The Notes and Bibliography System

Let us now consider the note as a means for citation. If in your text you speak of an author or quote some of his pas-sages, the corresponding note should provide the necessary documentation. This system is convenient because, if you use footnotes, the reader knows immediately what author and work you are citing. Yet this process imposes duplication because you must repeat in the final bibliography the same reference you included in the note. (In rare cases in which the note references a work that is unrelated to the specific bibli-ography of the thesis, there is no need to repeat the reference in the final bibliography. For example, if in a thesis in astron-omy I were to cite Dante’s line, “the Love that moves the sun and all the other stars,” the note alone would suffice.)¹ The presence of the references in the note certainly does not

1 Par. XXXIII.145. [The English translation is from Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, trans. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander, with an intro-duction and notes by Robert Hollander (New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 917. —Trans.]

171 5.4 | Footnotes

invalidate the need for a final bibliography. In fact, the final bibliography provides the material you have consulted at a glance, and it also serves as a comprehensive source for the literature on your particular topic. It would be impolite to force the reader to search the notes page by page to find all the works you have cited.

Moreover, the final bibliography provides more com-plete information than do the notes. For example, in cit-ing a foreign author, the note provides only the title in the original language, while the bibliographical entry will also include a reference to the translation. Furthermore, while usage suggests citing an author by first name and last name in a note, the bibliography presents authors in alphabetical order by last name. Additionally, if the first edition of an article appeared in an obscure journal, and the article was then reprinted in a widely available miscellaneous volume, the note may reference only the miscellaneous volume with the page number of the quote, while the bibliography will also require a reference to the first edition. A note may also abbreviate certain data or eliminate subtitles, while the bib-liography should provide all this information.

Table 5.2 provides an example of a thesis page with var-ious footnotes, and table 5.3 shows the references as they will appear in the final bibliography.¹³ Notice the differences between the two. You will see that the notes are more casual than the bibliography, that they do not cite the first edition, and that they aim only to give enough information to enable a reader to locate the text they mention, reserving the com-plete documentation for the bibliography. Also, the notes do not mention whether the volume in question has been trans-lated. After all, there is the final bibliography in which the reader can find this information.

What are the shortcomings of this system? Take for exam-ple footnote 6 of table 5.2. It tells us that Lakoff’s article is in the previously cited miscellaneous volume Semantics.

Where was it cited? Luckily, in the same paragraph, and the reference appears in the table’s footnote 5. What if it had been cited ten pages earlier? Should we repeat the reference for convenience? Should we expect the reader to check the

Table 5.2

EXAMPLE OF THE NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY SYSTEM

Even though Chomsky¹ accepts the principle of Katz and Fodor’s interpretive semantics² that derives the meaning of a sentence from the sum of the meanings of its elementary constituents, he does not renounce his belief that deep syn-tactic structure primarily determines meaning.³

Naturally, Chomsky eventually developed a more articu-lated stance, as his first works already foretold.⁴ He devel-ops this stance through discussions that he describes in the essay “Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpretation,”⁵ placing the semantic interpretation at the intersection between the deep structure and the surface structure. Other authors, for example Lakoff,⁶ attempt to build a generative semantics in which the logical-semantic form generates the syntactic structure itself.⁷

1 Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 1965), 162.

2 Jerrold J. Katz and Jerry A. Fodor, “The Structure of a Semantic Theory,” in The Structure of Language, ed. J. J. Katz and J. A. Fodor (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 479–518.

3 For a satisfactory overview of this position see Nicolas Ruwet, An Intro-duction to Generative Grammar (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1973).

4 Noam Chomsky, “Persistent Topics in Linguistic Theory,” Diogenes (Fall 1965): 13–20.

5 Noam Chomsky, “Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpretation,” in Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, ed. Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 183–216.

6 George Lakoff, “On Generative Semantics,” in Steinberg and Jakobovits, Semantics, 232–296.

7 In line with this approach cf. James McCawley, “Where Do Noun Phrases Come From?,” in Steinberg and Jakobovits, Semantics, 217–231.

173 5.4 | Footnotes

Table 5.3

EXAMPLE OF A CORRESPONDING STANDARD BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 1965.

———. “Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpreta-tion.” In Steinberg and Jakobovits, Semantics, 183–216. Origi-nally published in Studies in General and Oriental Linguistics, ed.

Roman Jakobson, 52–91 (Tokyo: TEC Corporation for Language and Education Research, 1970).

———. “Persistent Topics in Linguistic Theory.” Diogenes (Fall 1965): 13–20. Originally published as “De quelques constantes de la théorie linguistique.” Diogène 51 (July-September 1965): 4–21.

Katz, Jerrold J., and Jerry A. Fodor. “The Structure of a Semantic Theory.” In The Structure of Language, ed. J. J. Katz and J. A.

Fodor, 479–518. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Orig-inally published as “The Structure of a Semantic Theory.” Lan-guage 39, no. 2 (April-June 1963): 170–210.

Lakoff, George. “On Generative Semantics.” In Steinberg and Jako-bovits, Semantics, 232–296.

McCawley, James. “Where Do Noun Phrases Come From?” In Stein-berg and Jakobovits, Semantics, 217–231.

Ruwet, Nicolas. An Introduction to Generative Grammar. Trans.

Norval S. H. Smith. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1973. Originally published as Introduction à la grammaire générative (Paris: Plon, 1967).

Steinberg, Danny D., and Leon A. Jakobovits, eds. Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1971.