Generative Semantics 4: The Collapse

2021 ◽  
pp. 223-260
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Standard Theory ◽  
Formal Modeling ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
Transformational Model ◽  
Clear Winner ◽  
Relational Grammar ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
Transformational Framework

This chapter traces the collapse of Generative Semantics, which ultimately became a movement away from Noam Chomsky’s view of linguistics, more than a movement toward a unifying vision of language or linguistics. The leaders all went in various directions. Paul Postal and Jim McCawley retained their commitments to formal modeling, but Postal developed a new, non-Transformational framework with David Perlmutter, Relational Grammar, while McCawley continued to ply an increasingly idiosyncratic Transformational model he eventually called Unsyntax. Robin Lakoff led the expansion of linguistic pragmatics and founded feminist linguistics. George Lakoff and Haj Ross took overlapping but distinct forays into non-discrete linguistics. Meanwhile, the Generative Semantics ethos was losing whatever appeal it may have had. Linguists outside the movement, and some within, found the style irritating. Meanwhile, too, Chomsky’s innovations were proving very fruitful and attracting adherents under the label, the Extended Standard Theory. Chomsky’s framework emerged from the brief Generative Semantics eclipse and now seemed the clear winner of the Linguistics Wars.

The theoretical significance of the Latin accusative and infinitive: a reply to Pillinger

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Comrie
Keyword(s):  
Standard Theory ◽  
Relational Grammar ◽  
Theoretical Significance

Pillinger (1980) argues that the Latin accusative and infinitive construction provides evidence against some of the current assumptions of Relational Grammar (RG) and,1to a lesser extent, the Extended Standard Theory (EST). I argue that, even if one accepts Pillinger's analysis of this construction – as I would, perhaps with less diffidence than Pillinger himself – then this analysis is completely neutral with regard to deciding between RG and EST and compatible with either.

The origin and developmemt of generative semantics

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 399-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Predicate Calculus ◽  
Abstract Syntax ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Transformational Model ◽  
Lexical Structure ◽  
George Lakoff

Summary Against the background of the controversial and polarized work of Frederick Newmeyer and Robin Tolmach Lakoff, this paper chronicles the early development of generative semantics, an internal movement within the transformational model of Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. The first suggestions toward the movement, whose cornerstone was the obliteration of the syntax-semantics boundary, were by George Lakoff in 1963. But it was the work conducted under the informal banner of “Abstract Syntax” by Paul Postal that began the serious investigations leading to such an obliteration. Lakoff was an active participant in that research, as were Robin Tolmach Lakoff, John Robert (“Háj”) Ross and James D. McCawley. Through their combined efforts, particularly those of McCawley on semantic primitives and lexical insertion, generative semantics took shape in 1967: positing a universal base, importing notions from predicate calculus, decomposing lexical structure, and, most contentiously, rejecting the central element of the Aspects model, deep structure.

Generative Semantics 2: The Heresy

2021 ◽  
pp. 107-144
Author(s):  
Randy Allen Harris
Keyword(s):  
Surface Structure ◽  
Natural Extension ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Transformational Grammar ◽  
George Lakoff

This chapter examines how Generative Semantics, which had emerged from Transformational Grammar as part natural extension of, and part challenge to, Noam Chomsky’s work, became a full-blown heretical divergence with Chomsky’s 1967 “Remarks on Nominalization” lectures, in which he took his theory in countervailing directions. Generative Semanticists had extended syntactic derivations deeper, diminished the lexicon, and enriched the scope of transformations. The lectures emphasized Surface Structure semantics, enriched the lexicon, and diminished the role of transformations. They were also dismissive of specific Generative Semantic innovations, especially those of George Lakoff. Lakoff attended the lectures. Sparks flew. Chomsky and his new proposals fared poorly across the linguistic landscape, where Generative Semantics rapidly took hold, but his own students, Ray Jackendoff at the fore, were inspired by the new direction (known variously as “Lexicalism,” “Extended Standard Theory,” and, contrapuntally to the heresy, “Interpretive Semantics”).

