MEANING AND FORM*

Abstract

AbstractRecent work in linguistics has assumed that “surface” differences in syntax do not necessarily reflect differences in “deep” structure, i.e., there are differences in form without differences in meaning. But in many, perhaps in all, instances where the assumption has been adopted in practice, an unsuspected difference in meaning can be found. It is a safer working hypothesis that linguistic economy requires all differences in form to be correlated with differences in meaning.