Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. The term "generative grammar" is used in different ways by different people, and the term "generative linguistics" therefore has a range of different, though overlapping, meanings.

Formally, a generative grammar is defined as one that is fully explicit. It is a finite set of rules that can be applied to generate all those and only those sentences (often, but not necessarily, infinite in number) that are grammatical in a given language. This is the definition that is offered by Noam Chomsky, who invented the term, and by most dictionaries of linguistics. Generate is being used as a technical term with a particular sense. To say that a grammar generates a sentence means that the grammar "assigns a structural description" to the sentence.

The term generative grammar is also used to label the approach to linguistics taken by Chomsky and his followers. Chomsky's approach is characterised by the use of transformational grammar – a theory that has changed greatly since it was first promulgated by Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures – and by the assertion of a strong linguistic nativism (and therefore an assertion that some set of fundamental characteristics of all human languages must be the same). The term "ge(ne)rative linguistics" is often applied to the earliest version of Chomsky's transformational grammar, which was associated with a distinction between the "deep structure" and "surface structure" of sentences.

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

Dan Sperber (born June 20, 1942, Cagnes-sur-Mer) is a French social and cognitive scientist. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology and linguistic pragmatics: developing, with British psychologist Deirdre Wilson, relevance theory in the latter; and an approach to cultural evolution known as the 'epidemiology of representations' in the former. Sperber currently holds the positions of Directeur de Recherche émérite at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Director of the International Cognition and Culture Institute.

Sperber is the son of Austrian-French novelist Manès Sperber. He was born in France and raised an atheist but his parents, both non-religious Ashkenazi Jews, imparted on the young Sperber a "respect for my Rabbinic ancestors and for religious thinkers of any persuasion more generally". He became interested in anthropology as a means of explaining how rational people come to hold mistaken religious beliefs about the supernatural.

Thomas G. Bever (born December 9, 1939) is a Regent's Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, Language, Reading and Culture and Neuroscience at the University of Arizona. He specializes in language acquisition, focusing on the cognitive and neurological sources of linguistic universals. Bever received a B.A. in linguistics and psychology from Harvard University in 1961 and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967. He was employed at Rockefeller University from 1967–1969, Columbia University from 1970–1986, and the University of Rochester from 1985–1995 before accepting his current position at the University of Arizona, where he has remained since.

Bever is notable for his study of the garden path sentence The horse raced past the barn fell and his analysis by synthesis model of sentence processing, developed with David Townsend.

The Shadow is a collection of serialized dramas, originally in pulp magazines, then on 1930s radio and then in a wide variety of media, that follow the exploits of the title character, a crimefighting vigilante in the pulps, which carried over to the airwaves as a "wealthy, young man about town" with psychic powers. One of the most famous pulp heroes of the 20th century, The Shadow has been featured in comic books, comic strips, television, video games, and at least five motion pictures. The radio drama is well-remembered for those episodes voiced by Orson Welles.

Introduced as a mysterious radio narrator by David Chrisman, William Sweets and Harry Engman Charlot for Street and Smith Publications, The Shadow was fully developed and transformed into a pop culture icon by pulp writer Walter B. Gibson.

The Shadow debuted on July 31, 1930, as the mysterious narrator of the Street and Smith radio program Detective Story Hour. After gaining popularity among the show's listeners, the narrator became the star of The Shadow Magazine on April 1, 1931, a pulp series created and primarily written by the prolific Gibson.