generative grammar

noun

, Linguistics.

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. Compare transformational grammar.
2. a set of such rules.

generative grammar

noun

1. a description of a language in terms of explicit rules that ideally generate all and only the grammatical sentences of the language Compare transformational grammar

Word History and Origins

Origin of generative grammar¹

First recorded in 1955–60

Example Sentences

To paraphrase the terminology of generative grammars, it was a limited war language, with not too many possible war sentences.

From Project Gutenberg