A theoretical linguistic framework based on ideas promoted by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. A generative grammar attempts to describe a native speaker’s tacit grammatical knowledge by a system of rules or constraints that specify all of the well-formed, or grammatical, sentences of the language while excluding all ungrammatical, or impossible, sentences. Grammatical structure is assumed to be autonomous (i.e., determined by domain-specific principles and independent of meaning or more general cognitive or communicative pressures). Universal rules or constraints (‘Universal Grammar’) are hypothesized to be innate, and to guide children in acquiring the grammar of any particular language. Stands in contrast to the cognitive-functionalist approach to language.
See Constraint, Cognitive-functional approach, Competence (linguistics), Domain specificity, Innate (1), Linguistics, Parameter (linguistics), Systemic functional linguistics, Transformational grammar approach, Universalism