GENERATIVE GRAMMAR


Meaning of GENERATIVE GRAMMAR in English

Ling.

1. a linguistic theory that attempts to describe the tacit knowledge that a native speaker has of a language by establishing a set of explicit, formalized rules that specify or generate all the possible grammatical sentences of a language, while excluding all unacceptable sentences. Cf. transformational grammar .

2. a set of such rules.

[ 1955-60 ]

Random House Webster's Unabridged English dictionary.      Полный английский словарь Вебстер - Random House .