WHAT HAPPENED TO

GENERATIVE SEMANTICS?

Group Member :

1. Alif Setiawan Willyanto

2. Amadhea Ardha Candra
3. Feni Rama Dhanti
4. Maria Putri Nugraheni
5. Meganada Nawwar
Nawangsih
6. Prasojo Ngesti Wibowo
7. Puspita Sari
In the late 1960s, Generative syntacticians split
off in two directions:

Interpretive
Generative
Semantics
Semantics
 Generative Semantics

 Generative Semantics is enabling the specification

of a precise and structurally driven route from
form to meaning.
 The generative semantics states that syntactic
structures are calculated based on meaning.
 This theory posits that a sentence can or should
be represented in the basic structure as part of
the initial phrase marker in a derivation.
 Some Leading Generative
Semanticists

 GEORGE LAKOFF
 PAUL POSTAL
 HAJ ROSS
 JAMES MCCAWLEY

 By 1965-1967, postal, ross, and lakoff were arguing that deep structure was much
more ‘abstract’ than in standard theory.
 In this sense ‘abstract’ means farther fromsurface structure and closer to semantic
representation.
 By 1970 Generative semantics was born.
 Deep structure had been pushed back so closely to semantic representation that
Lakoff, Ross, Postal, and McCawley came to the conclusion that there was no
independent level of Deep Structure at all.
The theoretical standard - the theory on which all other
theories measure themselves - belongs to Chomsky.
Then, in 1981, from Chomsky's lectures on government
and binding, a book that many feel announced a
revolution as far-reaching for linguistics. Thus, the
judgments of the original four generative semantics are
increasingly being questioned, as accusations that they
have advocated the wrong theory are repeated more and
more often. So, Some say that Interpretivism won
because Chomsky was a more serious theorist, his
proposals were more refined and complex, his solutions
more articulated and intellectually challenging.
 Generative Semantics VS Interpretative Semantics

There are four reasons why no comparison between generative semantics and
interpretive semantics is truly meaningful:
(a) Neither party has a sufficiently developed theory that is most important in a
systematic way that would clearly favor one set of core hypotheses over another.
(b) The two programs differ significantly from each other in theoretical orientation
and scope, so that even if testing of specific predictions is possible, they need not
be generalized;
(c) In both programs, a very wide range of auxiliary propositions is compatible with
the core, and individual propositions can be easily added or omitted so that
counterexamples have little power; and
(d) The two programs cannot always be distinguished by reference to some part of the
proposition advocated by their members, because they begin by having a number
of propositions in common, and over time exchange other propositions which have
been developed independently.
In the end what looms large in deep structural
debates are their ideological implications. It may
not have been Lakoff, McCawley, Postal, and Ross,
either individually or together, that originally
intended to cancel Chomsky's research program. But
before long the interaction developed into a contest
of us-versus-them in which both sides clearly
concluded that there could only be one winner. The
legacy is that today we characterize debates only in
terms of us-against-them, winner-or-lose, even
though such perspectives greatly distort the science
in which they are actually conducted.
But in the end, it seems to us that the most
significant difference between Generative
Semantics and Interpretative Semantics lies
in the methodological values ​they hold
respectively.
Generative Semanticists think that construction of
"deeper theory" can only proceed if theorists are
prepared to take seriously the insights about data,
which have not been satisfactorily explained by
theory, that are obtained within the confines of
research. Meanwhile, Generative Semantics
advocates a "bottom-up" approach: the
methodological strategy is to try to construct the
highest possible postal level generalizations
regardless of the consequences for the theory as a
whole.
In the years since the deep structure debate ended, the
attention of the field has been rightly commanded by the
many important research results in syntax and semantics
achieved by a new generation of researchers working on new
problems in new domains. But it would be a mistake to
dismiss the issues encountered during the period of
Generative Semantic Interpretation as irrelevant to
contemporary concerns. The relationship between syntax
and semantics remains unanswered, and the tension
between mediation and distribution approaches in linguistics
is by no means resolved. But the conclusions of this debate
also affect on the theory that growing currently.
 Two Detachment Models of Generative Semantics and
Interpretive Semantics
When the opportunity arose to escape contention, many Generative Semantics took it,
ultimately prompting their opponents to back down as well. There were actually two
models for release available in the 1970s for Generative Semantics and Interpretive
Semantics interested in semantic issues.
The first is based on the work of the philosopher H. Paul Grice. Grice, in his William
James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1967 (see Grice 1975, 1978), argues
that standard formal logic can be made to withstand objections about their ability to
capture ordinary conclusions by supplementing them with a concise set of
conversational conversations. principle. The principles that Grice offers are presented
informally and intuitively justified - generally by anecdotes - rather than by rigorous
formal proof.
A second model of disengagement from deep structural disputes, more attractive to
those wishing to maintain a formal approach, is provided by the work of the logician
Richard Montague (especially Montague 1973 [1970]). Montague offers a strictly
semantic theory, but explicitly limits its domain to relatively small "fragments" of the
English language.