Meaning and the Structure of Language

Author(s): Frank W. Heny and Wallace Chafe

Source: College English , May, 1972, Vol. 33, No. 8 (May, 1972), pp. 908-929
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/374931

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FRANK W. HENY

Meaning and the Structure of Language

by Wallace Chafe*

THE NON-LINGUIST who has conscientiously tried to keep abreast of developments

in linguistic theory may well be ready to give up. Linguistics, especially trans-
formational grammar, has matured recently at an alarming rate, so that transforma-
tional grammarians may seem to have developed increasingly narrow interests
and, moreover, to have become so embroiled in the muddy business of securing
their own positions, digging themselves in on a narrow front, that whether they
are involved in civil war or are continuing to extend the frontiers of linguistic
knowledge is often very unclear-even to themselves.
I fancy that scarcely a single transformationalist will bother to raise his head
as Professor Chafe wings his way overhead firing enthusiastically but erratically
in all directions. The outsider is much more likely to notice the high-flier, and
he needs some help in assessing the significance of Chafe's sally-perhaps it would
not be out of place to give him at the same time some reports from the trans-
formational trenches, and to assure him that all is still well there. I shall assume
that he is reasonably familiar with Chomsky's Syntactic Structures1 and the main
developments in transformational grammar up to about 1965, when Chomsky
published his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.2
Not that I believe the college English teacher has any (narrow professional)
reason to bother much about contemporary linguistics. On the contrary, recent
developments in transformational grammar should make it perfectly clear that
there is no hope whatever of making direct use of that approach to linguistics in
English teaching-at any rate not along the lines of existing attempts. And Chafe's
work seems even less relevant.
This book of his is an attempt to argue that transformational grammar, as a
theory of language, is misconceived. He claims that it is based on syntax rather
than semantics. So Chafe proposes an alternative theory, supposedly based on
meaning and not on syntax, and gives a number of analyses, mostly of English,
developed out of his new approach.
Chafe's book makes no significant contribution to linguistic theory. It adds
scarcely anything to our knowledge of the structure of language. Yet the problems
*University of Chicago Press, 1971 (360 pp., $10.50).
1Noam Chomsky: Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1957).
2Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press, 1965).
Frank W. Heny, after teaching high school English for a number of years in England and
Africa, went to UCLA for a Ph.D. and spent a year at MIT. He is now Assistant Professor
of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts.

908

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 909

which it is supposed to solve are real enough. In fact-although it would be hard

to discover this from Chafe's discussion-they are questions which practically every
transformationalist is currently working on. Indeed, some of Chafe's analyses look
superficially very much like certain analyses recently proposed by transforma-
tional grammarians. This paper is intended to show how it is that despite these
superficial resemblances, Chafe's work has very little significance, while com-
parable transformational analyses, even if they turn out to be totally wrong, never-
theless may make a very important contribution to the development of the new
science-and might help English teachers to teach more effectively.
It will be necessary to take one or two of Chafe's analyses and see how a trans-
formational grammarian might have gone about supporting them. In addition,
we shall take some of the transformational analyses that superficially resemble
Chafe's and compare them with others, that are apparently quite incompatible
yet also transformational. In that way it will be possible to show how the principal
difference between Chafe's work and transformational grammar is not, as he
supposes, a matter of whether the theory of language is based on syntax or
semantics, but rather a question of how linguistic evidence is used to justify an
analysis.
The central problem to which Chafe addresses himself is an old one: the rela-
tionship between form (syntax) and meaning (semantics) in language. At first it
may seem very obvious that form and meaning do not completely coincide. We
find many ambiguous sentences like Flying planes can be dangerous, where one
structure seems to have two quite different meanings. (In the first, it is the planes
which fly that are said to be dangerous, while in the second the danger is said
to consist in making them fly.) On the other hand there are pairs of sentences like
John hit Bill and Bill w'as hit by John, which have essentially the same meaning
although they differ in form. From such examples we might reach the conclusion
that there is no immediate relationship between syntax and semantics in natural
language.
Chomsky argued otherwise. We have been assuming that each English sentence
has just a single form or structure and that two sentences which are superficially
not identical share no single structure that could account for the synonymy (or
near synonymy) of a pair like the active and passive just quoted. In fact, as
Chomsky first showed in 1957,3 there are many good, purely formal, syntactic
reasons for supposing that on some level of analysis (specifically, what has been
called deep structure), there is no essential formal difference between John hit Bill
and Bill was hit by John. If we concentrate our attention solely upon that level,
such sentences as active-passive pairs may be alike both in form and meaning. Fur-
thermore, Chomsky has argued that Flying planes in the above example has to be
derived from two deep structures, roughly Planes that fly and someone flies
planes.4 If correct, this will account in a comparable fashion for the two meanings
of the original sentence without supposing that there is any mismatch between
syntax (at a deep level) and semantics.

3Syntactic Structures, pp. 42-3.

4"A Transformational Approach to Syntax," in Structure of Language, ed. J. Fodor and J.
Katz (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), p. 237.

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910 COLLEGE ENGLISH

In the light of these observations of Chomsky's, and in fact of the whole histo
of transformational grammar which 'has provided a good deal of evidence for
believing that much of the structure of language lies hidden well below th
superficial and obvious, it seems that the general question of how form an
meaning are related can only be answered from within a particular theory of
language. In a theory like Chomsky's, a sentence possesses considerably mo
structure (form) than is obvious at the surface. In a theory of language that reco
nized only the most superficial structures, a sentence like Flying plane's can b
dangerous would have just one form but two meanings, while John hit Bill an
Bill was hit by John would differ in form yet have but one meaning. In such
theory there would not be any direct one-to-one correspondence between form
and meaning. Yet Chomsky's theory would permit such a direct correspondenc
between the (underlying) form and the meaning of each of these sentences. Henc
Chomsky's theory provides an entirely different set of forms as input to a gener
account of the relationship between form and meaning from the forms yielded b
a theory positing only surface structures, and would almost certainly lead
different general statements about the form-meaning relationship.
At the very least, then, a theory must provide, and justify, a definition of form(s)
for each sentence and select one or more which are to be associated with meanin
Consequently the value of a general account of the form-meaning relationship
given by a theory depends crucially on the quality of the evidence for the par
ticular structures that it associates with certain meanings.
Chafe criticizes transformational grammar for being wrongly based on syntax
(form) rather than semantics (meaning). It is important to be clear that he is
generally (though not always) attacking a particular set of hypotheses develope
at one stage in the history of transformational theory-those set forth in Aspec
There, Chomsky developed the hypothesis that the structure of every natural
language could be most adequately described by three formally distinct sets of
rules: syntactic, semantic, and phonological, each of which was somewhat furthe
internally differentiated into sets of similar rules. In particular the syntax of
language was supposed to fall naturally into two parts. One part, the phra
structure, can be thought of as building trees like the following, which is the
deep structure of John bit Bill. It is at the level of deep structure that the lexi
items are entered into the syntactic trees (from the lexicon) by a set of specia
rules.

