Palindrome (; "again") and ' (; "way, direction"). Palindromes date back at least to 79 AD, as a palindrome was found as a graffito at Herculaneum, a city buried by ash in that year. This palindrome, called the Sator Square, consists of a sentence written in Latin: "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" ("The sower Arepo holds with effort the wheels"). It is remarkable for the fact that the first letters of each word form the first word, the second letters form the second word, and so forth. Hence, it can be arranged into a word square that reads in four different
Generative principle Generative principle In foreign language teaching, the generative principle reflects the human capacity to generate an infinite number of phrases and sentences from a finite grammatical or linguistic competence. This capacity was captured in Wilhelm von Humboldt's famous phrase that language makes "infinite use of finite means". It is the theoretical basis for pattern drills and substitution tables - an essential component of the audio-lingual method - and may be considered as the necessary counterpart to the communicative principle, i.e. teaching communication through communicating (communicative language teaching; communicative competence). Children, in their process of first-language acquisition, notably in pre-sleep monologues,