From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Sat Jul 25 1998 - 15:55:31 EDT
At 12:13 PM 7/25/98 -0700, Edgar Foster wrote:
>Dear Jonathan,
>
>You make many fine points, but I would like to address a few issues
>you raise. I will document my comments below. Let me say at the outset
>that I am not trying to win a debate.
I'm not either - I hope my tone in the last message didn't come across as a
call to a debate. Your message is certainly correct in stating that many
people seem to think of deep structure as related to the "inner meaning" of
a sentence, though Chomsky himself, who has now abandoned deep structure
anyway, probably did not see it that way.
There's nothing really wrong with the things you are saying here, I just
don't particularly agree with the school of thought that it represents.
Since I'm getting farther away from Greek itself, this will be my last
message on this subject. Feel free to respond to it, though.
>As stated above, Chomsky's work was built upon by other linguists.
>Subsequently, deep structure is defined by other psychologists (and
>linguists) as "the underlying meaning" of words and phrases in a
>sentence. For proof of this point, please read the references below:
>
>"deep structure-n. Ling. An abstract underlying structure that
>determines the actual form of a sentence" (New American Heritage
>Dictionary).
This definition is a form-oriented one.
>Psychologist Charles Morris also defines deep structure as "the
>underlying meaning of a sentence" (Morris 237 [1996]).
How does Morris define the "underlying meaning of a sentence"? Without a
clear definition, this is a fairly meaningless statement. And how do you
know whether a particular form is closer to or farther from the underlying
meaning of a sentence?
>"Psychologists who are concerned with the way people use and
>understand language divide language into two structures, or types of
>representations." The underlying representation of language refers to
>the meaning component of language--it's the thought you want to
>convey. Surface structure refers to the sounds of the verbal
>expression that you use" (Halpern 89 [1989])
In this definition, deep structure is defined as a structure. The second
statement is somewhat ambiguous - I'm not sure whether "the thought you
want to convey" is anything more than the set of propositions in the
graphical representation of the deep structure.
>Here again, deep structure seems to be defined as the thought behind
>the words--their meaning. True, not all take this approach to
>linguistics. But, there are certain psychologists who do hold to this
>school of thought.
This is certainly true.
>I would not call the propositions in a diagram the "underlying
>meaning" either. My comments above were intended to demonstrate how
>one ascertains the "underlying representation" of surface structure.
>We can move from the diagram TO the underlying meaning. As for the
>definition of deep structure, I am working with the denotation
>proposed above--underlying meaning.
I still don't know what you mean by "underlying meaning", nor how you would
"move from the diagram TO the underlying meaning".
>> >I don't think it's fair to say that the RSV emphasizes the surface
>structure of Greek - it generally seeks to maintain grammatical forms
>as close as possible to those found in the original, but I doubt very
>much that Metzger ever made up the surface structure graphs for the
>Greek, then analyzed them and used them as a basis for translation.< <
>
>It is unlikely that Metzger formulated various surface structure
>graphs, and worked from these. It is apparent, however, that the RSV
>does seek to convey the surface structure and not so much the
>underlying meaning of the original speakers.
I'm not sure what you mean by "not so much the underlying meaning". If what
you mean is that it does not attempt to make sentences active and direct,
but tries to mirror the sentence structure of the original as much as
possible, I agree with you.
>"the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory,
>the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth" (RSV)
>
>"The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived
>among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the
>Father's only Son" (TEV)
Boy, this is a great verse.
Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com
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