NP AUX VP

I I
N I NP
Tns IV
IJohn past
John past hit Bill
The other part of the syntax, cons
but changes them. By making us
to represent the deep structure of

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 911

the same as that of the corresponding active sentence. So we build the tree shown
above not only for the active but also for the passive, later changing it by trans-
formational rules to form a new tree in which the words Bill was hit by John are
in their proper order.5 Certain transformational rules would have to apply even to
the deep structure of the active sentence simply in order to yield the proper surface
form; for example, it would be necessary to get rid of the marker "past" shown
in the tree and instead form the proper past tense of the verb. The tree shown
would thus be the deep structure of both the active and passive example given
above and the trees that remained after the application of all the relevant trans-
formations to that deep structure would be the surface structures of the two sen-
tences. The surface structures would of course differ, although the deep structures
would be the same.
In his account of the relationship between form and meaning Chomsky fol-
lowed Katz and Postal6 in postulating a set of semantic rules operating on the
deep structure trees built by the phrase structure-before they had been changed
by any of the transformations-to yield an account of various aspects of meaning,
notably of sameness and difference of meaning (synonymy and antonymy) and
of anomaly. At that time it was not clear that any other aspects of meaning had
linguistic significance. On the basis of the rules set up by Katz and Postal, Chomsky
was in a position to provide an immediate account of the fact that the active and
passive were paraphrases: they were derived from a single deep structure-
roughly the tree shown above-and hence, since the semantic rules operated on
deep structure trees, would automatically have the same rules operate on them.
They would be indistinguishable, semantically. Notice that this was not a crucial
part of the argument put forward by Chomsky in 1957 for relating such a pair of
active and passive sentences in the syntax; there were a number of arguments for
that, having to do with the best way to set up phrase structure rules for English.
The account of the synonymy of active and passive sentences which fell out of
his independently justified theory was simply a very welcome bonus.
Now Chafe objects to the fact that, in the account of linguistic structure which
we have just summarized, the syntactic phrase structure rules and not the semantic
rules are what build up basic linguistic structures. Chomsky's semantic rules only
"interpret" the syntax. Chafe feels that "it is in the semantic structure that the
well-formedness of sentences is determined" (p. 59)-a sentiment with which
many transformationalists would entirely agree. His reasons, however, for his
general theoretical position are very vague. His position is said to be (1) aestheti-
cally more pleasing, (2) more appropriate as an explanation of language use,
and (3) better able to relate language to animal communication. Finally (4), he
sees no reason for positing a level of deep structure (pp. 65-68). These "argu-
ments" seem to constitute a profession of faith, not evidence for the inadequacy
of Chomsky's theory and rather than consider them in detail we had better look

5Actually this is an oversimplification. Chomsky (1965; p. 103) suggests that passive sentences
may differ from their active counterparts in that they incorporate a dummy Manner Adverbial.
But this is both controversial and unimportant.
6Katz, J. and P. Postal: An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Description, (Cambridge: M.I.T.
Press, 1964).

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912 COLLEGE ENGLISH

at the quality of Chafe's own evidence for the particular relationships which h
sets up between form and meaning.
It is impossible to emphasize too strongly the importance of considering Chafe
use of evidence. As transformational grammar has developed it has becom
increasingly clear that what Chomsky has done for linguistics is to revise our
conception of how to use evidence in support of linguistic hypotheses.7 We hav
reached the stage where it is quite conceivable that the basic concept of a gram
matical transformation may have to be rejected and replaced by some other. The
are a number of 'transformational' linguists even today who have argued for th
need to make some such radical substantive change in the theory. But if it turn
out that far-reaching modifications have to be made, the evidence leading to tho
changes will be of precisely the same general kind as that which has generally
supported transformational analyses.
Although Chafe claims to 'be heavily indebted to Chomsky (and that he clearly
is, in certain ways) he has not grasped the fundamental importance in Chomsky
work of the use of evidence. It is not the rather trivial distinction between a
semantic and a syntactic grammar that distinguishes Chafe's work from trans-
formational grammar; it is his lack of a serious commitment to the principle that
every hypothesis must be framed so as to be very precisely tested against lin-
guistic data and either supported or rejected on the basis of that evidence. Many
of Chafe's ideas are not in principle susceptible of empirical testing. Others he
simply leaves untested.
Although the non-linguist may have little interest in details of linguistic analysis,
it is only by means of examples that we can show meaningfully where it is that
Chafe fails and hence point out the value of Chomsky's approach. On p. 191,
Chafe discusses the following two sentences:

(1) An elephant likes peanuts. [Chafe's (1.a)]

(2) The elephant likes peanuts. [Chafe's (6)]

Chafe is concerned only with the "generic" interpretation of these sentences under
which they make a general statement about (almost) all elephants. He claims that
under that kind of interpretation, they differ semantically:

What I shall suggest is that in (2) the class of elephants is regarded as an undif-
ferentiated whole, not as composed of separate individuals as in (1).

