how descriptive and explantory theories are different from each other.

1. EXPLANATORY VS Descriptive
theories

2. • Linguists often differentiate between descriptive and
explanatory theories of language.
• Some work is regarded as descriptive while some as
explanatory.
• The difference between these theories is not widely
recognized in the field of linguistics .

3.  EXPLANATORY VS Descriptive theories
 EXPLANATORY THEORIES
• Explanatory theories
(or theoretical
frameworks), are
theories about why
languages are the way
they are.
 Descriptive theories
• Descriptive theories
(or theoretical
frameworks) are
theories about what
languages are like.

4. •The distinction between descriptive theories and
explanatory theories is not recognized in linguistics,
although it is not hard to identify the historical
explanation for this.
• Regenerative theories, such as American structuralism,
explicitly disavowed the goal of constructing an
explanatory theory. As they were examples of descriptive
theories.
•Generative grammar, in contrast, has aimed at being an
explanatory theory.

5.  Descriptive theories
• In Descriptive theories the principles of language are
presented through description of that language.
• Basically these theories investigates the form and
function of a language.
• They can be described as the study of the description
of internal phonological, grammatical and semantic
structures of a language.

6. • When language is studied descriptively, the main
concern is to find out the unconscious rules that
people follow while using a language.
• Therefore, linguistics takes a descriptive approach to
language as it tries to explain things as they actually.

7. • Some linguists are of the view that, “a linguistic theory
is said to be descriptively adequate if it makes a
descriptively adequate grammar for language”.
• In Linguistics, descriptive theory describe the
structure of a language at a given time, avoiding
comparisons with other languages or other historical
phases.

8.  EXPLANATORY THEORIES:
•They tend to explain the phenomena of language.
•They are concerned with the internal structures of
a language.
•They consider the aspects that govern the
language.

9. •As descriptive linguistics, for example, describes
the current state of language; an explanatory
approach would try to explain how this state
came to be.
•Therefore it also studies the history of a
language.

10. • Moreover, explanatory theories in linguistics studies how
language evolved, what are the factors which influenced it,
shape it and make it the way it is.
• For example, starting from the primary linguistic data, how
does a child acquire language? How does it come to have an
internal representation of a system of rules that determines
how sentences are to be formed? He needs a strategy for
selecting a grammar. To the extent that a theory of language
succeeds as providing such a strategy, it is said to
be explanatory adequate.

11.  CHOMSKY’S views on Descriptive VS
Explanatory theories
•He is of the view that a single theory can serve
simultaneously as a descriptive theory and as an
explanatory theory.

12. • Such a view follows from Chomsky's ideas about
innateness:
• if one believes that languages are the way they are
because of our innate linguistic knowledge, then a
theory about that innate linguistic knowledge will
simultaneously serve as a theory about what
languages are like and as a theory about why they are
that way.

13. Conclusion:
•Explanatory theories answer the question ‘WHY’
•While descriptive deals with the question
‘WHAT’.
•In a linguistics research both of these theories go
side by side.
•We can not exclude any one of these.