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19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 1. Syntax

[purely structural or grammatical features of language]

9 ideas
Chomsky's 'interpretative semantics' says syntax comes first, and is then interpreted [Chomsky, by Magidor]
Syntax is independent of semantics; sentences can be well formed but meaningless [Chomsky, by Magidor]
Universal grammar doesn't help us explain anything [Searle]
Intuition may say that a complex sentence is ungrammatical, but linguistics can show that it is not [Block]
How do we parse 'time flies like an arrow' and 'fruit flies like an apple'? [Devlin]
Syntactic form concerns the focus of the sentence, as well as the truth-conditions [Hofweber]
A theory of syntax can be based on Peano arithmetic, thanks to the translation by Gödel coding [Horsten]
Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor]
'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor]