CHOMSKY’S THETA THEORY: DESTROYING THE TRADITIONAL IDEALS OF THE SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC CONFIGURATIONS OF ENGLISH SENTENTIAL STRUCTURE

Abstract

In Syntactic Structure (1957), Chomsky proposes an interface between syntax and semantics. Similar view is expressed in his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) wherein he claims: “some parts of the semantics map fairly nicely into syntax.” With the development of semantics and the subsequent useful insights gleaned from semantic theories, it is easy to theorize the extent to which syntax is determined or constrained by semantics. Theta-theory, though a syntactic theory, attempts to provide the syntactic and semantic configurations of predicates and the potential thematic relations that different arguments characterize. The key question that the theory seeks to answer is how there exists one-to-one correspondence between grammatical arguments and thematic relations thereby formulating the form and meaning correspondence in theta criterion. The theory challenges the tradition accounts of subject, object and any other part of the sentence and comes up with more substantial description of these sentential components. This study describes the syntactic mapping of different phrases to different syntactic positions like subject, object and adjunct etc., and attempts to re-evaluate these components from linguistic perceptive.
The study also describes some of the thematic gaps that theta theory contains and seeks to fill these gaps with the semantic views of different semanticists.