A Bi-Polar Theory of Nominal and Clause Structure and Function

Grammar encodes meaning (Wierzbicka 1988). “Grammar is simply the structuring and symbolization of semantic content” (Langacker 1987). Grammatical variation is largely the result of a compromise between the differing requirements for the encoding of both semantic and discourse pragmatic aspects of meaning (Givón 1984). “One should prefer a semantic theory that explains otherwise arbitrary generalizations about the syntax and the lexicon...a theory’s deviations from efficient encoding must be vigorously justified, for what appears to be an irregular relationship between syntax and semantics may turn out merely to be a bad theory of one or the other” (Jackendoff 1983). The above statements all support the position that there is a close relationship between form and function, between syntax and linguistic semantics. The statement by Jackendoff is called the Grammatical Constraint. In its strongest form—the form adopted in this paper, although not by Jackendoff—linguistic representations of form and function, syntax and linguistic semantics, are not distinct. There are no syntactic representations that are purely formal, lacking functional and semantic content. Such representations would fail to capture the functional and semantic generalizations that allow us to make sense of linguistic form. Two key dimensions of meaning that get grammatically encoded are referential meaning and relational meaning. The key claim is that, in English, these two dimensions of meaning are typically encoded in distinct grammatical poles—a referential pole and a relational pole—with a specifier functioning as the locus of the referential pole and a head functioning as the locus of the relational pole. At this level of description, relational pole is used generally to encompass objective (noun, pronoun, proper noun) as well as relational (verb, adjective, adverb, preposition) heads. For example, in the expression