Download
1 / 24
580 likes | 2.42k Vues
Generativism. Lecture # 13 . Review of Lecture 12. Structure and form Structure – raw material, has no specific meaning Form – Organized, has a meaning, finished product Synchronic & Diachronic approaches. Generativism. Developed by Noam Chomsky & followers in 1950s.
E N D
Generativism Lecture # 13
Review of Lecture 12 Structure and form Structure – raw material, has no specific meaning Form – Organized, has a meaning, finished product Synchronic & Diachronic approaches
Generativism Developed by Noam Chomsky & followers in 1950s. Came as a reaction to behaviourism Chomsky asserted that language is free from stimulus control Creativity is a human attribute which distinguishes men from machines
Generativism Humans are capable of producing varieties of utterances. But it is a ‘rule-governed creativity’ Our utterances have a certain grammatical structure. They conform to identifiable rules of well-formedness
Generativism Productivity cannot be identified with creativity but the have an intrinsic connection between them. Central component of Chomskyangenerativism – rules that determine productivity of human language have formal properties of the structure of human mind (Mentalism)
Generativism There are significant differences between Chomskyangenerativism and Bloomfieldian and post Bloomfieldian structuralism. Bloomfield and his followers emphasized on the structural diversity of languages. Generativists, in contrast, are more interested in what languages have in common
Generativism Another difference – he attaches more importance to formal properties of languages to the nature of rules that their description requires. Chomsky says that human language faculty is innate and species - specific
Generativism Innate & species- specific means genetically transmitted and unique to species. Several complex formal properties are found in all languages. They are arbitrary and serve no known purpose. They cannot be deduced from anything else that we know of human beings.
Generativism In recent years, in between theoretical and descriptive linguistics the universal formal properties in language help to construct a general theory of language structure. A further difference between Bloomfieldian and Post- Bloomfieldian structuralism is Chomskyan distinction between competence and performance
Generativism A speaker’s linguistic competence is that part of his knowledge of language system which makes him produce indefinitely large set of sentences that make up his language Performance is language- behaviour – it is determined not only by linguistic competence but by some other factors as well.
Generativism The factors can be social conventional beliefs about the world, the speaker’s emotional attitudes towards what he is saying, his assumptions about his interlocutor’s attitudes etc. The physiological and psychological mechanisms are involved in the production of utterances
Generativism The competence-performance distinction is at the heart of generativism. A speaker’s linguistic competence is a set of rules which he has constructed because of his application of his innate capacity for language acquisition to the language data that he has heard around him in his childhood
Generativism The grammar that the linguist constructs can be seen as a model of the native speaker’s competence. This gives him the ability to produce indefinitely large number of sentences. This aspect with its reinterpretation and revitalization of the traditional notion of universal grammar has attracted philosophers and psychologists
Generativism Distinction between competence & performance similar to Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole Both of them rest upon the feasibility of separating what is linguistic from what is non-linguistic More identifiable difference is on the rules of syntax
Generativism Saussure states langue as the system of rules and parole as the actual sentences Chomsky commented on the capacity to produce and understand syntactically well-formed sentences – that is the central part of speaker’s linguistic competence Competence – performance distinction has been criticized.
Generativism Chomsky himself gave it the title of grammatical competence and pragmatic competence (Performance does not give the real clue) Chomskyangenerativism closer to Saussurean and Post- Saussureanstructuralim
Generativism This close relationship is on the necessity of drawing a distinction between the language system and the use of that system in particular contexts of utterance. It does not accept the principles of functionalism but accepts the phonological notions of Prague school.
Generativism Chomsky’s Universal grammar Chomsky was against stimulus – response theory. He asserted that language is free from their control Generate does not relate to any process of sentence production in real time by speakers
Generativism Generative grammar is a set of rules which, operating upon a finite vocabulary of units, generates a set of strings or sequence or syntagmsi.e as sets of units brought together in a particular construction. To say that a grammar generates a sentence means that the grammar "assigns a structural description" to the sentence.
Generativism Formally, a generative grammar is defined as one that is fully explicit. It is a finite set of rules based on a subconscious set of procedures that can be applied to generate all those and only those sentences (often, but not necessarily, infinite in number) that are grammatical in a given language.
Summary Generativism is an integrated whole in which the technical details of formalization are on a par with a number of logically unconnected ideas about language and the philosophy of science. Language free from stimulus control Human can produce variety of utterances
Summary It’s a rule governed creativity. We produce utterances with a certain grammatical structure. Generativism different from Bloomfieldian and Post-Bloomfieldian structuralism. They emphasized on the structural diversity Generativists interested in similarities in languages
Summary Chomsky gives importance to the formal properties of languages & to the nature of the rules that their description requires. Human language faculty is innate and species –specific Another difference – Competance and performance.
Summary Performance – language behaviour determined not only by competence but also other factors Competence-performance distinction at the heart of genertivism The distinction similar to langue-parole Identifiable difference on the basis of syntax
