1	Deep Structure & Generative Semantics February 7, 2002
2	Home-Brewed Dissension “As of 1965, and even later, we find in the bowels of Building 20 [the home of the MIT linguistics department] a group of dedicated co-conspirators, united by missionary zeal and shared purpose. A year or two later, the garment is unraveling, and by the end of the decade the mood is total warfare. The field was always closed off against the outside: no serpent was introduced from outside of Eden to seduce or corrupt. Any dissension had to be home-brewed” (Robin Lakoff, LW 102).
3	What is Generative Semantics? “The approach taken by Katz, Fodor, and Postal has been to view a semantic theory as being necessarily interpretive, rather than generative. The problem, as they see it, is to take given sentences of a language and find a device to tell what they mean. A generative approach to the problem might be to find a device that could generate meanings and could map those meanings onto syntactic structures” (p. 105, George Lakoff).
4	What is “Generative?” Chomsky: grammar that “specifies the infinite set of well-formed sentences and assigns to each of these one or more structural descriptions.” Liberal use during the ‘wars’: creative, productive, (and other dynamic terms) – p. 106
5	Chomsky’s Self-Imposed Limitations Autonomous Syntax? Was it wise?
6	Where did the idea of autonomous syntax originate? American Structuralism
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8	What did “Deep Structure” become after Aspects? Transformations occur before things get to the surface (ex. Minimalism & X-bar)
9	What is the Universal Base Hypothesis? “The deep structures of all languages are identical, up to the ordering of constituents immediately dominated by the same node” (p. 119, Haj Ross).
10	Selectional Restrictions Are they syntactic or semantic? Are they absolute restrictions?
11	Selectional Restrictions Every restriction has a counter example.
12	Why so much emphasis on transformational constraints? It was discovered that without constraints a transformational grammar was equivalent to a Turing Machine A Turing Machine can implement any algorithm, so language is not restricted either. Chomsky and company assumed that linguistics should identify constraints on what is a possible language.
13	Question What does Generative Semantics do to this structure by breaking the American Structuralist protocol for examining language? Answer: It reverses what depends on what (semantics on syntax or syntax on semantics).
14	Generative Semantics: Deeper and deeper Lakoff’s deep structure kept going deeper and deeper. He never stopped to resolve the problems that came up, exceptions to the rules. The transformations were different almost every time—no consistent model.
15	Generative Semantics vs. Chomsky’s Semantics
16	Competence vs. Performance Competence: has nothing to do with comprehension, nothing to do with production; model of knowledge in an abstract form; does not tell you how to understand a sentence. L = {S1, S2, S3, . . . Sⁿ }, only well-formed sentences Pairs each sentence with deep structure and logical form – this has nothing to do with the way humans generate sentences. Grammar is a mathematical system that exists independent of humans.
17	The Big Problem You can’t decide whether a sentence is acceptable unless you consider meaning, but you can’t assign a particular meaning without considering performance.
18	Why Chomsky Limits Himself Fear – biting off more than he can chew; what if it all falls apart (like generative semantics)? Faith – when there is a performance model that shows actual production, it will be based on competence.