ABSTRACT
In chapter 2 we looked at the generative semantic view of the relationship between syntax and the lexicon, according to which lexical items were derived by syntactic transformations operating on phrase markers some or all of whose terminal elements could be semantic features or components. But Chomsky’s (1970) criticism of this approach to derived nominals such as arrival and destruction was so influential that the possibility of any syntactic role in the formation of most complex words was discounted by ‘mainstream’ generative morphologists for around fifteen years. During that time, all derivational morphology, and generally also inflectional morphology and compounding, were seen as being ‘in the lexicon’, insulated from direct syntactic interference. This view is encapsulated in a hypothesis which has acquired various titles (Generalised Lexical Hypothesis, Strong Lexicalist Hypothesis or Lexical Integrity Hypothesis) and been formulated in various versions over the years; but the essence of all versions is that syntax is blind to the internal structure and composition of words and cannot affect it (except in the sense in which syntax necessarily affects inflectional morphology).1
