Paths of Lexicon Functioning in Generative Theory: An Approach to Concept and Performance

Abstract

Generativity is a system of rules that provides a syntactic description of sentences. It is based on the idea that a speaker can produce an unlimited number of grammatically and semantically correct sentences, relying on their unconscious knowledge of their language's system: syntactic, semantic, and phonological. Generation is the speaker’s ability to produce an unlimited number of sentences using a finite set of rules, understanding them, and distinguishing between what is syntactically correct and what is not, based on the speaker's implicit, unconscious knowledge of the language's rules. This knowledge is acquired from the speaker's earliest development and becomes ingrained in their mind, enabling them to later produce an unlimited number of new structures they have never heard before, but instead have created through their mental capacity and awareness of the language's foundational rules. This awareness is not intentional; rather, it is part of the cognitive process of the speaker, in addition to the sentences they have previously heard from their linguistic environment. Ultimately, this leads to the formation of their mental lexicon, which represents the stock of lexical units in their linguistic memory.

The lexicon, in this awareness, is not a dictionary list of words organized in specific books based on a particular system that refers to meanings according to certain usages. Rather, it is a mental path for the stock of lexical units in the speaker's mind. Chomsky utilized this in his second model through the developments he proposed. It became one of the foundational elements for updating the mentioned model. He continued to use it in his third model, despite leaving many cognitive pathways in his final update, as he did not abandon the lexicon due to its importance and centrality in the cognitive path of generative theory. For this reason, we decided to explore the functioning of the lexicon in this theory through the second and third models, examining its concept and the scope of performance it operates within, along with each functional path.