Chapter 4 - The Rise of Generative Semantics

Abstract

This chapter discusses the evolution of generative semantics, Katz–Postal contribution to generative semantics, and the Aspects contribution to generative semantics. It presents a synopsis of syntactic theory in 1970. It presents the reasoning that led to the conclusion that deep structures were highly abstract. By far, the main impetus for the adoption of highly abstract deep structures came from the Katz–Postal hypothesis. This might seem surprising. There is nothing in the notion that all interpretation takes place at deep structure that per se leads to abstractness. One can imagine a model consistent with Katz–Postal in which deep structures are quite shallow and are mapped onto their respective meanings by a rich set of interpretive rules. In fact, the possibility of semantic rules actually contributing to meaning is not ruled out under the Katz–Postal hypothesis. Even the assumptions of Katz–Postal and Katz–Fodor, taken together, were not sufficient to secure the generative semantic conclusion that there exists no level of deep structure distinct from semantic representation. This is because there is nothing in them that demands that if two sentences are paraphrases, they must have identical deep structures. Syntactic theory entered the 1970s very much under generative semantic hegemony. Generative semantics wore the mantle of orthodoxy, and that more than anything else explains its phenomenal success. Katz and Postal's conclusion that underlying structure fully determines meaning and Chomsky's that selectional restrictions are defined at the deepest syntactic level seemed too intuitively pleasing to be seriously questioned.