A Brief History of the Syntax-Semantics Interface in Western Formal Linguistics

This essay describes and comments on some of the key developments in the history of formal semantics and its relation to syntax, focusing on the period from the beginnings of Chomskyan generative grammar in the 1950's up until the mature period of formal semantics in the 1980's, with only a few remarks about earlier background and later developments. One crucial theme is the challenge of developing a compositional semantic theory, and how that challenge has taken on different forms with respect to different syntactic and semantic theories. The ‚syntax-semantics interface‛ is a relatively young topic in the history of linguistics. In early Western linguistics, there was little syntax and essentially no semantics other than some non-formal lexical semantics. Formal syntax came first, with Zellig Harris's student Noam Chomsky revolutionizing the field of linguistics with his work on syntax. Chomsky shared the field's general skepticism about the possibility of semantics as a subject of scientific study, but as semantics began to be developed in the context of generative grammar, the issue of the connection between syntax and semantics came to the fore very quickly and soon became a major area of research. ‚Formal semantics‛ arose a little later, with the logician Richard Montague as the key figure in its origins, and linguists, logicians, and philosophers cooperated in its early development. From both the syntactic and the semantic side, the emphasis was on the

[1]  Barbara H. Partee,et al.  Formal Semantics: Origins, Issues, Early Impact , 2010 .

[2]  Ronald M. Kaplan,et al.  Lexical Functional Grammar A Formal System for Grammatical Representation , 2004 .

[3]  Barbara H. Partee.  SOME TRANSFORMATIONAL EXTENSIONS OF MONTAGUE GRAMMAR , 1975 .

[4]  Richard Montague,et al.  ENGLISH AS A FORMAL LANGUAGE , 1975 .

[5]  R. May.  The grammar of quantification , 1978 .

[6]  Kees Versteegh,et al.  The development of Montague grammar , 2006 .

[7]  R. Harris.  The Linguistics Wars , 2021 .

[8]  Barbara H. Partee,et al.  Comments on C. J. Fillmore's and N. Chomsky's Papers , 1975 .

[9]  G. Cinque.  Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective , 1999 .

[10]  Reinhard Muskens.  New Directions in Type-Theoretic Grammars , 2010, J. Log. Lang. Inf..

[11]  Ray Jackendoff,et al.  Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar , 1972 .

[12]  Gerald Gazdar,et al.  Phrase Structure Grammar , 1982 .

[13]  David R. Dowty,et al.  Introduction to Montague semantics , 1980 .

[14]  R. Huddleston,et al.  Nouns and Noun Phrases , 1988 .

[15]  Edward P. Stabler,et al.  Computational Perspectives on Minimalism , 2011 .

[16]  Geoffrey K. Pullum,et al.  Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar , 1985 .

[17]  James D. McCawley,et al.  Where do noun phrases come from , 1969 .

[18]  Irene Heim,et al.  The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases : a dissertation , 1982 .

[19]  Emmon Bach,et al.  Some Generalizations of Categorial Grammars , 1984 .

[20]  Donna Jo Napoli,et al.  Linguistic theory in America : the first quarter-century of transformational generative grammar , 1981 .

[21]  B. Partee.  Reflections of a Formal Semanticist , 2004 .

[22]  B. Partee.  Montague Grammar and Transformational Grammar. , 1975 .

[23]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory , 1975 .

[24]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Deep structure, surface structure, and semantic interpretation , 1969 .

[25]  Ivan A. Sag,et al.  Book Reviews: Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar and German in Head-driven Phrase-structure Grammar , 1996, CL.

[26]  Maria Bittner.  Ontology for human talk and thought (not robotics) , 2006 .

[27]  CHRIS BARKER,et al.  Introduction: Direct Compositionality. , 2007 .

[28]  Barbara H. Partee,et al.  Montague Grammar , 1997, Handbook of Logic and Language.

[29]  Irene Heim,et al.  Semantics in generative grammar , 1998 .

[30]  Robin Cooper,et al.  MONTAGUE GRAMMAR, GENERATIVE SEMANTICS, AND INTERPRETIVE SEMANTICS , 1976 .

[31]  W. Bonney.  Pronouns and Variables. , 1974 .

[32]  Nino B. Cocchiarella,et al.  Richard Montague and the logical analysis of language , 1981 .

[33]  Emmon Bach,et al.  Informal Lectures on Formal Semantics , 1989 .

[34]  A. M. Ramer.  Mathematical Methods in Linguistics , 1992 .

[35]  Robin Hayes Cooper,et al.  MONTAGUE'S SEMANTIC THEORY AND TRANSFORMATIONAL SYNTAX. , 1975 .

[36]  David R. Dowty.  Grammatical Relations and Montague Grammar , 1982 .

[37]  E. Keenan.  Names, quantifiers, and the sloppy identity problem , 1971 .

[38]  Shalom Lappin,et al.  当代语义理论指南 = The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory , 2015 .

[39]  J. Fodor,et al.  The structure of a semantic theory , 1963 .

[40]  R. Jackendoff.  Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution , 2002 .

[41]  J. Katz,et al.  An integrated theory of linguistic descriptions , 1964 .

[42]  Richard Montague,et al.  The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English , 1973 .

[43]  Eric Bach,et al.  Montague phonology: a first approximation , 1981 .

[44]  J. Toomasian.  The Case for the Case , 2016, Perfusion.

[45]  G. Lakoff.  Pronouns and Reference , 1968 .

[46]  L. Bernstein,et al.  The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard , 1977 .

[47]  M. den Dikken,et al.  Nouns and noun phrases , 2003 .

[48]  P. Stanley Peters,et al.  On the generative power of transformational grammars , 1973, Inf. Sci..

[49]  G. Lakoff.  Linguistics and natural logic , 1970, Synthese.

[50]  E. Klima,et al.  Rules for English Pronominalization , 1963 .

[51]  Richmond H. Thomason,et al.  SOME EXTENSIONS OF MONTAGUE GRAMMAR , 1976 .

[52]  B. J. Meira.  Adverbs and functional heads: a cross-linguistic perspective , 2011 .

[53]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  वाक्यविन्यास का सैद्धान्तिक पक्ष = Aspects of the theory of syntax , 1965 .

[54]  László Dezsö,et al.  Universal Grammar , 1981, Certainty in Action.

[55]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Questions of Form and Interpretation , 1975 .

[56]  G. Harman.  Generative Grammars without Transformation Rules: A Defense of Phrase Structure , 1963 .

[57]  George Lakoff,et al.  On Generative Semantics , 1969 .