Foundations of Language Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution

Already hailed as a masterpiece, Foundations of Language offers a brilliant overhaul of the last thirty-five years of research in generative linguistics and related fields. "Few books really deserve the cliche 'this should be read by every researcher in the field, '" writes Steven Pinker,
author of The Language Instinct, "But Ray Jackendoff's Foundations of Language does."
Foundations of Language offers a radically new understanding of how language, the brain, and perception intermesh. The book renews the promise of early generative linguistics: that language can be a valuable entree into understanding the human mind and brain. The approach is remarkably
interdisciplinary. Behind its innovations is Jackendoff's fundamental proposal that the creativity of language derives from multiple parallel generative systems linked by interface components. This shift in basic architecture makes possible a radical reconception of mental grammar and how it is
learned. As a consequence, Jackendoff is able to reintegrate linguistics with philosophy of mind, cognitive and developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and computational linguistics. Among the major topics treated are language processing, the relation of language to perception,
the innateness of language, and the evolution of the language capacity, as well as more standard issues in linguistic theory such as the roles of syntax and the lexicon. In addition, Jackendoff offers a sophisticated theory of semantics that incorporates insights from philosophy of language, logic
and formal semantics, lexical semantics of various stripes, cognitive grammar, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic approaches, and theauthor's own conceptual semantics.
Here then is the most fundamental contribution to linguistic theory in over three decades.

How does human language work? How do we put ideas into words that others can understand? Can linguistics shed light on the way the brain operates? Foundations of Language puts linguistics back at the centre of the search to understand human consciousness. Ray Jackendoff begins by surveying the developments in linguistics over the years since Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. He goes on to propose a radical re-conception of how the brain processes language. This opens up vivid new perspectives on every major aspect of language and communication, including grammar, vocabulary, learning, the origins of human language, and how language relates to the real world. Foundations of Language makes important connections with other disciplines which have been isolated from linguistics for many years. It sets a new agenda for close cooperation between the study of language, mind, the brain, behaviour, and evolution.

1 - The Complexity of Linguistic Structure
2 - Language as a Mental Phenomenon
3 - Combinatoriality
4 - Universal Grammar
5 - The Parallel Architecture
6 - Lexical Storage Versus Online Construction
7 - Implications for Processing
8 - An Evolutionary Perspective on the Architecture
9 - Semantics as a Mentalistic Enterprise
10 - Reference and Truth
11 - Lexical Semantics
12 - Phrasal Semantics
13 - Concluding Remarks

Ray Jackendoff is the author of Semantics and Cognition, Consciousness and the Computational Mind, The Architecture of the Language Faculty, and (with Fred Lerdahl) A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. He has been Professor of Linguistics at Brandeis University since 1971. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology.