Generative Anthropology is a field of study based on the theory that the origin of human language was a singular event and that the history of human culture is a genetic or "generative" development stemming from the development of language.
In contrast to more common theories that examine human culture in terms of a multiplicity of complex cultural differences, Generative Anthropology attempts to understand cultural phenomena in the simplest terms possible: all things human are traced back to a hypothetical single origin point at which human beings first used signs to communicate.
Read more about Generative Anthropology: Eric Gans and The Origin of Generative Anthropology, The Originary Hypothesis of Human Language, Generative Anthropology Society & Conference
Famous quotes containing the words generative and/or anthropology:
“Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)