210 The formalization of sentence-meaning

The Katz Fodor theory is formalized within the framework of Chomskyan generative grammar. It was the first such theory of semantics to he proposed, and it played an important part in the development of the so-called standard theory of transforma­tional-generative grammar, which Chomsky outlined in Aspects (1965). I will treat it as an integral part of the Aspects theory, even though, as it was first presented in 1963, it was associated with a slightly modified version of the earlier, Syntactic Structures (1957), model of transformational-generative grammar.

Looked at from a more general, historical, point of view, the Katz-Fodor theory can be seen as the first linguistically sophisti­cated attempt to give effect to the principle of compositionality. Traditional grammarians had for centuries emphasized the interdependence of syntax and semantics. Many of them had pointed out that the meaning of a sentence was determined partly by the meaning of the words it contained and partly by its syntactic structure. But they had not sought to make this point precise in relation to a generative theory of syntax - for the simple reason that generative grammar itself is of very recent origin.

As I have said, I will discuss the Katz-Fodor theory, not in its original formulation, but (in what may now be thought of as its classical version) as it was presented in the period immediately following upon the publication of Chomsky's Aspects. The main consequence, as far as this book is concerned, is that we shall be operating with a particular notion of deep structure, which has now been abandoned by almost all linguists, including Chomsky. The arguments for and against the classical notion of deep structure, which divided the more orthodox Chomskyan transformationalists from the so-called generative semanticists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, are interesting and important. Some of the theoretical issues that were hotly discussed at the time have now been resolved. I will not go into them here.

One advantage of operating with the classical notion of deep structure, in a book of this kind, is that it is more familiar to non-specialists than any of the alternatives. Another is that it is simple to grasp and has been widely influential. What will be said about projection-rules and selection-restrictions in the fol-

7.3 Deep structure and semantic representations 211

lowing section is not materially affected by the adoption of one view of deep structure rather than another, or indeed by the abandonment of the notion of deep structure altogether. It is also worth emphasizing that, even if the classical notion of deep structure can no longer be justified on purely syntactic grounds, something like it, which (borrowing and adapting a Syntactic Structures term) I am calling the sentence-kernel, might well be justifiable on partly syntactic (or morphosyntactic) and partly semantic grounds (see section 7.2). The significance of this point will be explained as we proceed.

According to the standard theory of transformational gram­mar, every sentence has two distinct levels of syntactic structure, linked by rules of a particular kind called transformations. These two levels are deep structure and surface structure. They differ formally in that they are generated by rules of a dif­ferent kind. For our purposes the crucial point is that deep struc­ture is more intimately connected with sentence-meaning than surface structure is. Surface structure, on the other hand, is more intimately connected with the way the sentence is pro­nounced. Omitting all but the bare essentials, we can represent the relation between syntax, semantics and phonology, dia-grammatically, as in Figure 7.1.

With reference to this diagram, we can see that the grammar (in the broadest sense of the term) comprises four sets of rules, which, operating as an integrated system, puts a set of phonolo­gical representations (PR) into correspondence with a set of semantic representations (SR). What has just been said is often expressed, loosely and non-technically, by saying that the grammar is a system of rules which relates sound and meaning. But it is important to realize that this is indeed a very loose way of making the point; and, as experience has shown, it has led to a good deal of confusion among students and non-specialists. This point is worth developing in some detail.

Sound is external to the language-system, and independent of it; sound is the physical medium in which language-utterances (as products of the use of the language-system) are, normally or naturally, realized (and externalized) in speech; considered from a psycholinguistic (and neuropsychological) point of view,