Discussion Details
| Title: | Review of 'Chomsky's Minimalism' |
| Submitter: | Wolfram Hinzen |
| Description: | One would like to see the empirical evidence for the 'fact' that semantics
goes before syntax, or that we first 'think', and then 'speak', as stated in LINGUIST discussion issue number 19.2747 (link below). There is, as far as I know, no evidence, in fact, that semantics of the human kind is possible in the absence of a suitable syntax or generative system that supports such a semantics. If so, semantics, not only cannot, but must come after syntax, and it is a genuine insight of the generative tradition that what kinds of semantic interpretations we get, systematically depends on which syntactic structures a mind can and does compute. The idea that thoughts can be generated in a language-less mental nirvana, and then get somehow 'translated' into language, is a philosophical myth that arose with the Cartesian rationalist tradition. To see the previous thread(s) in this discussion, please visit: http://linguistlist.org/issues/19/19-2747.html |
| Date Posted: | 10-Sep-2008 |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
Linguistic Theories
Syntax |
| LL Issue: | 19.2754 |
| Posted: | 10-Sep-2008 |
