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Chomsky’s theories of grammar and language are often referred to as “generative,” “transformational,” or “transformational-generative.” In a mathematical sense, “generative” simply means “formally explicit.” In the case of language, however, the meaning of the term typically also includes the notion of “productivity”—i.e., the capacity to produce an infinite number of grammatical phrases and sentences using only finite means (e.g., a finite number of principles and parameters and a finite vocabulary). In order for a theory of language to be productive in this sense, at least some of its principles or rules must be recursive. A rule or series of rules ...(100 of 5208 words)