Syntactical and Semantical Categories [addendum] | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Syntactical and Semantical Categories [addendum]

Categorical distinctions in syntax and semantics are drawn on the basis of the distribution of linguistic expressions. According to the classical definitions, two expressions belong to the same syntactic category just in case they can be interchanged in every well-formed context salva beneformatione (without loss of well-formedness) and they belong to the same semantic category just in case they can be interchanged in every meaningful context salva significatione (without loss of meaningfulness) (Bar-Hillel 1953). The question is what counts as interchange in a context. Interpreting this phrase naïvely will result in inadequate definitions: Intuitively, one cannot conclude that "You are bald" and "I am bald" belong to different syntactic categories because "Most people who like you are bald" is well-formed, whereas "Most people who like I am bald" is not. Likewise, it cannot be concluded that cat and dog belong to different semantic categories from the fact that location is meaningful, whereas lodogion is not. Interchange of non-constituents is irrelevant for syntactic or semantic categorization.

One might try to modify the classical definition minimally, by saying that two expressions belong to the same syntactic category just in case they occupy the same range of syntactic positions within well-formed complex expressions, and they belong to the same semantic category just in case they occupy the same range of syntactic positions within meaningful complex expressions.

Syntactical and Semantical Categories [addendum] article

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