Az Egri Ho Si Minh Tanárképző Főiskola Tud. Közleményei. 1974. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 12)

ON WHETHER SEMANTICS IS GENERATIVE OR INTERPRETATIVE (A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF KATZ AND FODOR'S SEMANTIC THEORY) by ISTVÁN SZABÓ This paper is the first part of a longer treatise on the problem mentioned in the title. References in the paper are to the relevant parts of the treatise. On the first' pages of the paper there is a short outline of the origin of interpretative semantics, then there is a thumbnail summary of the basic tenets of the linguistic trend under discussion; the functioning of projection rules and selection restrictions is being exemplified by a number of cases. Some changes in the theory carried out by Katz and his followers during the past years are mentioned briefly. The applicability of some of Katz's tenets in their present form to the natural language is questioned, notably: the claim that grammatical rules and structures are fully independent of meaning; that meaning is fully independent of the phonetical realisation of the utterance. It is emphasised in the latter connection that logical (emphatic) stress plays an important role in expressing and conveying the meaning of an utterance. The question as to whether the semantic theory of Katz can be applied to generating and interpreting figurative speech has also been touched upon. It is pointed out that there are some contradictions in Katz's model of the mechanism of generating sentences. The model of Katz is contrasted with the speech generating model of psycholinguists, A. A. Leontyev's model among those which take into account the psychological aspects of „speech production" more than Katz's model does. Аэ it is well known, Katz posits these phases in „producing" a sentence: first generating the structural „skeleton" (phrase structure or deep structure) of an utterance, then inserting the lexical units into this formal structure and semantic interpretation thereof, and last, carrying out the optional transformations and phonetical realization of the sentence. If this is taken to be the model of actual generating of speech, then it means this: first an utterance is mechanically generated by the speaker; at the second phase the same speaker assigns reading to the utterance made by him. Such an interpretation of ,,speech production" is, of course, untenable. However, if this interpretation is not accepted, there is still the question: where does the Katzian speech generating mechanism function if not in the brain of the speaker. Most of the questions outlined above are just touched upon in this part of the paper; they and other problems are analysed at length in the parts under preparation. FELHASZNÁLT IRODALOM L. Bloomfield: (1933) Language, [New York (N. Y.)]. J. B. Carroll: (1965) Language and Thought. Englewood Cliffs, New Yersey. N. Chomsky: (1957) Syntactic Structures. Mouton & Co., The Hague. — (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge. — (1966) Cartesian Linguistics, N. Y., London. — (1966b) Topics in the theory of generative grammar. Current Trends in Linguistics, The Hague. — (1968) Language and Mind. N. Y. — (1971) Deep structure, surface structure, semantic interpretation. Semantics, eds. D. D. Steinberg, L. A. Jakobovits. Cambridge. Dezső László: (1967) Szórend és mondathangsúly. Általános nyelvészeti tanulmányok V. Szerk. Telegdi Zsigmond. P. B. Gough: (1965) Grammatical transformations and speed of understanding. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, v. 4, No 2. И. Ильясов: (1968) Эксперимент Джона Миллера по проверке психологической реальности трансформационной модели. Психология грамматики, Москва. J. J. Katz—J

. A. Fodor: (1963) The Structure of a Semantic Theory. Megjelent J. A. Fodor, J. J. Katz: (1965) The Structure of Language. (Englewood Cliffs) c. művében. .233