Having made this point, Chafe simply goes on to coin a name for the kind of
meaning supposedly exhibited by (2), assigns it a symbol in his formalism, and

71I do not, of course, mean to deny the importance of Chomsky's contribution in pushing lin-
guistic theory into entirely new areas and formulating many specific, fruitful hypotheses. Never-
theless it seems true and worth emphasizing that his most lasting contribution to linguistics has
been his insistence that it is possible (and necessary) to use empirical evidence in developing,
testing, refining and most frequently rejecting precisely formulated accounts of linguistic struc-
tures, in this way slowly building up a highly articulated, dense network of linguistic theory.
This essentially logical advance is what really counts and not his ideas about the relationship
between language and mind, not his own brilliant ideas about language structure-or his ability
to formalize these appropriately. Certainly not his conclusions.

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 913

then passes on to other matters. Now there is no harm in trying to make distinc-
tions of this sort. The linquist with finer intuitions about meaning is, other things
being equal, a better linguist. I share Chafe's intuition that these two sentences are
not precisely equivalent, semantically. If full paraphrases are composed of precisely
the same fundamental semantic units then these may very well not be full para-
phrases. But there is absolutely no point in incorporating such raw intuition into
a theory of language, assigning it a formal representation and so on, unless it has
implications which can be checked elsewhere in the language and it can be
systematically related to other, apparently independent phenomena. Does this
feeling of Chafe's that (2) in some way refers to the "class of elephants . . . as an
undifferentiated whole" have any conceivable consequences which can be checked?
I don't really know. That is part of the trouble: it is very hard to know what
kind of result his hypothesis is supposed to have. Taken strictly as its face value, if
(2) is a statement about a class it is false. Classes (to my knowledge) don't eat any-
thing. Elephants, members of the class of elephants, eat peanuts. Of course, we
don't regard (2) as false at all-it is just as true as (1), and is really about elephants.
So we can't accept Chafe's hypothesis under a strict interpretation; we have ac-
tually found evidence against that. Yet as a matter of fact we can find some evi-
dence which suggests that there are instances where Chafe would be right even
under a strict interpretation. Consider the following:

(3) (a) The waxbill is increasing in numbers.

(b) The dodo is extinct.

Both of these sentences must really be about classes. No single waxbill is increasing
in numbers, though the class is. It is the class of living dodos that has no members,
and not its members. Notice moreover that sentences related to (3.a,b) as (1) was
to (2) are very strange:8

(4) (a) *A waxbill is increasing in numbers.

(b) *A dodo is extinct.

If (2) were saying something about classes while (1) were not, we should expect
precisely that result. So there really does turn out to be a little empirical evidence
for making a distinction somewhat along the lines proposed (though never justi-
fied) by Chafe. Nevertheless it remains a fact that (2) is not generally understood
as a statement about a class. For the moment therefore I shall ignore special uses
like (3) and concentrate on sentences like (1) and (2). What precisely is the dif-
ference between them? First, consider the following examples, all rather like (2):

(5) (a) The robin eats bugs.

(b) The hippopotamus lives in water.
(c) The lemur is smaller than the gorilla.
(d) The rose doesn't flower in January.

We are still not interested in these sentences when they are about just one specific
member of the class in question, but only in what has been called the "generic"

81n these examples, and throughout the paper, I place an asterisk against examples which (in
my judgment) are somehow unacceptable as proper English sentences.

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914 COLLEGE ENGLISH

sense. Then each is about the members of a class of living creatures-roughly a

species. Recall that Chafe's original hypothesis was not so much about the differ-
ence between (1) and (2) as about some special characteristics of (2). Suppose we
try to replace it by a different one. Let us propose a hypothesis-that (2), and
sentences like it, are always about the members of a living species. How can we go
about testing such an idea? It will certainly need to be reformulated more precisely,
but initial support comes from the following, where a larger class than a species is
under consideration.

(6) (a) *The ruminant has cloven hoofs.

(b) *The primate is larger than the crustacean.
(c) *The tree gives off carbon dioxide at night.

I find all of these distinctly strange. For some reason, which could well be attrib-
uted to the correctness of our hypothesis, we can't use the definite article, "the,"
in the subject of sentences like (6) (in the generic sense under analysis here). The
effect of doing so is to produce a feeling of discomfort in (sensitive) speakers of
English.
Moreover, if the class in question consists of inanimate objects, similar sentences
are just as bad as (6. a-c) when we try to interpret them in the same "generic"
sense:

(7) (a) *The airport annoys a lot of people when it is built near a
(b) *The house has at least one door.
(c) *The road is wider than the footpath.

Finally, notice that sentences like (6) and (7) can be perfectly
in the generic sense provided the definite article "the" is repla
article "a," thus making them parallel to (1) instead of (2):

(6)' (a) A rodent eats wood.

(b) A ruminant has cloven hoofs.
(c) A primate is larger than a crustacean.
(d) A tree gives off carbon dioxide at night.
(7)' (a) An airport annoys a lot of people when it is built near
(b) A house has at least one door.
(c) A road is wider than a footpath.

In other words, these sentences support rather strongly the id

general difference between sentences like (2) and those lik
attributed to a special association between the presence of th
subject position and reference to members of a 'living specie
our hypothesis a little more precisely now:

When the head noun of the subject of a sentence names a species

the article of the subject is "the" and the subject is syntactically s
has one interpretation under which it is true just in case all the me
have the property described by the predicate of the sentence.

That is a very low level hypothesis indeed. In fact it scarcely d

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 915

the generalization which we have observed.What we want is a higher level hypoth-

esis about the meaning of the definite article which explains this fact along with a
number of other facts about where "the" can be used while (in some cases) "a"
cannot.

But we have made a start. As a matter of fact we have made such a go

we can easily be shown to be wrong. Consider the following:

(8) (a) The steam-engine uses water and coal.

(b) The well-made road is a pleasure to drive on.
(c) The bicycle is slower than the car.

These sentences have singular subjects containing the definite artic

interpreted "generically," i.e. in the sense we are interested in, an
noun has nothing to do with a living species. Our hypothesis failed
sentences to (2), although there is every reason to believe that it sh
SO.

There are other apparently related cases that we failed to include. The following
are about members of a much larger class than a species yet they, too, seem to bear
the relevant "generic" interpretation:

(9) (a) The insect is well-protected by an external skeleton.

(b) The mammal suckles its young.

