ABSTRACT

The label interpretive semantics describes any approach to generative grammar that assumes that rules of semantic interpretation apply to already generated syntactic structures. It was coined to contrast with generative semantics (see GENERATIVE SEMANTICS), which posits that semantic structures are directly generated, and then undergo a transformational mapping to surface structure. Confusingly, however, while ‘generative semantics’ is the name of a particular framework for grammatical analysis, ‘interpretive semantics’ is only the name for an approach to semantic rules within a set of historically related frameworks. Thus there has never been a comprehensive theoretical model of interpretive semantics as there has been of generative semantics.