What mean word generating

People like Ray Jackendoff and Adele Goldberg like to talk about «alternative generative grammar theories». The «alternative» part is obvious—it means they’re not (Chomskyan) mainstream generative grammar.¹ But what does «generative» mean?

Here’s a (non-exclusive) list of AGGs thrown out by Jackendoff in one instance: his own PA (Parallel Architecture, aka Simpler Syntax), GPSG (General Phrase Structure Grammar) and its successors, BCG (Berkeley Construction Grammar) and its successors, LFG (Lexical-Functional Grammar), Autolexical Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar. What do these all have in common?

First, there’s a purely historical/sociological meaning: Every AGG theory arose as a reaction to MGG (or recursively arose from an earlier AGG, where ultimately the first ancestor was a reaction to MGG).²

In fact, you could almost define «generative grammar theory» as «theory from someone who accepts the basic abstract from Chomsky’s Syntactic Structure, but rejects at least one of the foundational ideas from the frameworks that followed». But that doesn’t really add much to the openly historical definition.

Is there an useful meaning for «generative» that can be extracted? Yes, per Jackendoff:³

• A generative model is a model that produces a combinatorial structure (like a tree) that isn’t just derived from some external structure. It doesn’t matter whether you build the tree bottom-up instead of top-down, whether you use unification or analog constraint optimization, or even whether you build a cyclic graph instead of a tree.
• A generative grammar theory is a theory that has at least one component on the path between sound and meaning and vice-versa that requires a generative model. It doesn’t matter whether that component is syntax (MGG, and many alternatives), semantics (Generative Semantics), or functional structure (LFG), or whether there are multiple independently-generative components (PA).

Not exactly the definition Chomsky originally gave, but it still fits the word, and it covers all of the present and historical theories people want to call «generative».

Is this actually what «generative» means, or is the historical definition the real meaning, and this is just a (presumably not coincidental, but still metaphysically contingent) feature of all GG theories that happens to fit the pre-theoretic meaning of the name «generative»? I don’t know if Jackendoff has ever said.

Since I brought up Jackendoff,⁴ he also argues that generativity is inextricably tied two other ideas—both also from Chomsky, but separable from MGG:

• GG theories are (at least methodologically) mentalistic: they study language as it’s instantiated in the mind, not in society or Platonic space.
• GG theories are all driven by methodological minimalism toward universal grammar.⁵ Even if a theory’s «UG» is just a toolkit of ways to build language-specific constructions rather than anything like P&P’s set of hardcoded structural principles, and the theory strikes a radically different balance in what to minimize than Chomsky’s, and the author would vehemently disagree with your contention that she’s trying to minimize UG, any generative grammar theory is still ultimately trying to minimize UG.

What do either of these have to do with «generative»? Nothing directly. It’s probably not a coincidence that (at least according to Jackendoff) they’re true of all GG theories, but the same is true for other features he doesn’t bring up, like neutrality between production and perception. So, I think this contention can be completely separated from the definition of «generative». But others might disagree.

_{1. Which can be equated with the set of theories derived from Chomsky’s successive frameworks from Syntactic Structures to the Minimalist Program.}

_{2. So GG is a theory family. The fact that Syntactic Structure didn’t fully describe its theory just means that Proto-GG has to be reconstructed from Aspects and its 1960 alternatives through laws of regular theory change.}

_{3. This is all covered, at least to some degree, in Simpler Syntax and all of Jackendoff’s later books. Based on my vague memories, I think the most detailed treatment of all of these ideas is in book Meaning and the Lexicon—but I unfortunately don’t have a copy of that at hand, so I’m not positive on that.}

_{4. And Simpler Syntax, which actually spends a lot more time on these issues than on generativity per se.}

_{5. As you can probably guess, using the terms «UG» and «minimalism» led to a lot of confusion. Jackendoff’s later works have backed off from that a bit, but as far as I know, he hasn’t really come up with any good terminology to replace it.}

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.