At the time of the publication of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax it seemed that all of the semantically relevant parts of the sentence, all the things that determine its meaning, were contained in the deep structure of the sentence. The examples we mentioned above fit in nicely with this view. “I like her cooking” has different meanings because it has different deep structures though only one surface structure; “The boy will read the book” and “The book will be read by the boy” have different surface structures, but one and the same deep structure, hence they have the same meaning.

there has been a tendency in popular discussion to confuse “deep structure”with “generative grammar” or with “universal grammar.” And a number of pro-fessional linguists have repeatedly confused what I refer to here as “the creativeaspect of language use” with the recursive property of generative grammars, avery different matter.