Jackendoff Ray. The architecture of the language faculty

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997. – 262 p.
ISBN: 0262600250, 9780262600255Over the past twenty-five years, Ray Jackendoff has investigated many complex issues in syntax, semantics, and the relation of language to other cognitive domains. He steps back in this new book to survey the broader theoretical landscape in linguistics, in an attempt to identify some of the sources of the widely perceived malaise with respect to much current theorizing.Starting from the Minimalist necessity for interfaces of the grammar with sound, meaning, and the lexicon, Jackendoff examines many standard assumptions of generative grammar that in retrospect may be seen as the product of historical accident. He then develops alternatives more congenial to contemporary understanding of linguistic phenomena.The Architecture of the Language Faculty seeks to situate the language capacity in a more general theory of mental representations and to connect the theory of grammar with processing. To this end, Jackendoff works out an architecture that generates multiple co-constraining structures, and he embeds this proposal in a version of the modularity hypothesis called Representational Modularity.Jackendoff carefully articulates the nature of lexical insertion and the content of lexical entries, including idioms and productive affixes. The resulting organization of the grammar is compatible with many different technical realizations, which he shows can be instantiated in terms of a variety of current theoretical frameworks.Series forewordQuestions, goals, assumptions
Universal grammar
The mentalist stance
The notion of mental grammar
Learnability and universal grammar
Innateness
Relation of grammar to processing
Relation of grammar to brain
Evolutionary issues
Necessities and assumptions
Syntactocentrism and perfection
Interfaces; representational modularity
The Articulatory-perceptual interfaces
The phonology-syntax interface
The Conceptual-intentional interface
Embedding mismatches between syntactic structure and conceptual structure
The tripartite parallel architecture
Representational modularity
More on the syntax-semantics interface
Enriched composition
Aspectual coercions
Verbal coercions
Mass-count coercions
Reference transfer functions
Pictures, statues, and actors
Cars and other vehicles
Ham sandwiches
Argument structure alternations
Interpolated function specified by general principle
Interpolated function specified by qualia of complement
Adjective-noun modification
Adjectives that invoke the qualia structure of the noun
Adjectives that semantically subordinate the noun
Modification that coerses the reading of the head nounAnaphora
Binding inside lexical items
Control determined by LCS
Ringo sentences
Bound pronouns in sloppy identity
Quantification
Quantification into ellipted contexts
Quantificational relations that depend on internal structure of LCS
Remarks
The Lexical interface
Lexical insertion versus lexical licensing
PIL=CIL
PIL and CIL are at s-structure
Checking argument structure
Remarks on processing
The lexicon in a more general mental ecology
Lexical entries, lexical rules
Broadening the conception of the lexicon
Morphosyntax versus Morphophonology
Inflectional versus Derivational Morphology
Productivity versus Semiproductivity
Psycholinguistic considerations
Optimal coding of semiproductive forms
Final remarks
Remarks on Productive MorphologyThe place of traditional Morphophonology
Phonological and class-based Allomorphy
Suppletion of composed forms by irregulars
The status of zero inflections
Why the lexicon cannot be minimalist
Idioms and other fixed expressions
Review of the issues
The wheel of fortune corpus: if it isn't lexical, what is it?
Lexical insertion of idioms as Xos
Lexical licensing of units larger than Xo
Parallels between Idioms and Compounds
Syntactic mobility of (only) some Idioms
Idioms that are specializations of other Idiomatic Constructions
Relation to Construction GrammarEpilogue: how language helps us thinkBrain Phenomena opaque to Awareness
Language is not thought, and Vice Versa
Phonetic form is conscious, thought is not
The Significance of Consciousness again
First way language helps us think: linguistic communication
Second way language helps us think: making conceptual structure available for attentionThe relation between Consciousness and Attention
Language provides a way to pay attention to thought
Third way language helps us think: valuation of conscious percepts
Summing up
The illusion that language is thought
The wheel of fortune corpus
Notes