Editing Language (section)

=== Modern linguistics ===
[[File:Noam chomsky cropped.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Noam Chomsky]] is one of the most important linguistic theorists of the 20th century.]]

In the 1960s, [[Noam Chomsky]] formulated the [[Generative linguistics|generative theory of language]]. According to this theory, the most basic form of language is a set of syntactic rules that is universal for all humans and which underlies the grammars of all human languages. This set of rules is called [[Universal Grammar]]; for Chomsky, describing it is the primary objective of the discipline of linguistics. Thus, he considered that the grammars of individual languages are only of importance to linguistics insofar as they allow us to deduce the universal underlying rules from which the observable linguistic variability is generated.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Foley|1997|pp=82–83}}</ref>

In opposition to the formal theories of the generative school, [[Functional theories of grammar|functional theories of language]] propose that since language is fundamentally a tool, its structures are best analyzed and understood by reference to their functions. [[Formal grammar|Formal theories of grammar]] seek to define the different elements of language and describe the way they relate to each other as systems of formal rules or operations, while functional theories seek to define the functions performed by language and then relate them to the linguistic elements that carry them out.<ref name="NewmeyerForm"/>{{refn|group=note|"Functional grammar analyzes grammatical structure, as do formal and structural grammar; but it also analyzes the entire communicative situation: the purpose of the speech event, its participants, its discourse context. Functionalists maintain that the communicative situation motivates, constrains, explains, or otherwise determines grammatical structure, and that a structural or formal approach is not merely limited to an artificially restricted data base, but is inadequate even as a structural account. Functional grammar, then, differs from formal and structural grammar in that it purports not to model but to explain; and the explanation is grounded in the communicative situation".<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Nichols|1984}}</ref>}} The framework of [[cognitive linguistics]] interprets language in terms of the concepts (which are sometimes universal, and sometimes specific to a particular language) which underlie its forms. Cognitive linguistics is primarily concerned with how the mind creates meaning through language.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Croft|Cruse|2004|pp=1–4}}</ref>