Abstract
It is generally hypothesized that syntactic representations have “psychological reality” that is, the cognitive system, in processing strings of words, assigns to each a unique syntactic structure which is the input to semantic interpretation. A criterion by which one can evaluate a syntactic theory is thus whether or not a semantic representation can be derived from it by algorithms. The issue is interesting beyond linguistic theory to cognitive science in general, because the syntactic structures assigned are dependent on the workings of the relevant part of the brain. Furthermore, because these syntactic structures are semantically interpreted, we gain insight into a particular system—the linguistic one—for encoding meaning and knowledge in the brain.
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References
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S’ is argued to be a projection of the Inflection node INFL, which determines both the syntactic and semantic nature of the constituent. See Chomsky, 1981, for discussion.
For example, in the non-configurational language Warlpiri (i) appears to hold, but (ii) clearly does not.
For further discussion, see Rothstein (1985), “Irecation and syntax,” ms., Bar-Ilan University.
Arguments for the existence and autonomy of such a syntactic node are, made on completely different grounds in Chomsky (1981).
See Rothstein and Reed, 1985.
For further discussion, see Rothstein, 1983; E. Williams, “Predication,” LI, 11/2, 1980; T. Stowell, 1981
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© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Rothstein, S.D. (1987). Syntactic Representation and Semantic Interpretation. In: Vaina, L.M. (eds) Matters of Intelligence. Synthese Library, vol 188. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3833-5_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3833-5_9
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