ABSTRACT
A generative grammar of some language is the set of rules that defines the unlimited number of sentences of the language and associates each with an appropriate grammatical description. The concept is usually associated with linguistic models that have a mathematical structure and with a particular view of the abstract nature of linguistic study. It came to prominence in linguistic theory through the early work of Noam Chomsky and perhaps for this reason is often, though wrongly, associated exclusively with his school of linguistics. It is nevertheless appropriate to start with a quotation from Chomsky (1975b, p. 5):
A language L is understood to be a set (in general infinite) of finite strings of symbols drawn from a finite ‘alphabet.’ Each such string is a sentence of L…. A grammar of L is a system of rules that specifies the set of sentences of L and assigns to each sentence a structural description. The structural description of a sentence S constitutes, in principle, a full account of the elements of S and their organization…. The notion ‘grammar’ is to be defined in general linguistic theory in such a way that, given a grammar G, the language generated by G and its structure are explicitly determined by general principles of linguistic theory.
