The Language Faculty and the Interface Systems: Interactions between Syntax and Semantics

Abstract

This article claims that substantive minimalism, as assumed by Chomsky in the recent developments of the Generative Syntax program, opens a new perspective for the treatment of the Syntax-Semantics Interface. We first characterize the scientific view supporting the Generative model of grammar. The movement metaphor, proposed in order to capture the property observed in human languages that some constituents seem to occupy two different positions in the sentence structure at the same time, reveals that the conceptual-intentional system of the human mind distinguishes among different kinds of semantic relations marked by different mechanisms in the Syntax