Syntax -Semantics Interface in Linguistic Theory with a Special Reference to the Optimality Theory Framework

Syntax-semantics interface in linguistic literature have been dealt with in two opposite mainstreams; a syntacticallyoriented perspective (Chomsky 1957, 65, 79, 81, Horrock 1987, and Haegman 1992) modified and supported later on by the Optimality Theory approach of Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky (1993) and a semantically-oriented one in its two facets the generative and the interpretive (Jerrold J. Katz Jerry A. Fodor: 1963, George Lakoff 1963 and Fillmore 1968). Furthermore, some experimental psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies have been presented to support or reject one or both of these perspectives (Millar Mckean 1964, Gleason, J. Ratner, N. 1993, Friederici, Angela D., Jiirgen Weissenborn 2007). This paper is at attempt to shed some light on this serious linguistic controversy to arrive at some general outlines that might be of help to the linguistic theorists, language second/foreign teachers and students to establish a scientific scheme in dealing with language