So our hypothesis is simply not broad enough to cover all the cases.
Moreover, there is at least one class of cases where it leads us to expect a generic
interpretation that fails to appear-when the name of the species is "man":

(10) (a) *The man has two legs.

Instead, quite abnormally, we have to say:

(10) (b) Man has two legs.

Yet when a sub-class of men is named, we unexpectedly get the generic meaning:

(11) (a) The Indian is now very sensitive to injustice.

(b) The laborer is worthy of his hire.
(c) The Watusi is taller than the pygmy.

At this point there are several options open to us. We can try to demonstrate
that all these apparent counter-examples to our generalization must, for quite inde-
pendent reasons, be analyzed as phenomena of another kind, thus permitting us to
retain our original hypothesis. Or we can look for a new generalization that will
cover all the new cases as well. Or we can try to exclude some of these new cases
independently and re-phrase the hypothesis to cover the others. For example, we
might be able to handle the difference between (6) and (9) by referring to the fact
that only the latter involve predications which are typical of the class in question.
Which course we take in practice will be determined by other decisions we have
made in constructing the theory of which our hypothesis is a part; above all, by the

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916 COLLEGE ENGLISH

possibility of finding some general way of dealing with the meaning of "the" so as
to permit just the right class of cases to have the special "generic" interpretation,
yet at the same time deal with other uses of the definite article. The meaning of
"the" must, for example, account for the further special interpretation exhibited in
(3.a,b) where a class rather than its members is under consideration. We should
try to account in the same way, by reference to its meaning-in this rather special
sense-for the fact that the so-called indefinite article, "a," is not limited in the same
way as "the" in the cases where it can have a generic interpretation.
We are not, of course, concerned with the details of the problem on this oc-
casion but with the principles involved. We have shown in sufficient detail how the
transformational grammarian might go about trying to re-cast Chafe's observation
in such a way that it could be made into a hypothesis about semantics which would
be subject to empirical testing and incorporated in a wider (but still rigorous)
theory. It is interesting that Chafe actually noticed cases like (11.a-d) but assumed
they were unrelated to (1) and (2) and felt in no way obliged either to argue in
detail that such was the case or to try to incorporate them. Instead, he simply set
up a new semantic category to handle them and provided a formal representation
of this category in his theory.
Likewise, despite the fact that the subject of (2) contains the definite article,
"the," Chafe regards that noun phrase as semantically indefinite, like (1); that (2)
contains a definite article is purely coincidental and an example of a peculiar mis-
match between meaning (semantics) and form (syntax). Yet sentences like (11):

(11) (a) The Indian is now very sensitive to injustice.

(b) The laborer is worthy of his hire.
(c) The Watusi is taller than the pygmy.

he analyses as possessing semantically definite subjects; so in that case form and

meaning are matched. Chafe does not feel obliged in any way to justify this asym-
metry; nor does he make any attempt to provide us with a theory that will predict
when a language will permit semantically indefinite noun phrases to look as if they
were definite. Far from it-his theory is not yet well enough developed even to
recognize this as a problem. Although a transformational grammarian might very
well end up with just the same analyses as Chafe, his theoretical position obliges
him to search for some kind of higher order generalization to explain the apparent
anomaly and try to discover general limits on the ways in which form and meaning
can fail to match up exactly.9
There is no point in looking in detail at the manner in which Chafe develops his
theory, or in examining particular analyses any further since, no matter what in-
sights he may have into the structure of language, he makes, as we have shown for
certain cases, no serious attempt to incorporate them in an empirical theory of
language. Hence, there is no point in taking too seriously his views on the nature
of the general relationship between syntax and semantics, and we shall not discuss

9Notice, incidentally, that our hypothetical "transformational" grammarian hasn't been using
any transformations at all. He has simply been approaching the data in a particular fashion, try
ing to develop explanatory hypotheses by careful testing.

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 917

them here, except as they bear on a controversy which is currently raging over that
issue within transformational grammar.
On page 87, Chafe discusses two sentences which have received a good deal of
attention from transformational grammarians in connection with this question:

(12) (a) Seymour sliced the salami with a knife [Chafe's (10) (a)]
(b) Seymour used a knife to slice the salami. [Chafe's (10) (b)]

Lakoff (1968) gave eleven arguments for deriving these two sentences from a
single deep structure.10 These arguments are not entirely independent of each other
and may not be very good arguments for the kind of analysis Lakoff proposed. In-
deed, Chomsky (1968) has discussed that analysis in detail and has provided very
strong grounds for thinking that it is mistaken." But Lakoff's arguments were de-
tailed and precise and (given certain assumptions) certainly seemed to suggest that
just as the active and passive:

(13) (a) John hit Bill.

(b) Bill was hit by John.

would have to be derived from a single, perhaps more abstract structure than either
(in the classical argument for transformational grammar given by Chomsky
[1957]), so the two sentences (12a) and (12b) would have to be derived from a
single underlying structure. Lakoff's argument leads him to that conclusion; Chom-
sky, as we have just noted, has since provided detailed counter-evidence and points
to what he considers flaws in the argument. Chafe questions Lakoff's "assumption"
that the two sentences should be related to a single underlying form. It was in
reality no assumption but the conclusion to a serious, detailed argument. Chafe
gives no detailed arguments. He makes no effort to counter Lakoff's. He simply
gives two general objections to the proposal to derive sentences like (12.a) and
(12.b) from a single source. We may dismiss such objections very quickly, and
mention them only by way of contrast.
To understand something of the significance of Lakoff's hypothesis that (12.a)
and (12.b) are both derived from a single source it is necessary to go, in some
detail, into the theory within which he was making this claim. Recall that Chomsky
in Aspects set up a framework (summarized at the beginning of this paper) which
accounted in passing, as it were, for the synonymy of (13.a) and (13.b): for syn-
tactic reasons they came from essentially the same deep structure, but semantic
rules operated on deep structures; hence it was a happy confirming result to have
the two syntactically related sentences appropriately assigned the same meaning.
Now what Lakoff did in the paper in which he discussed (12.a) and (12.b) was
to extend Chomsky's way of arguing, trying to show that it also covered those two
sentences. Again he did not directly use in his discussion the fact that they were
(partial?) paraphrases. He tried to give quite independent arguments for deriving
them from a single source.

