Ray Jackendoff
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[[Image:Jackendoff.png|right|thumb|250px|Professor Ray Jackendoff in August 2007 at an Authors@Google event.]]
'''Ray Jackendoff''' (born [[January 23]], [[1945]]) is an [[United States|American]] [[linguistics|linguist]]. He is [[professor]] of [[philosophy]], Seth Merrin Chair in the [[Humanities]] and, with [[Daniel Dennett]], Co-director of the Center for [[Cognitive science|Cognitive Studies]] at [[Tufts University]]. He has always straddled the boundary between [[generative linguistics]] and [[cognitive linguistics]], committed as he is both to the existence of an innate [[Universal Grammar]] (an important thesis of generative linguistics) and to giving an account of language that meshes well with the current understanding of the human mind and [[cognitive processes|cognition]] (the main purpose of cognitive linguistics).
Jackendoff's [[research]] deals with the [[semantics]] of [[natural language]], its bearing on the formal structure of [[cognition]], and its [[lexical]] and syntactic expression. He has also done extensive research on the relationship between conscious awareness and the computational theory of mind, on syntactic theory, and, with [[Fred Lerdahl]], on musical cognition. His theory of [[conceptual semantics]] developed into a comprehensive theory on the foundations of language, which indeed is the title of a recent monograph (2002): ''Foundations of Language. Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution''. Much earlier, in his 1983 ''Semantics and Cognition'', he was one of the first linguists to integrate the vision faculty into his account of meaning and human language.
He was awarded the [[Jean Nicod Prize]] in [[Paris]] in [[2003]]. Tufts and Rutgers are the only universities in the United States to have two former Jean Nicod Prize Winners on their faculty (the other being [[Daniel Dennett]] at Tufts; [[Jerry Fodor]] and [[Zenon Pylyshyn]] at Rutgers).
Jackendoff studied under the famed linguists [[Noam Chomsky]] and [[Morris Halle]] at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], where he received his [[PhD]] in linguistics in 1969. Both Chomsky and Halle are now [[Institute Professor]]s emeriti at MIT.
Before moving to [[Tufts]] in [[2005]], Jackendoff was [[professor]] of linguistics and Chair of the Linguistics Program at [[Brandeis University]] from 1971 to 2005.
== Interfaces and generative grammar==
Jackendoff argues against a syntax-centered view of [[generative grammar]] (called ''syntactocentrism'' by him), at variance with earlier models such as Standard Theory (1968); Extended Standard Theory (1972); Revised Extended Standard Theory (1975); [[Government and binding theory]] (1981); [[Linguistic minimalism|Minimalist Program]] (1993), in which syntax is the sole generative component in the language. Jackendoff takes syntax, semantics and phonology all to be generative, connected amongst each other via interface components. Thus, the task of his theory is to formalize the proper interface rules.
While rejecting mainstream generative grammar due to its syntactocentrism, the Cognitive Semantics school has offered an insight that Jackendoff would sympathize with, namely, that meaning is a separate combinatorial system not entirely dependent upon syntax. Unlike many of the Cognitive Semantics approaches, he contends that neither syntax alone should determine semantics, nor vice-versa. Syntax need only interface with semantics to the degree necessary to produce properly ordered phonological output (see Jackendoff 1996, 2002, 2005).
==Contribution to musical cognition==
Jackendoff, together with [[Fred Lerdahl]], has been interested in the human capacity for music and its possible parallels to the human capacity for language. In particular, music has a structure as well as a [[grammar]] (a means by which sounds are combined into structures). When a listener hears music in an [[idiom]] he or she is familiar with, the music is not merely heard as a stream of sounds; rather, the listener constructs an unconscious understanding of the music and is able to understand pieces of music never heard previously. Jackendoff is interested in what cognitive structures or "mental [[representations]]" this understanding consists of in the listener's mind, how a listener comes to acquire the musical grammar necessary to understand a particular musical idiom, what [[innate]] resources in the human mind make this acquisition possible and, finally, what parts of the human music capacity are governed by general cognitive functions and what parts result from specialized functions geared specifically for music (Jackendoff & Lerdahl, 1983; Lerdahl, 2001). Similar questions have also been raised for human language, although there are differences. For instance, it is more likely that humans evolved a specialized language [[module]] than one for music, since even the specialized aspects of the music capacity are interlinked with other more general cognitive functions <ref>[http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/RayJackendoff/MusicCapacity.pdf Jackendoff, R.& Lerdahl, F. The human music capacity: what is it and what's special about it?, <I>Cognition</I>,100, 33-72 (2006).]</ref>
==References==
===Selected works===
* {{cite book | author = Jackendoff, Ray | year = 1976 | title = Semantics and Cognition | pages= 283 | publisher = MIT Press | location = Cambridge, Mass. | id = ISBN 0-262-10027-4}}
* {{cite book | author = Jackendoff, Ray | year = 1987 | title = Consciousness and the Computational Mind | pages = 356 | publisher = MIT Press | location = Cambridge, Mass. | id = ISBN 0-262-10037-1}}
* {{cite book | author = Jackendoff, Ray | year = 1990 | title = Semantic Structures | pages= 322 | publisher = MIT Press | location = Cambridge, Mass. | id = ISBN 0-262-10043-6 }}
* {{cite book | author = Jackendoff, Ray | year = 1992 | title = Languages of the Mind | pages = 200 | publisher = MIT Press | location = Cambridge, Mass. | id = ISBN 0-262-10047-9}}
* {{cite book | author = Jackendoff, Ray | year = 1994 | title = Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature | pages= 246 | publisher = Basic Books | location = USA | id = ISBN 0-465-05462-5}}
* {{cite book | author = Jackendoff, Ray | year = 2002 | title = Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution | pages = 477 | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = Oxford/New York | id = ISBN 0-19-827012-7}}
* {{cite book | author= Culicover, Peter W.; Jackendoff, Ray | year = 2005 | title = [[Simpler syntax]] | pages = 589 | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = Oxford/New York | id = ISBN 0-19-927108-9, ISBN 0-19-927109-7}}
* {{cite book | author = Jackendoff, Ray | year = 2007 | title = Language, Consciousness, Culture: Essays on Mental Structure (Jean Nicod Lectures) | pages = 403 | publisher = MIT Press | location = Cambridge, Mass. | id = ISBN 0-262-10119-X}}
===Footnotes===
{{Reflist}}
==See also==
*[[Conceptual Semantics]]
*[[Mentalist Postulate]]
*[[Jean Nicod Prize|List of Jean Nicod Prize laureates]]
*[[X-bar theory]]
==External links==
*[http://ase.tufts.edu/philosophy/people/jackendoff.shtml Website at Tufts University]
*[http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/ Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University]
*[http://blip.tv/file/509192 Ray Jackendoff, Conceptual Semantics, Harvard University, 13 November 2007 (video)]
*[http://internalism.googlegroups.com/web/Jackendoff%20-%20Semantics%20and%20cognition.pdf?gda=NnGiQVkAAADy552aSClb4ITRvY_uh1wg1HlZwQx1sWdg19XYVi-vtGG1qiJ7UbTIup-M2XPURDQygvGqyvkEdDeFrqZpbhAaiiQlHDGiKbzxcInHK4Ga8wkBfGCcUDOOFolhD-ndPQM ''Semantics and Cognition''], in Shalom Lappin (1996), "The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory",
539-559. Oxford: Blackwell.
*[http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/localcopy/pdf/jackendoff99possibleStages.pdf ''Possible stages in the evolution of the language capacity''], Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 3, No. 7 (July 1999).
[[Category:1945 births|Jackendoff, Ray]]
[[Category:Living people|Jackendoff, Ray]]
[[Category:American linguists|Jackendoff, Ray]]
[[Category:Semanticists|Jackendoff, Ray]]
[[Category:Syntacticians|Jackendoff, Ray]]
[[Category:Cognitive scientists|Jackendoff, Ray]]
[[Category:Tufts University faculty|Jackendoff, Ray]]
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