Emergent grammar is an approach to the study of
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages...
, originally proposed by
Paul HopperPaul Hopper is an American linguist of British birth. In 1973 he proposed the glottalic theory regarding the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European consonant inventory, in parallel with James Makken and V. V. Ivanov...
, which postulates that rules for grammar and syntactic structure emerge as language is used. It is distinguished from what Hopper calls the
A Priori Grammar Postulate, which posits that grammar is a set of rules existing in the mind before anything else, and is exemplified by the school of
generative grammarIn theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences...
and the concept of
Universal GrammarUniversal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans . It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages...
.
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Emergent grammar is an approach to the study of
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages...
, originally proposed by
Paul HopperPaul Hopper is an American linguist of British birth. In 1973 he proposed the glottalic theory regarding the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European consonant inventory, in parallel with James Makken and V. V. Ivanov...
, which postulates that rules for grammar and syntactic structure emerge as language is used. It is distinguished from what Hopper calls the
A Priori Grammar Postulate, which posits that grammar is a set of rules existing in the mind before anything else, and is exemplified by the school of
generative grammarIn theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences...
and the concept of
Universal GrammarUniversal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans . It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages...
. Whereas Universal Grammar claims that features of grammar are innate, emergent grammar claims that the human language faculty has no innate grammar and that features of grammar are learned through experience; the term "emergent" in this context is synonymous with "non-innate."
Emergent grammar was formally proposed in 1987. Since then, it has been an approach common in linguistic
discourse analysisDiscourse analysis , or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken or signed language use....
and
conversation analysis
Conversation analysis is the study of talk in interaction...
and has been used to investigate the relationship between grammatical structure and real-time interaction and language use.