Explaining grammar as meaningful

In the previous chapter I presented linguistic studies that concentrated on the integration of syntax and conceptual semantics. Chomsky (1957) proposed several varieties of formal structure descriptions originally based on standard frameworks of traditional grammar. Jackendoff (1983) demonstrated that an appropriate integration of phonological, syntactic and semantic phenomena requires a reorganization, in which each of the different domains determines its own principles of formal structure description. We have seen that this insight led to three stages in which the domain’s structure descriptions were represented independently but systematically integrated by means of interface relations. The previous chapter finished with a radical revision: The foundations of different domains and their integration should no longer be represented as phenomena in the body external world, that is, the world of things. Instead the external world should be pushed into the mind/brain/body that organizes the ranges of internal feelings and externally oriented perception, action and objective thought.

The reader may ask why many modern schools of linguistics had widely accepted logical formats as guidelines for descriptive representations. He should recall that antiquity and the middle ages already understood grammar and logic as related disciplines. All other disciplines had to be understood in domain-appropriate conception frameworks following schematic knowledge of grammar and logic. Accounting for the enormous progress of mathematics and logic linguistics also aimed at correspondingly improved formats and theories that nevertheless should be adapted to the characteristics of natural languages. Without abandoning the formalist techniques, theoretical linguistics should clearly circumscribe and define the basic properties that distinguish ordinary language from other notational systems, say of computer science, the genetic code, the “language” of bees etc. or from other knowledge frames defined for the sciences physics, genetics, formal information theory, computer theory etc.