having the ability to produce or originate; "generative power"; "generative forces
having the ability to produce or originate; "generative power"; "generative forces"
producing new life or offspring; "tXsXwhe reproductive potential of a species is its relative capacity to reproduce itself under optimal conditions"; "the reproductive or generative organs"
If something is generative, it is capable of producing something or causing it to develop. the generative power of the sun
In linguistics, generative is used to describe linguistic theories or models which are based on the idea that a single set of rules can explain how all the possible sentences of a language are formed
A linguistic theory that attempts to describe a native speaker's tacit grammatical knowledge by a system of rules that in an explicit and well-defined way specify all of the well-formed, or grammatical, sentences of a language while excluding all ungrammatical, or impossible, sentences. Finite set of formal rules that will produce all the grammatical sentences of a language. The idea of a generative grammar was first definitively articulated by Noam Chomsky in Syntactic Structures (1957). The generative grammarian's task is ideally not just to define the interrelation of elements in a particular language, but also to characterize universal grammar that is, the set of rules and principles intrinsic to all natural languages, which are thought to be an innate endowment of the human intellect. See also grammar, syntax