Handbook Of Applied Language, Linguistics And Literature

Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. The term ';generative grammar' is used in different ways by different people, and the term ';generative linguistics' therefore has a range of different, though overlapping, meanings. Generative linguistics deals with the study and application of grammar in a fully explicit way, with a range of different, overlapping meanings by different people. Formally, a generative grammar is defined as one that is fully explicit. It is a finite set of rules that can be applied to generate all those and only those sentences that are grammatical in a given language. This is the definition that is offered by Noam Chomsky, who invented the term, and by most dictionaries of linguistics. Generate is being used as a technical term with a particular sense. To say that a grammar generates a sentence means that the grammar ';assigns a structural description' to the sentence. This publication deals with major ideas in language, literature and linguistics.