Generative Structural Semantics

This paper develops a Generative Structural Semantics (GSS) framework for vague predicates. It rejects the assumption that semantic stability requires fixed meanings, sharp boundaries, or truth-conditional mappings. Instead, it proposes that linguistic meaning emerges from the competition among interpretive trajectories under historically shaped background conditions. On this view, a vague predicate is not characterized by indeterminate reference, but by the sustained coexistence of multiple interpretive tendencies that achieve partial uptake across contexts without any single trajectory attaining stable dominance. Acceptability is treated as a graded property of linguistic uptake rather than a truth-value, and semantic stability is understood as a locally stabilized pattern of usage generated through repeated interactions between interpretive trajectories and context-sensitive background conditions. The framework further introduces a weak update mechanism to capture historical dependence in linguistic practice, and a rupture condition describing breakdowns in interpretive absorption.