| Ray Jackendoff |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT RAY JACKENDOFF | |
| 1945 births | |
| jackendoff, ray | |
| living people | |
| american linguists | |
| semanticists | |
| syntacticians | |
| cognitive scientists | |
| tufts university faculty | |
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Jackendoff studied under famed linguists Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle at the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology ( Cambridge, MA ), where he received his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1969. Both Chomsky and Halle are now Institute Professor s emeriti at MIT. Jackendoff was Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the Linguistics Program at Brandeis University from 1971 to 2005. In the fall of 2005, Jackendoff moved to Tufts University ( Medford, MA ), where he is Professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies (along with Daniel Dennett ). 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- Binding Theory 1981 ; 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). SELECTED WORKS SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS |
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