The accusative and infinitive in Latin: a refractory complement clause

1980 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. S. Pillinger
Keyword(s):  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Relational Grammar ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Complement Clause

In this paper I set out to show that, contrary to expectation, Subject-to-Object Raising does not form part of the derivation of Accusative and Infinitive (A&I) complements in Latin: and that this, coupled with the apparent NP-status of these complements, causes some difficulties for two of the current ‘schools’ of transformational-generative grammar, namely Generative Semantics/Relational Grammar, and Chomsk's Extended Standard Theory.After a brief note on the use of intuition in analysing a dead language, the basic positions of the above two schools are given, together with certain distinctions and terminology relevant to the Latin data under consideration.

Pohľad Na Pomenovanie Cez Prizmu Teoretických Rámcov A Slovníkového Hesla

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-301
Author(s):  
Alexandra Jarošová
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Extended Model ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
Situational Contexts ◽  
Methodological Procedures

Abstract The first part of this paper outlines the relevant aspects of functional structuralism serving lexicographers as a departure point for building a model of lexical meaning useable in the Dictionary of Contemporary Slovak Language. This section also points to some aspects of Klára Buzássyová’s research on lexis and word­formation that have enriched the functional­structuralist paradigm. The second section shows other theoretical and methodological frameworks, such as linguistic pragmatics, cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics (all of them departing in some respect from the structuralism and, in other aspects, being complementary with it) that can enhance the structuralist basis of the model. The third section outlines an extended model of lexical meaning that represents a synthesis of all those theoretical frameworks and, at the same time, represents a reflection of three language constituents: 1. The social constituent is present in consideration of communicative functions of utterances, naming functions of lexical units, functional styles and registers, language norms, and situational contexts; 2. The psychological component takes the form of consideration of the prototype effect, the abolition of boundaries between linguistic meaning and other parts of cognition; 3. Thanks to the structural/systematic component, a description of paradigmatic and syntagmatic behaviour of words can be performed, and an inventory of formal­content units and categories (lexemes, lexies, word­forming and grammatical structures) can be provided. In our dictionary practice, the above­mentioned model is reflected in the methodological procedures as follows: 1. Systemization of repetitive (regular, standardized) phenomena; 2. Prototypicalization of meaning description; 3. Contextualization/encyclopedization of meaning description; 4. Pragmatization of meaning description; 5. Continualized presentation of language phenomena, i.e., introduction of numerous phenomena of transient and indeterminate nature and indicating the existence of a semantic­pragmatic and lexical­grammatical continuum; 6. “Discretization” of combinatorial continuum, i.e., identification and description of entrenched word combinations with naming functions.

Technological Objects, Social Positions, and the Transformational Model of Social Activity

MIS Quarterly ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 803-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Faulkner ◽  
◽  
Jochen Runde ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Activity ◽  
Transformational Model

Unified Formal Modeling and Analyzing both Functionality and QoS of Web Services Composition

2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 2698-2715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fang-Xiong XIAO ◽  
Zhi-Qiu HUANG ◽  
Zi-Ning CAO ◽  
Li-Zhong TU ◽  
Yi ZHU
Keyword(s):  
Web Services ◽  
Formal Modeling ◽  
Web Services Composition ◽  
Services Composition

Social Networking Sites Continuance: An Application of Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanshu Rajput
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Theory Of Planned Behaviour ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Planned Behaviour ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
Moderating Role

Social networking sites (SNSs) have become popular in India with the proliferation of Internet. SNSs have gained the interests of academicians and researchers. The current study is an endeavor to understand the continuance of social networking sites in India. The study applies an extended version of theory of planned behavior. Additional factors privacy concerns and habits were incorporated into the standard theory of planned behaviour. A survey was conducted in a Central University in India. Overall, data was collected from 150 respondents. PLS-SEM was used to test the proposed model. All the hypotheses except the moderating role of habits between intentions and continued use of social networking sites, were supported by the results. Habits were found to affect continued use of social networking sites indirectly through continued intentions.

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