THE CHOMSKYAN VERSION OF GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

ABSTRACT. On Smith’s reading, Chomsky shows that the immense complexity of the innumerable languages we hear around us must be variations on a single theme. Botha and Knight write that, as Chomsky puts it, recursion sets human language apart from animal communication. Chomsky focusses on the mind of a language learner/user. Hinzen affirms that the Chomskyan version of generative grammar and the Minimalist Program (MP) as its most recent incarnation are inherently philosophical projects. Radford looks at the approach to syntax adopted within the theory of Universal Grammar developed by Chomsky. Marantz states that descriptive linguistics under the structuralist and generative traditions treats distributional generalizations about categories and structures within collected utterances and written sentences. (pp. 84–88)