The Vicissitudes of War

This chapter charts the battles around the central notions of the Generative/Interpretive Semantics dispute: the existence of Deep Structure (rejected by Generative Semantics, redefined by Interpretive Semantics), the Katz-Postal Principle (rejected by both, in different ways), the notion of grammaticality (distended by Generative Semantics into contingencies and gradations, then rejected; retained by Interpretive Semantics). It also examines the rhetorical maneuvers around George Lakoff’s proposal of global rules (embraced as unfortunately inevitable by Generative Semantics, terminologically rejected but methodologically embraced by Interpretive Semantics). The chapter also documents some of the direct firefights and skirmishes across the Transformational Grammar battlefield, which left Generative Semantics in a position of clear ascendancy.

The Beauty of Deep Structure

This chapter charts the rise of Noam Chomsky’s Transformational-Generative Grammar, from its cornerstone role in the cognitive revolution up to its widely heralded realization in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. That realization featured the development of an evocative concept, Deep Structure, a brilliant nexus of meaning and structure that integrates seamlessly with Chomsky’s companion idea, Universal Grammar, the notion that all languages share a critical, genetically encoded core. At a technical level, Deep Structure concentrated meaning because of the Katz-Postal Principle, stipulating that transformations cannot change meaning. Transformations rearrange structure while keeping meaning stable. The appeal of Deep Structure and Universal Grammar helped Transformational Grammar propagate rapidly into language classrooms, literary studies, stylistics, and computer science, gave massive impetus to the emergence of psycholinguistics, attracted substantial military and educational funding, and featured prominently in Chomsky’s meteoric intellectual stardom.

Generative Semantics 2: The Heresy

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”).

Generative Semantics 1: The Model

This chapter follows the emergence of Generative Semantics from the Transformational Grammar developments codified in Noam Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. It was on George Lakoff’s mind from before Aspects but it only achieved the rhetorical, sociological, and theoretical conditions to thrive with that codification. Generative Semantics looked like a natural extension of Transformational Grammar, rooting itself in the semantic subsoil of Deep Structure and aligning closely with Universal Grammar. But that subsoil quickly proved to be less fertile than it had seemed, so Generative Semantics imported concepts from logic and philosophy of language; and Universal Grammar proved less substantial than it had seemed, so Generative Semantics solidified it with a Universal Base hypothesis. The resulting model was an extraordinarily elegant theory in which language passed through a homogeneous system of rules from thought and meaning to structure and expression, but it contained multiple seeds, both attitudinal and technical, of a challenge to Chomsky’s work.

Construções de verbos transitivos-predicativos em português: uma perspetiva transformacional

This article presents a proposal for the analysis of transitive-predicative verbal constructions, not derivable transformationally from completive constructions. The theoretical framework of operator-transformational grammar and the methodological principles of the reference framework of the Lexicon-Grammar are adopted herein. The article identifies a set of constructions and distinguishes them from other structures, usually identified as transitive-predicative structures in the literature

Syntactic and Semantic Features of Three-Act Verbs in Russian and Uzbek Languages

Research of syntactic-semantic analysis of three-act verbs consists in theoretical comprehension of transformational grammar in its enormous explanatory power. The core of transformational grammar is the idea of the core of the language, consisting of the simplest linguistic structures, from which all other linguistic structures of greater or lesser complexity can be derived. The problem of invariance, which is the central problem of modern structural linguistics, finds its most profound solution precisely in transformational grammar. The core of the language includes simple, declarative, active sentences, the so-called core sentences. In European languages, verb sentences are most common. They are followed by substantive, adjective and adverbial sentences in decreasing order of usage. In a simple sentence, the verb does not have to be the central node, but if there is a verb in the sentence, it is always the center of that sentence.

Parallelism between Linguistics and Music – Noam Chomsky and Heinrich Schenker

The paper aims to compare musical language with verbal language, creating a new perspective on music and natural language. The three categories of linguistics, phonology, syntax and semantics are analyzed. Bernstein highlights the analogies between the linguistic categories and music, researching the same three components of linguistics in music. The possibility of applying the transformational grammar procedures to the musical text is studied. In the second part of the paper, the authors investigate the method of analysis based on harmony and counterpoint, differentiating several structural levels conceived by the theoretical musician H. Schenker. Schenkerian analyzes are a relatively recent appearance in the field of musical analysis, which proposes as an innovation in the field of musical analysis the structural vision of musical discourse.

The Reception of Early Transformational Grammar in Europe

The early success in the United States of Chomsky’s book Syntactic Structures and the theory of transformational-generative grammar that it introduced raises the question of the reception of the theory in other countries. Looking at Europe, there is no overarching generalisation. In some countries (the UK, the Netherlands) the theory enjoyed a great success, in others a moderate success, at least for a time (France, Germany), and in other countries very little success (Italy, Spain). Nevertheless, there is widespread agreement that European contributions to the theory have been among the most important.

The Morphophonemics of Weak Triliteral Stems in Standard Arabic: A Generative Phonology Perspective

The “weak” triliteral stems of Standard Arabic have been studied in considerable detail by Arab as well as Western grammarians. In most cases, however, the treatment has been largely limited to listing and classifying the primary data, which satisfies observational adequacy but fails to meet the essential requirements of descriptive adequacy, simplicity and generality. In a few cases rules have been proposed, but these rules fall short of expectations: on the whole, they strike the user as complex, arbitrary and unmotivated. Drawing on the theory of Generative-Transformational Grammar, I have formulated a small set of rules which seek to satisfy all of the three essential requirements, and thus render the subject more palatable to scholars as well as learners of Standard Arabic.