Netiquette IQ Blog Of 1/23/19 - Generative Grammar - Do You Know Whay It Is?

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by Richard Nordquist Richard Nordquist is a freelance writer and former professor of English and Rhetoric who wrote college-level Grammar and Composition textbooks. Updated May 15, 2018  Mental grammar is the generative grammar stored in the brain that allows a speaker to produce language that other speakers can understand. It is also known as competence grammar and linguistic competence. It contrasts with linguistic performance, which is the correctness of actual language use according to a language's prescribed rules.  The concept of mental grammar was popularized by American linguist Noam Chomsky in his groundbreaking work "Syntactic Structures" (1957). Philippe Binder and Kenny Smith noted in "The Language Phenomenon" how important Chomsky's work was: "This focus on grammar as a mental entity allowed enormous progress to be made in characterizing the structure of languages." Related to this work is Universal Grammar, or the predisposition for the brain to learn complexities of grammar from an early age, without being implicitly taught all the rules. The study of how the brain actually does this is called neurolinguistics. "One way to clarify mental or competence grammar is to ask a friend a question about a sentence," Pamela J. Sharpe writes in "Barron's How to Prepare for the TOEFL IBT." "Your friend probably won't know why it's correct, but that friend will know if it's correct. So one of the features of mental or competence grammar is this incredible sense of correctness and the ability to hear something that 'sounds odd' in a language." It's a subconscious or implicit knowledge of grammar, not learned by rote. In "The Handbook of Educational Linguistics," William C. Ritchie and Tej K. Bhatia note, "A central aspect of the knowledge of a particular language variety consists in its grammar—that is, its implicit (or tacit or subconscious) knowledge of the rules of pronunciation (phonology), of word structure (morphology), of sentence structure (syntax), of certain aspects of meaning (semantics), and of a lexicon or vocabulary. Speakers of a given language variety are said to have an implicit mental grammar of that variety consisting of these rules and lexicon. It is this mental grammar that determines in large part the perception and production of speech utterances. Since the mental grammar plays a role in actual language use, we must conclude that it is represented in the brain in some way. "The detailed study of the language user's mental grammar is generally regarded as the domain of the discipline of linguistics, whereas the study of the way in which the mental grammar is put to use in the actual comprehension and production of speech in linguistic performance has been a major concern of psycholinguistics." (In "Monolingual Language Use and Acquisition: An Introduction.") Prior to the early 20th century and previous to Chomsky, it wasn't really studied how humans acquire language or what exactly in ourselves makes us different from animals, which don't use language like we do. It was just classified abstractly that humans have "reason," or a "rational soul" as Descartes put it, which really doesn't explain how we acquire language—especially as babies. Babies and toddlers don't really receive grammar instruction on how to put words together in a sentence, yet they learn their native tongue just by exposure to it. Chomsky worked on what it was that was special about human brains that enabled this learning.

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In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” has just been published and will be followed by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

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In addition to this blog, I maintain a radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

Additionally, I am the president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a “best of breed” reseller of products for communications, email, network management software, security products and professional services.  Also, I am the president of Netiquette IQ. We are currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ, which promotes the fundamentals outlined in my book.