Semantic structure

Abstract

In generative–transformational theories of language, semantics has always played handmaiden to syntax. For example, the extended standard theory (EST) has as its core a component of base phrase structure rules and a lexicon which supplies lexical items for the deep syntactic trees generated by the base rules; ‘semantic representations’ are created from these lexicalized P-markers at various stages of their syntactic derivation from deep to surface structure (Jackendoif, 1972: 4 ff.). Similarly, the semantic representations of a rival theory, generative semantics (GS), are taken from deep pre-lexical syntactic P-markers generated by base PS rules (McCawley, 1971). Both of these models reflect the historical roots of generative–transformational grammar, for at its inception, this theory provided only a model of syntax with no description of semantic structure (Chomsky, 1957). So it is natural, though not necessary, that linguists working in this tradition would construct their semantic models as outgrowths of the original syntactic core.