Linguistics wars

The linguistic wars were extended deputes inside the American theoretical linguistics domain that occurred mostly in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the disagreement between Noam Chomsky and some of his associates and doctoral students. The debates started in 1967 when linguists Paul Postal, “Haj” Ross, George Lakoff, and James McCawley—self-dubbed "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"—proposed an alternative approach in which the relation between semantics and syntax is viewed differently, which treated deep structures as meaning rather than syntactic objects. While Chomsky and other generative grammarians argued that meaning is driven by an underlying syntax, generative semanticists posited that syntax is shaped by an underlying meaning. This intellectual divergence led to the rise of two camps: generative semantics and interpretive semantics.

Eventually, generative semantics spawned a different linguistic paradigm, known as cognitive linguistics, a linguistic theory that correlates learning of languages to other cognitive abilities such as memorization, perception, and categorization. While, Imperative Semanticists, Chomsky, have moved on to other linguistic notions different from deep structure that lead to more universal grammar.

Historical Background

Chomsky introduced his first influential work, syntactic structure in 1956, which was a significant shift from the dominant linguistics paradigm, Bloomfieldian linguistics, which was championed by Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949). Chomsky criticised the Bloomfieldians describing them as "Taxonomist linguistic, mere collectors and cataloguers of language" as the Bloomfieldian school of linguistics tended to prioritise small units of language, mainly phonological and morphological elements in the linguistic analyses. Syntactic structure posited the notions of Transformational generative grammar (sets of rules that could mathematically generate sentences.), incorporating larger, sentence-level analyses of language.

In syntactic structure, Chomsky posited that languages have a set of rules that govern them; syntactic, phonological, and morphological components. He posited that semantic components created the deeper structure whereas phonological holds the surface structure of a stretch of linguistic items, leaving the problem of the placement of ‘meaning’ in linguistic analysis unanswered.

Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965 developed his theory further by introducing deep structure and surface structure, which were influenced by the notions of previous scholars. First, the notions of langue/parole by Saussure (1857-1913) wherein, langue is the native knowledge of the language, and parole is the actual use of language. Secondly, by the notions of Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965) who argued that ‘parole’ (i.e. the actual use) is observable and is considered the arrangement of speech whereas ‘langue’ is the systems that underpin grammatical categories, lexicon, and the rules of linguistic combinations in the actual speech.

Aspects also addressed the issue of 'meaning' by endorsing the Katz-Postal Hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that [[transformations]] do not affect meaning and therefore are “semantically transparent” as they termed them. This attempt was to introduce semantics ‘meaning’ in the syntactic paradigm. This endorsement resulted in further exploration—mediational approaches as opposed to distributional approaches—of the relation between syntax 'structure' and semantics 'meaning' wherein meaning is crucial, paving the way and creating the environment for the emergence of the generative semantics paradigm.

Dispute

The divergence in the generative semantics' and Aspects' paradigms.

Despite, initially sharing some aspects of the Chomskyan syntax in Aspects, generative semantics diverged on the role of deep structure and semantic representation. The key points of disagreement are the degree of abstractness of deep structures, maximally reduced grammatical categories and the approach to lexical decomposition.  Generative semantics views deep structure and transformations as necessary for connecting the surface structure with 'meaning'. Whereas Chomsky’s paradigm considers the deep structure and transformation that link the deep structure to the surface structure essential for describing the structural composition of linguistic items—syntactic description—without explicitly addressing ‘meaning'. Notably, generative semanticists eventually abandoned deep structures altogether for the semantic representation (i.e. the underlying meaning structure).

In response to these challenges, Chomsky conducted a series of lectures and papers, known later as Remarks, which culminated in what was later known as the interpretivist programme. This programme aimed to the ideas that gave rise to generative semantics such as transformations. (e.g., the words refuse and refusal would belong to the same category ‘refuse’ in the generative semantics framework, but in Remarks, Chomsky argued for the limitation of transformations and the separation of lexical entries—in the lexicon—of semantically related words such as (refuse and refusal). His Remarks and new ideas culminated in what he terms the Extended Standard Theory, which Chomsky thought of as an extension to Aspects , but to many linguists, the relation between transformations and semantics in the Generative Semantics was the natural progression of Aspects.

Generative Semantics faced challenges in empirical confirmation. Unlike interpretive semantics, the generative semantic analyses contained analysis of other factors such as the intention of the speaker and the denotation and entailment of sentences, while the interpretive semantics analyses would involve Phrase-structure rules and transformation both are both ‘innately’ codified according to Aspects, drawing on Chomsky’s ideas of innate faculty in the human brain which process languages. Generative semantics faced methodological hurdles such as the lack of explicit rules, formulas, and underlying structures. This vagueness made it difficult to compare and evaluate the theory relative to the interpretive semantics. Additionally, the generative semantics framework was met with criticism for introducing irregularities that were not always justified. The generative semantics paradigm's attempt to bridge syntax and semantics blurred the lines between these linguistic domains, and some argue that it created more problems than it solved. These limitations eventually led to the decline of generative semantics Conversely, interpretative semantics offered simpler rules with complete rejections of the generative semantics tradition, producing a more concise linguistic theory.

Aftermath

After the protracted debates and with the decline of generative semantics, its key figures pursued various paths. George Lakoff moved on to cognitive linguistics, which explores the cognitive domain and the relation between language and mental processes. Meanwhile, Chomsky, in the late 90s, switched his attention to a more universal programme of generative grammar, The Minimalist Programme, which does not claim to offer a comprehensive theory of language acquisition and use.  Postal rejects the idea of generative semantics and embraces natural languages discarding mental aspects of languages (i.e., cognition) altogether and emphasizing the grammaticality. Postal adopts a mathematical/ logical approach to studying ‘natural’ languages.  Haj Ross ventured to more literary-orientated endeavors such as poetry, though he maintained his transfomationalist essence as his name existed in many of the Chomskyan works. As for McCawley, he continued following the tradition of Generative Semantics until his unfortunate death in 1999. He was known for his malleable approach to linguistic theory, employing both Extended Standard Theory and Generative Semantics elements.

Books

A first systematic description of the linguistic wars is the chapter with this title in Frederick Newmeyer's book Linguistic Theory in America, which appeared in 1980. The second edition, from 1986, reduces this chapter in order to make space for later developments.

The Linguistics Wars is the title of a 1993 book by Randy Allen Harris that closely chronicles the dispute among Chomsky and other significant individuals (Lakoff, Postal, etc.) and also highlights how certain theories evolved and which of their important features have influenced modern-day linguistic theories. A second edition was published in 2022, in which Harris traces several important 21st century linguistic developments such as Construction Grammar, Cognitive Linguistics and Frame semantics (linguistics), all emerging out of generative semantics. The second edition also argues that Chomsky's Minimalist Program has significant homologies with early generative semantics.

Ideology and Linguistic Theory, by John A. Goldsmith and Geoffrey J. Huck, also explores that history, with detailed theoretical discussion and observed history of the times, including memoirs/interviews with Ray Jackendoff, George Lakoff, Paul M. Postal, and John R. Ross. The "What happened to Generative Semantics" chapter explores the aftermath of the "wars" and the schools of thought or practice that could be seen as successors to generative semantics.

See also

• Ray C. Dougherty
• Ray Jackendoff
• Neurolinguistics
• Decoding Chomsky: Science and revolutionary politics