Uncontained Rules of Meaning

Abstract

Publisher Summary The beginning of transformational generative grammar in the late 1950s was marked by Chomsky's discovery of deep-lying regularities in syntactic structure. This led to a picture of language as consisting of a combination of syntactic regularity and lexical irregularity. However, there are regular processes by which lexical items are inserted into syntactic structures, and the meaning of lexical items contributes to the meaning of the syntactic structures into which they are inserted. Semantics thus came to be added to syntax and was conceived of as consisting of two parts: a lexicon, dealing with irregularities, and a set of projection rules and (later) rules of semantic interpretation, dealing with regularities. This view led to the position nowadays referred to as “interpretative semantics.” In the 1960s, an alternative view within the general perspective of transformational generative grammar made its appearance. Syntactic structures were no longer regarded as pivotal, new semantic regularities were discovered, and increasing attention was focused on semantic structures and subsequently on logic.