10George Lakoff: "Instrumental Adverbs and the Concept of Deep Structure," in Foundations
of Language IV, pp. 2-49.
11"Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpretation," in Studies in Oriental and
General Linguistics, ed. R. Jacobson (Tokyo, 1970), pp. 52-91.

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918 COLLEGE ENGLISH

Although Lakoff did not make any detailed proposals about what the commo
source might be, his arguments tend to suggest that a tree something like the f
lowing might underlie both:

NP VP

NP S
N

I NP
Yy NP
Seymour use a knife Seymour slice the salami

Transformational rules would then deform this structur

than for (12.a), just as they deformed the earlier tree
passive) than (13.a) (the active). If his arguments are
modified version of the theory of 1965, then the seman
that single structure, and the fact that the two senten
synonymous would be explained; again a happy result.
This extension of the earlier theory seems thus far ve
that the evidence is correct might be accepted with littl
far-reaching consequences. The first thing to notice is
(13.b) both contained the same words, (12.a) and (12.b) d
little obvious formal relationship, in fact, between Seymour
salami and Seymour sliced the salami with a knife. Such
similarity does not necessarily change the nature of Lak
tionship between form and meaning. In fact he assume
surface structures of (12.a) and (12.b) contained relativel
nevertheless their common source was a tree which had words at the end of the
branches-at least below major nodes like N and V.
More recently, however, he and others following the same line of inquiry have
been led to postulate underlying structures which do not contain ordinary words
at all, but primitive entities common to all language. The basic building blocks of
language, the objects which appear in the trees produced by syntactic phrase
structure rules, are not, as Chomsky has always supposed them to be, ordinary
words, but (as Chafe considers them) more abstract primitive units.12
Ross, for example, has argued that the sentence Henry is hungry actually has
essentially the following structure at the deepest syntactic level:'s

'2Strictly speaking, Chomsky postulated some rather abstract primitives, even in 1957, which
were not words: for example, the affixes -en, -ing in his analysis of the English auxiliary. Never-
theless his phrase structure rules reflected and continue to reflect very closely the intuitive di-
vision of an English sentence into words belonging to the major lexical classes of the language.
13John R. Ross: "Adjectives as Noun Phrases," in Modern Studies in English, ed. D. Reibel
and S. Schane (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 352-360.

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 919

NPVP

V vNNP
-I

Sv

Henry BE Henry HUNGRY

rather than something like:

N PS V P

V Adj

Henrv BE Hungry

Notice that in the first tree the item most close

"hungry" is attached to a node labeled "V;" in
verb it has its own subject, "Henry," which is la
Obviously we cannot identify this element com
gry".
What kind of animal is this abstract verb HUNGRY? More generally, what
are the primitive elements that are inserted into underlying trees in this new
framework? There is of course no a priori reason why they should have any
significance at all beyond their syntactic function. But recall that in the earlier
theory which we set out very briefly above there were semantic rules operating
on the underlying syntactic trees in order to capture certain aspects of meaning.
If rules like those assumed in the earlier theory continue to operate on the new
kind of underlying tree then we might expect that the basic units inserted into
those trees, units like HUNGRY, will have some kind of semantic significance. Since
the two sentences (12.a) and (12.b) turn out to be very similar in meaning, it is
obviously very reasonable to suppose that the abstract building blocks set up
within Lakoff's theory are not merely syntactic but also, in some sense, semantic.
In fact Lakoff, Ross, and others pursuing the same general line of inquiry have
been led to suppose that at a certain level of abstraction syntax and semantics are
not distinct: form and meaning match exactly. Of course, the kind of "form"
involved is quite different from the obvious structure of English sentences-or
even the somewhat abstract deep structure postulated by Chomsky."
Ross, like Lakoff, gave quite a number of detailed and supposedly syntactic
arguments for his abstract and rather surprising underlying structures; neither
simply "assumed," as Chafe suggested was often the case, that all paraphrases have
identical underlying structures. In fact such considerations could scarcely be

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920 COLLEGE ENGLISH

relevant to Ross's case; there is no English sentence *Peter is (that) he hungers

or even the simple *Peter hungers. It simply turned out that purportedly syntac
arguments of a number of different kinds seemed to point to identical underlyi
analyses for paraphrases in a large number of instances. At that stage, linguis
working in this sub-school of transformational grammar (now generally know
as "generative semantics") formulated the general working hypothesis that th
most primitive syntactic units were also, in some sense, primitive semantic uni
and that, indeed, virtually all true paraphrases have identical underlying syntact
structures.

Although in the analysis of (12.a) and (12.b), Chafe disagreed with La

theory which Lakoff and Ross developed lent itself very naturally to
which are in almost complete agreement with many of Chafe's own an
least superficially. For example, on pp. 119-31 Chafe describes how
analyze a sentence like:

(14) (a) John opened the door.

as related to:

(14) (b) The door became open.

because the sense of the former includes in some way the sense of the latter. Then,
in turn, this last sentence includes the sense of:

(14) (c) The door is (was) open.

and hence (14.b) and (14.c) should be related in much the same way as are
(14.a) and (14.b). Generative semanticists, too, would analyse the sentence John
opened the door as having an underlying structure essentially like the following:

INP

NPNP
VP

NP

John CAUSE the door BE the door OPEN BECOME

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 921

The structure of this tree is rather closely exhibited in the following partial
paraphrase of (14.a):

(14) (a') John caused it to come about that the door was open.

and both the tree and (14.a') provide just those relations of inclusion that Chafe
sensed in the original sentence and built into his analysis. But whereas the trans-
formational grammarians have specific and detailed and apparently independent
reasons for their analyses, Chafe has only his intuitions. They agree only in be-
lieving that the well-formedness of sentences is determined at a level which is
composed of units which are essentially semantic.
Because of the specific and detailed nature of the transformational arguments
it is possible to counter them with other evidence. Fodor, for example has been
able to provide three good arguments against relating (14.a-c) by deriving them
from a single source.14 (Actually he was interested in the possibility of relating
kill and die, but the point remains the same.) He pointed out, among other things,
that while the following kind of sentence is perfectly acceptable (though
stylistically somewhat turgid),

(15) (a) John caused it to come about that the door was open on Sunday by warning
the guard on Friday.

it is impossible to say,

(15) (b) *John opened the door on Sunday by warning the guard on Friday.

