Syntax and Semantics

[Sebastian Shaumyan]

                       SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

I have been following the discussion on the relation of semantics to syntax and
I take a keen interest in the problem. So I venture to say a few words on this
topic. I will consider the problem not from the standpoint of a particular
linguistic theory, but rather from a theory-neutral standpoint. I believe 
some problems belong to a set of pre-theoretical prerequisites that must be
respected by any linguistic theory. The relation of syntax to semantics
belongs to this class of problems, I think.

The opposition SYNTAX : SEMANTICS is based on the assumption that
syntax does not deal with meaning while semantics does. Is this
assumption valid? A careful analysis of the data of linguistic
research raises strong doubts about the validity of this
assumption. We discover that what is called syntax and semantics both
deal with meaning but wuth very different kinds of meaning. What is
crucial is this: We discover two kinds of meaning: 1) grammatical
meaning (including syntactic meaning) and 2) non-grammatical, or
content meaning. Grammatical meanings are represented by grammatical
morphemes while content meanings are represented by content
morphems.Let me illustrate the distinction between the two kinds of
meaning by some examples.

Consider the Russian sentence:

DEVOCHK-A CHITA-ET KNIG-U
girl      reads    book

`The girl reads a book'

In the transliteration of the Russian sentence the hyphens are used to
present in a simplified form an analysis of the words into grammatical
and content morphemes. Here is a simplified analysis of this
sentence: The first word consists of the content morpheme DEVOCHK
`girl' and the grammatical morpheme A. The grammatical morpheme A
denotes a bundle of grammatical meanings: 1) nominative case and
simultaneously subject, 2) feminine gender, 3) singular. The second
word consists of the content morpheme CHITA `read' and the grammatical
morpheme ET. The grammatical morpheme ET denotes: 1) the present
tense, 2) 3-d person 3) singular. The third word consists of the
content morpheme KNIG `book' and the grammatical morpheme U. The
grammatical morpheme U denotes: 1) accusative and simultaneously
direct object, 2) feminine gender, 3) singular. Comparing the content
meanings with the grammatical meanings of these words, we discover a
profound difference between the both kinds of meaning. The content
meanings are more concrete, more narrow, more specific while the
grammatical meanings are more abstract, wider, more general. The
content meaning DEVOCHK occurs in a dozen or at most in a couple of
dozen of different words, while the grammatical meaning A occurs in
thousands of words. Any language has only a closed limited set of
grammatical meanings, while the number of content meanings is huge and
unlimited, in principle.

While in inflectional languages, like Russian or Latin, grammatical
meanings are represented by sounds or sound sequences, in
non-inflectional languages like English the grammatical meanings may
be represented by word order. Thus, in the English translation of the
Russian sentence, THE GIRL READS A BOOK, we must analyze GIRL into two
morphemes GIRL-SUBJECT and BOOK into BOOK-DIRECT_OBJECT, but here these
morphemes are determined by the word order.

The grammatical morphemes belong in grammar, while content morphemes
belong in the lexicon. If this assumption is correct, then we must
replace the opposition GRAMMAR/SYNTAX VERSUS SEMANTICS by the
opposition GRAMMAR/SYNTAX VERSUS LEXICON.

Traditionally, semantics has been a branch of linguistics which has
been concerned with lexical meanings. Traditionally, many linguists
have opposed semantics to syntax because they have not recognized that
syntactic functions are a special kind of meanings. Every morpheme, no
matter whether lexical or grammatical, is a bilateral linguistic unit
consisting of sign and meaning. Language does not have meaningless
morphemes. Meaning is any kind of information denoted by signs. A
syntactic function is a meaning because it is a certain information
denoted by a sign.

Now, if we agree that both grammatical and content morphemes have
meaning, one may ask: What is the place of semantics in linguistics?
This is a good question: if semantics by definition must be concerned
with meanings, and if we claim that not only lexical, but also
grammatical morphemes have meaning, then we must admit that semantics
must cover both the lexicon and grammar.

I would agree with this claim. To be consistent, we must extend the
notion of semantics to cover both the lexicon and grammar. But this in
no way will undermine the fundamental distinction between the lexicon
and grammar.

I propose the following structure of linguistics:


                            LINGUISTICS
                                /\
                               /  \
                              /    \
                     PHONOLOLGY     SEMANTICS
                                       /\
                                      /  \
                                     /    \
                              GRAMMAR      LEXICON
                         

These scheme is motivated by the following considerations: 

Every morpheme is a bilateral entity consisting of sign and meaning. A
sign consists of phonemes, which are unilateral entities. So the first
division of linguistics is into two areas of study: 1) phonology--the
study of the unilateral, that is, meaningless entities, that is
phonemes, 2) the study of meaningful entities, that is, linguistic
units proper. The latter study in its turn divides into the theory of
grammar, or grammatical semantics and the theory of the lexicon, or
lexical semantics. Syntax is not a separate level of natural language
but an intrinsic part of grammatical semantics which is concerned with
functional relations between the components of the sentence, the
simple components being words and the compound components being word
groups of different degrees of complexity.

The opposition GRAMMAR:LEXICON does not mean that we cannot conceive
of a discipline that is concerned with the interaction of grammatical
and lexical meanings. For example, the choice of grammatical cases in
Russian or Latin depends on the lexical meaning of verbs that govern
grammatical cases.  In languges that have passive constructions,
passive constrictions are heavily constrained by the lexical meanings
of verbs. But no matter how we define the scope of our research, it is
crucial to clearly distinguish between lexical and grammatical
meanings. Without a clear distinction of lexical and grammatical
meanings neither their separate study nor the study of their
interaction can be productive. In all cases, there is no place for
the distinction of syntax and semantics: syntax is an integral part of
semantics.



--------------------------------------------------------------------
Sebastian Shaumyan				   119 Whittier Road    
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics	  New Haven, CT 06515, U.S.A.
Yale University					      (203) 397-1814
						 FAX: (203) 387-7433
--------------------------------------------------------------------