Generative semantics

Generative semantics is (or perhaps was) a research program within linguistics. The approach developed out of transformational generative grammar in the mid 1960s, but stood largely in opposition to work by Noam Chomsky and his students. The nature and genesis of the program are a matter of some controversy and have been extensively debated. Generative semanticists took Chomsky's concept of Deep Structure and ran with it, assuming (contrary to later work by Chomsky and Ray Jackendoff) that deep structures were the sole input to semantic interpretation. This assumption (along with a tendency to consider a wider range of empirical evidence than Chomskyan linguists) lead generative semanticists to develop considerably more absract and complex theories of deep structure than those advocated by Chomsky and his students. Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, there were heated debates between generative semanticists and more orthodox Chomskyans. The generative semanticists lost the debate, insofar as their research program had ground to a halt by the 1980s. However, this was in large part because the interests of key generative semanticists such as George Lakoff had gradually shifted away from linguistics.

"Interpretive" vs. "Generative" semantics

The controversy surrounding generative semantics stemmed in part from the competition between two fundamentally different approaches to semantics within transformational generative syntax. The first semantic theories designed to be compatible with transformational syntax were interpretive; that is, syntactic rules enumerated a set of well-formed sentences, each of which was assigned an interpretation by the rules of a separate semantic theory. This left syntax relatively (though by no means entirely) "autonomous" with respect to semantics, and was the approach preferred by Chomsky. Generative semantics turned this picture upside down. Interpretations were generated directly by the grammar as deep structures, and were subsequently transformed into recognisable sentences by transformations. This approach necessetated more complex deep structures than those proposed by Chomsky, and as a consequence more complex transformations. It was, however, appealing in several respects. First, it offered a powerful mechanism for explaining synonimity. In his initial work in generative syntax, Chomsky motivated transformations using active/passive pairs such as "I hit John" and "John was hit by me", which despite their identical meanings have quite different surface forms. Generative semanticists wanted to account for all cases of synonimity in a similar fashion — an impressively ambitious goal before the advent of more sophisticated interpretive theories in the 1970s. Second, the theory had a pleasingly intuitive structure. Under generative semantics, the form of a sentence was quite literally be derived from its meaning by means of transformations. To some, interpretive semantics seemed rather "clunky" and ad-hoc in comparison.