Question

The capacity of a grammar to generate a proper structural description of sentence is called:

• A. Weak generative capacity
• B. Strong generative capacity
• C. Neutral generative capacity
• D. None of the above

Answer 1

Answer:

B. Strong generative capacity

In linguistics, especially in generative grammar (as developed by Noam Chomsky), the concept of generative capacity refers to a grammar's ability to generate sentences.

There are two types:

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1. Weak Generative Capacity:

• Refers to the ability of a grammar to generate all and only the grammatical sentences of a language — but without specifying their internal structure.

• It cares only whether a string is grammatical, not how it's structured.

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2. Strong Generative Capacity:

• Refers to the ability of a grammar to generate not only the grammatical sentences, but also to provide a correct structural description (such as phrase structure trees or syntactic rules).

• This includes syntax, structure, and hierarchy — not just strings.

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