Hence, he concluded, (15.a) must not be permitted to collapse into (15.b). But
how are we to prevent that from happening if (15'.a)-a sub-part of (15.a)-
collapses into (15'.b)-a sub-part of (15.b)?

(15') (a) John caused it to come about that the door was open on Sunday.
(b) John opened the door on Sunday.

There may be ways of accounting for this counter-example. The issue is still
very much alive. But that itself is important. Within transformational grammar,
and at present only within that framework, it is necessary to ask questions about
the relationships between sentences in such a way that reasonably precise answers
can be given and so that it is clear how those answers could be shown to be
wrong; otherwise the questions themselves are ruled out of order.
The most far-reaching and systematic attack on the idea (adopted by Lakoff,
Ross, and others holding the viewpoint of generative semantics) that paraphrases
have a common source, has been mounted by Chomsky and a number of his more
recent students. They have pointed out, in particular, that a great number of the
best arguments for relating pairs of sentences like Lakoff's (12.a) and'(12.b) are
not really independent syntactic arguments at all, but semantic.

14Jerry Fodor, "Three reasons for not deriving 'kill' from 'cause to die'," Linguistic Inquiry
1:429-38.

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922 COLLEGE ENGLISH

If this is correct, then the data discussed by Lakoff and others provides no direct
evidence for the claim that use and with, or kill and die, are derived from comm
sources in phrase structure-or indeed anywhere in the syntax. Chomsky h
pointed out how within the broader framework accepted by Lakoff, Ross, and
himself Lakoff's observations do not lead inevitably to his conclusions.15 It remai
quite possible that the underlying trees for (12.a) and (12.b) are something like
the following respectively:

NP S VP
SNP PP

Prep NP

Seymour sliced the salami with a knife

NP VP S
V NP
N NP N VP
N V NP

Seymour use a knife Seymour slice the salami

In that case, the second tree is rather like the one suggested by La
but the first is quite different. Under such an analysis th
reason to suppose that "slice," "cut," and so on are anything o
words. Quite different semantic rules would have to opera
shown, and in some way those rules would have to account fo
two sentences in question are always true together and possess m
properties in common. In other words we should have to rever
the familiar picture of linguistic structure developed up to abo
and others. That such a move is the correct one has not been demonstrated;
Chomsky has simply shown that the evidence hitherto offered in support of
generative semantics does not unambigously support that hypothesis, and is in con-
flict with other important generally held assumptions and findings of transforma-
tional grammar.
Chomsky,16 Jackendoff,17 and others have also turned up some evidence for a
new hypothesis which goes rather further towards undermining one of the basic
assumptions of generative semantics. They suggest that a good number of meaning

15"Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Semantic Interpretation."

161bid.
17Ray Jackendoff: Some Rules of Semantic Interpretation for English, Diss. M.I.T. 1969. See
also "Modal Structure in Semantic Theory," Linguistic Inquiry 11:4.

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 923

relations in English and other languages can be most directly stated if semantic
rules work not just on the underlying trees formed by the phrase structure rules
but also on trees that correspond quite closely to the final form taken by English
sentences after transformations have been applied. For example, a great number of
people find sentences like the following unambiguous and altogether non-synony-
mous:

(16) (a) Few people have read many of Hemingway's novels.

(b) Many of Hemingway's novels have been read by few people.

Yet, at least in the standard theory of transformational grammar, t

come from a single underlying tree, something like:

NPV NP

Few people have read many of Hemingway's novels

The passive rule would operate on this just as it does on

N p..
NP-p_.
V-P
N V N

John hit Bitt

to give Bill was hit by Joh

change in meaning someho
been changed by the passiv
reason for supposing that
sentences under considerat
if certain semantic relation
structure rules, but on ot
roughly, surface structure
account of the relationshi
hypothesis that semantic
level at which form and m
quite a blow to demonstrat
other than the deepest one
The alternative account of
developing on the basis o
called "interpretive semant
tics" developed by Lakof
familiar analyses of Englis

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924 COLLEGE ENGLISH

than generative semantics to the earlier theory with which I am assuming the
reader is familiar, i.e. the one that Chafe wants to attack. It is also newer than
generative semantics and less well-developed. Hence I shall not describe in more
detail the work that has been done within that framework. Notice however the
general position of interpretive semantics with respect to the relationship between
syntax and semantics. Syntax and semantics are quite distinct. Sometimes pairs of
synonymous sentences, like the active and passive, will turn out to have a common
deep structure. Form and meaning will coincide on one level. At other times, a
pair (like (12.a) and (12.b)) may be alike in meaning yet share no syntactic
structure. It is, of course, incumbent on the interpretivist to develop a theoretical
account of when paraphrases will share structures and when not.
Whether it will turn out that the correct analysis of all the sentences discussed
above lies in the direction suggested by Lakoff's approach or in the framework just
sketched will depend on many factors. At present the position is very confused.
As might be guessed from our discussion here, much of the debate within trans-
formational grammar turns on the question of the relevance of particular evidence
offered in support of very abstract hypotheses. Because both sides are trying to
develop strictly scientific arguments, it is necessary for them to develop those
hypotheses to the point where they make clearly different predictions about what
data will be found and then to demonstrate that one rather than the other theory
can handle the observed facts. Neither position is sufficiently well-developed for
its general superiority over the other to be demonstrable on the basis of current
knowledge. The area where most remains to be done is undoubtedly semantics.
Syntactic theory is developed at least to the point where we know a great
number of systematic facts about the structure of languages and can trace with
some confidence the implications of any given analysis. But we are only just
beginning to recognize and discover how to analyse the semantic relationships
(of at least equal complexity and interest) which occur in natural language. The
development of the so-called interpretive theory of semantics mentioned earlier
has emphasized the need for a sophisticated, independent semantics within which
one could seek to justify, in the usual way, the claim that distinct, independent
semantic rules must apply to (12.a) and (12.b) to yield similar "meanings" (in
some sense) and at the same time account for the regularities that Lakoff wanted
to attribute to the synax. It should be obvious, in fact, that there cannot in
principle be a general theory of the relationship between form and meaning in
natural language until both are adequately defined and the definitions empirically
justified.
The present writer has argued elsewhere that a theory of meaning for natural
language cannot be adequate unless it at least characterizes the native speaker's
knowledge of the general conditions under which each of the (ordinary declara-
tive) sentences of his language is true or false.18 No matter how fluently someone
produced the sentences of English we should not say he possessed the knowledge
of a native speaker unless he judged There are five people in this room false if only
four were, true if five were, and often true even if more than five were present.

