The pragmatics of creative language use in East Asian languages

Abstract

Creative language use has been one of the foundational issues for much of modern linguistics. For example, Chomsky’s (1957, 1965) generative programme rests crucially on the notion of the creative aspect of language use (along with the notion of the alleged poverty of stimulus, McGilvray, 2001) as he defines them. Thus, Chomsky (1965, p. 6) articulates the theoretical interest of generative grammar in terms of an underlying grammatical device for diverse ranges and novel situations of language production and comprehension, in the realm of performance: