Call for Papers

Generativity in language, cognition, and artificial intelligence. Theoretical convergences and emerging paradigms 

(revue Punctum : https://punctum.gr/)

Deadline : May 31, 2025

This issue explores how different theoretical traditions have conceptualized the generative capacities of language and thought, and how these ideas intersect with contemporary developments in AI. We will focus on the frameworks of Noam Chomsky, Gustave Guillaume, Antoine Culioli, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Joseph Courtés, each offering a distinct perspective on the generative processes underpinning meaning construction.

At the core of Noam Chomsky’s transformational-generative grammar is the idea that a finite set of syntactic rules can generate infinite grammatically correct sentences. For Chomsky, generativity is a formal, combinatorial property of language grounded in human biology– specifically, the faculty of language. His focus is on linguistic competence, the internalized system of knowledge that enables speakers to produce and comprehend novel utterances. For him, syntactic structure is at the center of meaning construction. In this framework, generativity is not merely creative expression but a computational process driven by recursive operations like Merge. This perspective has profoundly influenced both theoretical linguistics and computational models of language, shaping approaches to natural language processing and AI systems designed to simulate syntactic productivity. However, Chomsky’s model has been critiqued for its limited attention to language’s semantic, pragmatic, and enunciative aspects – areas highlighted by Guillaume and Culioli.

Call for Papers here