Single Idea 18006

[catalogued under 19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 1. Syntax]

Full Idea

Chomsky and his followers (whose position was labelled 'interpretative semantics') claimed that a sentence is first assigned a syntactic structure by an autonomous syntactic module, and this structure is then provided as input for semantic interpretation.

Gist of Idea

Chomsky's 'interpretative semantics' says syntax comes first, and is then interpreted

Source

report of Noam Chomsky (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax [1965]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 1.3

Book Reference

Magidor,Ofra: 'Category Mistakes' [OUP 2013], p.18


A Reaction

This certainly doesn't fit the experience of introspecting speech, but then I suppose good pianists focus entirely on the music, and overlook the finger movements which have obvious priority. But I don't know the syntax of the sentence when I begin it.

Related Idea

Idea 18008 Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor]