Syntax-semantics interface : Arabic is a case

Abstract EN

In order to make a coherent statement or an accurate description, linguists have to focus on one aspect of a language and preclude the others according to a process called selected focusing, but it is believed that such an act of isolation is only an artificial practice.

Although a naïve or a child is not aware of the various levels of language, he/she is well knowledgeable about the grammatical, structural, and semantic tools that make him/her easily and instantly spot the ill-formed or meaningless sentences of his/her native language.

Two opposite mainstreams discovered in the study of syntax-semantics interface.

The 1st is the syntactically-oriented perspective established by Chomsky and his followers, which is later modified and supported by the Optimal Theory Approach, and the 2nd is the semantically-oriented one in its two facets- the generative and the interpretive.

The early generative transformational approach went too far in insisting that the syntactic aspect has an autonomous characteristic and should be dealt with in isolation from semantics, whereas others argue that they are interrelated and cannot be separated.

The main objective of this study is to arrive at some general outlines that might help linguists, second/foreign language teachers as well as students and tries to shed light on this linguistic controversy in order to establish a scientific scheme in language studies.