Yes, we derive syntactic meaning from grammatical structure. It's one thing getting a machine to understand grammar and another to get a human to understand. If anyone is interested, Doing Grammar by Max Morenberg is an excellent source of knowledge about grammar.[0]He approaches grammar very systematically which is helpful if people want to train machines.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Grammar-Max-Morenberg/dp/0199947...