18Frank W. Heny, "Semantic Operations on Base Structures," Diss., U.C.L.A. 1970.

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 925

The way in which words bear meaning can be characterized in terms of the con-
tribution they make to evaluating the truth of sentences in which they occur, and
superficially very similar items may operate in those rules for defining truth in
quite dissimilar ways, leading to different conditions under which apparently
similar items can be appropriately used. When we discussed the behavior of the
definite article "the" in generic sentences, earlier in this paper, we were in fact
reaching toward a general rule of interpretation for that word-a rule that would
explain the apparent irregularities by leading naturally to just the right truth
values and at the same time interacting properly with the interpretation of the
rest of (2) but refusing to do so for (7.b).

(2) The elephant likes peanuts.

(7) (b) *The house has at least one door.

Notice that if it turns out that the native speaker really does possess an internal-
ized knowledge of such rules leading to the general characterization of truth, then
both interpretive and generative semantics will turn out to be "interpretive" in this
deeper sense. And if linguistic semantics really consists of such interpretive rules
then neither generative nor interpretive "semantics" has much to do with semantics
at all: they just set different limits on syntax. That is, they simply define "form"
in different ways.
For Lakoff's theory the semantic rules will operate on abstract units; for
Chomsky's theory they will operate on words. The choice between the two
theories cannot be made until we are in possession of more knowledge about the
semantic rules required by the two theories. The idea that meaning necessarily
involves a relationship between the world and language has only just begun to
enter transformational theory and will undoubtedly affect our ultimate account
of the relation between form and meaning-for one thing, it totally alters our
conception of meaning.
At present, of course, confusion reigns. It would probably be possible to turn
up a generativist and an interpretivist who could not find a single transformation
which both agreed to be part of the grammar of English. Some of them question
the existence of even well-established rules like the passive and the reflexive.
Does this mean that from the point of view of the teacher of English there is
after all nothing to choose between Chafe and either of these transformational
schools? After all, as we observed earlier in this paper, many of Chafe's intuitive
analyses end up much like those argued for by generative semanticists. If both he
and they are wrong, and the evidence offered by the generative semanticists for
their analyses really turns out to be incapable of supporting their claims, what is
to recommend either to the attention of the English teacher?
One thing that the current controversy within transformational grammar must
have made perfectly clear (it should have been clear all along) is that the non-
linguist who seeks to make direct use of the results-the detailed analyses--pro-
vided by transformational grammar (or by Chafe or anyone else) does so at
extreme peril. Transformational grammar certainly can provide no help whatso-
ever to the English teacher in the form of "correct" analyses. Even if it could,
of course, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that a student would be able to

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926 COLLEGE ENGLISH

write better through being taught those analyses.19 There is no shadow of an

excuse for using Roberts' series20 in the high schools, or Jacobs and Rosenbaum2
or Lester 22 in a college English course on the grounds that they help students u
their own language more effectively. There never has been. Learning about noun
phrases, complements, relative clauses, and all the other syntactic paraphernalia of a
typical introductory course in transformational grammar has not been shown
more relevant to the problems of learning to write English than were the trivi
skills acquired under the old style grammar: how to identify a noun, to find th
predicate of a sentence, or parse a present participle. There certainly does not
seem to be any a priori reason for expecting such knowledge to help the writer
And the new miracle-working analyses themselves now turn out to be highly
suspect, for the analyses of sentence (12.a) above given by Lakoff and Chomsk
have very little in common.
Nevertheless, I believe that current work in transformational grammar migh
have relevance to the teaching of English. The careful sifting through and weig
ing of vast masses of data, and the imaginative formulation and justification o
surprising and interesting hypotheses about language structure based on that dat
which characterize the best in current transformational work, could probably pr
vide the adventurous teacher with exciting methods and material.
The examples (1) through (11) in the first part of this paper might well ope
up new paths along which to send students in search of their own language. Thi
is not the place to develop a classroom plan in detail, but I had better show ho
those examples might be used-at least in outline. The first thing to establish wi
students would probably be the nature of the relevant, synonymous ("generic
readings of examples like (1) and (2), not merely by considering similar example
but also by looking at other near paraphrases, such as the following:

(1) An elephant likes peanuts.

(2) The elephant likes peanuts.
(17) (a) Elephants like peanuts.
(b) All elephants like peanuts.
(c) Any elephant likes peanuts.
(d) Every elephant likes peanuts.
(e)? Each elephant likes peanuts.
(cf. Each elephant likes his own peanuts.)

The slightly different shades of meaning exhibited in these examples (includin

the anomaly of (17.e) could profitably be discussed in detail. Then introduce a
hypothesis like Chafe's (see above, p. 912); find counter-examples as we did her

191 do not mean to imply that transformational grammar has provided the critic or Englis
scholar with nothing of value. In fact the work of Ohmann, Levin, Freeman, and others demo
strates very clearly that at a certain level there has already been fruitful interaction between th
disciplines. This will undoubtedly increase in importance as linguists devote more attention
semantic questions.
20Paul Roberts, The Roberts English Series (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966).
21Jacobs, R. and P. Rosebaum, English Transformational Grammar (Waltham, Mass.: Gi
and Co., 1968).
22Mark Lester, Introductory Transformational Grarmnar of English (New York: Holt, Rin
hart, 1971).

