Specialists called transformational-generative grammarians, such as the American linguistic

scholar Noam Chomsky, approach grammar quite differentlyas a theory of language. By

language, these scholars mean the knowledge human beings have that allows them to acquire
any language. Such a grammar is a kind of universal grammar, an analysis of the principles
underlying all the various human grammars.
Noam Chomsky, born in 1928, American linguist, educator, and political activist. Chomsky is the
founder of transformational-generative grammar, a system that revolutionized modern
linguistics.
Linguists concerned with theoretical semantics are looking for a general theory of meaning in
language. To such linguists, known as transformational-generative grammarians, meaning is part
of the linguistic knowledge or competence that all humans possess. A generative grammar as a
model of linguistic competence has a phonological (sound-system), a syntactic, and a semantic
component. The semantic component, as part of a generative theory of meaning, is envisioned as
a system of rules that govern how interpretable signs are interpreted and determine that other
signs (such as Colorless green ideas sleep furiously), although grammatical expressions, are
meaninglesssemantically blocked. The rules must also account for how a sentence such as
They passed the port at midnight can have at least two interpretations.