Syntactic Structures

SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES
The fact that correspondences between formal and semantic
features exist, however, cannot be ignored. These correspondences
should be studied in some more general theory of language that will
include a theory of linguistic form and a theory of the use of
language as subparts. In § 8 we found that there are, apparently,
fairly general types of relations between these two domains that
deserve more intensive study. Having determined the syntactic
structure of the language, we can study the way in which this
syntactic structure is put to use in the actual functioning of language.
An investigation of the semantic function of level structure,
as suggested briefly in § 8, might be a reasonable step towards a
theory of the interconnections between syntax and semantics. In
fact, we pointed out in § 8 that the correlations between the form
and use of language can even provide certain rough criteria of
adequacy for a linguistic theory and the grammars to which it leads.
We can judge formal theories in terms of their ability to explain and
clarify a variety of facts about the way in which sentences are used
and understood. In other words, we should like the syntactic
framework of the language that is isolated and exhibited by the
grammar to be able to support semantic description, and we shall
naturally rate more highly a theory of formal structure that leads
to grammars that meet this requirement more fully.
Phrase structure and transformational structure appear to provide
the major syntactic devices available in language for organization
and expression of content. The grammar of a given language must
show how these abstract structures are actually realized in the case
of the language in question, while linguistic theory must seek to
clarify these foundations for grammar and the methods for
evaluating and choosing between proposed grammars.
It is important to recognize that by introducing such considerations
as those of § 8 into the metatheory that deals with grammar
and semantics and their points of connection, we have not altered
the purely formal character of the theory of grammatical structure
itself. In §§ 3-7 we outlined the development of some fundamental
linguistic concepts in purely formal terms. We considered the
problem of syntactic research to be that of constructing a device
SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS
for producing a given set of grammatical sentences and of studying
the properties of grammars that do this effectively. Such semantic
notions as reference, significance, and synonymity played no role in
the discussion. The outlined theory, of course, had serious gaps in
it — in particular, the assumption that the set of grammatical
sentences is given in advance is clearly too strong, and the notion of
"simplicity" to which appeal was made explicitly or tacitly was left
unanalyzed. However, neither these nor other gaps in this development
of grammatical theory can be filled in or narrowed, to my
knowledge. by constructing this theory on a partially semantic
basis.
In §§ 3-7, then, we were studying language as an instrument or a
tool, attempting to describe its structure with no explicit reference
to the way in which this instrument is put to use. The motivation
for this self-imposed formality requirement for grammars is quite
simple — there seems to be po other basis that will yield a rigorous.
effective, and 'revealing' theory of linguistic structure. The requirement
that this theory shall be a completely formal discipline is
perfectly compatible with the desire to formulate it in such a way as
to have suggestive and significant interconnections with a parallel
semantic theory. What we have pointed out in § 8 is that this formal
study of the structure of language as an instrument may be expected
to provide insight into the actual use of language, i.e., into the
process of understanding sentences.
9.4 To understand a sentence we must know much more than the
analysis of this sentence on each linguistic level. We must also
know the reference and meaning" of the morphemes or words of
10 Goodman has argued—to my mind, quite convincingly—that the notion
of meaning of words can at least in part be reduced to that of reference of
expressions containing these words. See N. Goodman, "On likeness of meaning,"
Analysis, vol. 10, no. 1 (1949); idem, "On some differences about meaning,"
Analysis, vol. 13, no. 4 (1953). Goodman's approach amounts to reformulating
a part of the theory of meaning in the much clearer terms of the theory of
reference, just as much of our discussion can be understood as suggesting a
reformulation of parts of the theory of meaning that deal with so-called "structural
meaning" in terms of the completely nonsemantic theory of grammatical
structure. Part of the difficulty with the theory of meaning is that "meaning"