generative semantics

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generative semantics

n
(Linguistics) (functioning as singular) a school of semantic theory based on the doctrine that syntactic and semantic structure are of the same formal nature and that there is a single system of rules that relates surface structure to meaning. Compare interpretive semantics
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

gen′erative seman′tics


n.
a theory of grammar holding that the deep structure of a sentence is equivalent to its semantic representation, from which the surface structure can be derived using one set of rules rather than separate semantic and syntactic rules.
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A number of trendy terms are glossed over so lightly as to be nugatory: stratificational, functional, Montague, generative semantics, daughter-dependency, etc.
(1) Generative semantics had, not surprisingly, a taste for amusing rule names: flip, Y[iddish] movement, and whiz-deletion are examples, in addition to those mentioned here.
I found the data intriguing, since one of my interests at the time was the comparative syntax of Latin and English and another was the development of generative semantics, loosely spun off from standard transformational generative grammar.
2.2 Flaws with the 'random generator' model call for a return to the semantics-driven syntax of generative semantics (6)
He calls the underlying theory Semantic Syntax, which is a direct continuation of what was (inaccurately) called Generative Semantics during the 1960s.
Generative semantics, as suggested by George Lakoff and other recent linguists, provides a sharp contrast with what Chomsky and Pinker claimed in their interpretive approach to language, which is well-known as Chomskyan linguistics.
To this reviewer this is sound scholarship; a similar approach is found in the well-known theorems of generative semantics in the field of linguistics.
Her essay also provides a brief contextualization of generative semantics, which was a controversial departure from Noam Chomsky and generative syntax in the early 1970s by linguists such as Haj and George Lakoff, James McCawley, and Paul Postal.
To directly capture the expressive function that I-Language obviously performs, grammatical architecture must be either "semantocentric," as in Generative Semantics, Levelt (1989), and the "functionalist" models (e.g.
Postal, and Robert Ross, established a new school, namely, generative semantics (henceforth, GS), which disagreed with generative grammarians on many substantive issues.
The rebels, and the converts they attracted, fought under the banner of 'Generative Semantics' (for which Lakoff claims the copyright), while Chomsky's troops regrouped under 'Interpretive Semantics'.
He discusses generative semantics as the background of cognitive linguistics, the basic mechanisms of thought, the structure of grammar, the neural theory of language, the poetic metaphor, implications of cognitive linguistics for philosophy, and the application of cognitive linguistics to political analysis in the US.
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