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 927

and then the hypothesis can be modified, extended, supported, defeated and re-
peatedly re-formulated.
The approach all the time must be heuristic. Students are supposed to be search-
ing deeper into the structures, and becoming more conscious of the resources, of
their own language. They will be subjecting to close scrutiny many aspects of
their own usage which are not yet settled; so they will develop and refine their
own sensibilities, and hopefully they will not merely discover what is already
there but will also, in testing and trying to generalize about their language, change
it and increase their ability to control and use it.
A proper perspective is important. Precise hypotheses certainly must be formu-
lated. Without attention to detail the whole exercise is quite pointless. Rather than
sharpening awareness it will encourage students to be content with vague, useless
generalities. But it must never be thought of as a way to teach facts about English.
If a student learns anything significant from such a program it will be because he
has been challenged to find things out for himself. While the teacher needs to have
command of his subject, that is only so as to clear obstacles out of the way, guide,
and lead-and never because he must pass on the truth.
Of course the students who start work in this area will automatically uncover
new territory to explore once they tire of the generic "a" and "the." They could,
for instance, tackle the ordinary indefinite and definite articles or the universal
quantifiers that we found in examples (17.a-e). A little imagination-added to a
good deal of training-will suggest unlimited topics to the teacher. Adverbs, for
example, are always worth taking on. Consider the following:

(18) (a) John furnished all the rooms of his house lavishly.
(b) *John lavishly furnished all the rooms of his house.
(19) (a) *For the party, John filled all his bathtubs lavishly with beer.
(b) For the party, John lavishly filled all his bathtubs with beer.
(20) (a) John furnished all the rooms of his house lavishly with period furniture.
(b) John lavishly furnished all the rooms of his house with period furniture.

The starred sentences are, for my speech, peculiar (I would expect the facts to
vary a little with other speakers). Why? What is it about the interpretation of
"lavishly" that permits it sometimes to occur in one position, sometimes in another
and sometimes in either-with a difference of meaning? As more work of the
sort exemplified here emerges from transformational grammar I would expect it
to open up vast new areas in which a student can be led by example to think pre-
cisely about his own language-and in particular about the structure of meaning
in that language.
I believe that an English teacher able to tap and use this new knowledge would
have at his command a rather powerful tool. Not everyone interested in linguistic
structure writes well; but no one who writes well has all his life remained totally
uninterested in the medium he uses. It may very well be the case that a real interest
in language itself is a necessary prerequisite to the arduous work of self-criticism
and revision without which few of us are able to embody thoughts in written
language of any clarity. And the student who has unraveled some of the mysteries
of his own speech and realized a little the extent of his command over this medium

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928 COLLEGE ENGLISH

must inevitably gain self-confidence and develop a greater interest in using its h
den resources.

Semantics is not the only area that he could profitably study. Once a student has
become interested in language structure, there are a few areas in which recent
transformational syntax may have direct relevance. An oversimplified example
will help to make this clear.
The normal declarative sentence John hit Mary said with ordinary stress, i.e.
with the intonation center on "Mary," presupposes nothing and simply makes a
statement about John. But if the speaker knows (or assumes) that his hearer thinks
that someone hit Mary and wishes to establish for that hearer the identity of the
person who did so, he may use any of the following sentences:

(21) (a) It was John that hit Mary

(b) The one that hit Mary was John
(c) John hit Mary

(The italics indicate strong stress.) If the sentence is written, however, (21.c)
cannot convey to the hearer the special emphasis on "John" which is intended
since even if stress be represented in some way in the written form, this is rela-
tively ineffective. Yet many writers fail to notice such facts (at least in an initial
draft), for they mentally supply the stress. Many simply do not possess the aware-
nessness of the alternative structures displayed above which have now come in for
considerable attention from transformational grammarians. It seems likely that
very recent work on the presuppositions of certain syntactic forms, such as
(21.a-c), and on the relationship between stress and other means of realizing em-
phasis could have direct relevance to the teaching of English writing to the native
speaker. The recent course by Virginia Tufte, Grammar as Style,23 seems to make
good, unobtrusive use of transformational work in suggesting areas for concen-
tration and developing approaches to particular problems in communication which
are based upon a clear understanding of the syntactic structures involved.
Nevertheless, it seems likely that the really distinctive contribution that trans-
formational grammar might make to college English teaching lies in the new kind
of interest which it could engender in the semantic structure of the native lan-
guage.
An approach to English teaching along the lines discussed earlier calls, of course,
for a new kind of English teacher-one who is not merely familiar with some of
the conclusions of linguists, but is also thoroughly grounded in the underlying
methodology and philosophical bases of transformational work. He needs to
understand a wide variety of possible analyses, possess a vast store of data in the
form of examples embodying evidence for these, and be sufficiently excited by
the prospect of searching the byways of his language to pass this on to his stu-
dents. And then he must be concerned not with the discovery of truth but with
developing in his students an interest in language and in particular in the relation
between language and the world so that directly and indirectly he may lead the

23New York: Holt, Rinehart (1971).

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 Meaning and the Structure of Language 929

student to write more effectively. We are, after all, thinking of an English teacher
and not a linguist.
Perhaps the time spent on training this teacher will not be justified by results.
There have been many fine language teachers who knew nothing of transforma-
tional work. And wildly exaggerated claims have been made in the past for a
"linguistic approach" to just about everything in language teaching. I want to
make no such claims. In fact it must be very obvious that this paper is primarily
intended to emphasize the futility of trying to make use of most linguistic results
for such a purpose. The science is in its extreme infancy and many years will pass
before we can dream of basing a technology upon it. There is no way of guessing
how the science may eventually help the teacher of the native language. Cau-
tiously, we may try to apply a few ideas and see if they work. But if linguistics
today has any real place in English courses this is not because of any results but
because it has the power to lead the student to re-discover repeatedly the imagi-
native leap taken by Chomsky fifteen years ago when he postulated that the
crucial aspects of linguistic structure lay hidden beneath the surface, in the mind
of the speaker. As a result of his work and that of his students there is probably
enough material available to form the basis of a really new approach to English
teaching.
No one has tried to use linguistic data in English teaching in this way. I have
a feeling that there is much to be gained from making the effort to explore-though
I wouldn't bet too much money on it!

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