living languages such as Japanese, Swahili, and Navaho, and even dead languages, like Latin and Sanskrit. In fact, generative linguists aim to generalize the rules of all human languages, living, dead, and those yet undiscovered, with the ultimate goal of discovering the essential qualities of human language itself, above and beyond the characteristics of any one language in particular. These "essential qualities" are referred to as linguistic universals; collectively they are known as Universal Grammar.
A linguistic universal might be a particular feature which every natural human
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Approximate Word count = 1432
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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