About this title: 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 ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780199264377ISBN:0199264376
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 498 pages. (498 pages) proposes a holistic theory of the relation between the sounds, structure, and meaning of language and their relation to mind and brain. this work aims to offer fundamental thinking in linguistics since noam chomsky's "aspects of the theory of syntax" in 1965. it also provides insights on the evolution of language, thought, and communication. numerous figures (Paperback) read more
Binding: orig. boards
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford
Date Published: (2002)
Description: Minor rubbing. VG., dustwrapper. 24x17cm, xix, 477 pp. Contents: Psychological & Biological Foundations: Complexity of Linguistic Structure; Language as a Mental Phenomenon; Combinatoriality; Universal Grammar; Architectural Foundations: The Parallel Architecture; Lexical Storage versus Online Construction; Impications for Processing; An Evolutionary Perspective on the Architecture; Semantic & Conceptual Foundations: Semantics as a Mentalistic Enterprise; Reference & Truth; Lexical Semantics; ... read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780198270126ISBN:0198270127
Description: BRAND NEW HARDBACK. 240x168 mm. This book is printed on demand. (allow 1-2 weeks for printing) (498) a landmark in linguistics and cognitive science. ray jackendoff proposes a new holistic theory of the relation between the sounds, structure, and meaning of language and their relation to mind and brain. foundations of language exhibits the most fundamental new thinking in linguistics since noam chomsky's aspects of the theory of syntax in 1965--yet is readable, stylish, and accessible to a wide ... read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780198270126ISBN:0198270127
Description: Good. Missing Dust Cover Cover and pages may have some wear or writing. Binding is tight. We ship daily Monday-Friday. Delivery Confirmation included on all domestic orders. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN-13:9780199264377ISBN:0199264376
Description: Good. 0199264376 Good condition. May have some markings & or shelfwear. All pages intact. Used items may not include extras such as infotrac, CD or other web access codes. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 2003-11-06
ISBN-13:9780199264377ISBN:0199264376
Description: Good. Excellent customer service. May ship from alternate location depending on your zip code and availability. Satisfaction guaranteed! ! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780199264377ISBN:0199264376
Description: New. 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... read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 2002-03-28
ISBN-13:9780198270126ISBN:0198270127
Description: Good. Excellent customer service. May ship from alternate location depending on your zip code and availability. Satisfaction guaranteed! ! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 2002-03-28
ISBN-13:9780198270126ISBN:0198270127
Description: New. New Book. Excellent customer service. May ship from alternate location depending on your zip code and availability. Satisfaction guaranteed! ! read more
"Jackendoff has created a provocative masterpiece in this exploration of the theories and current problems in cognitive and neurological grammar and its insight into the nature of language and thought. His survey of the linguistic theoretical landscape is thorough and nuanced and he adds his own cogent hypotheses when he finds the philosophical framework lacking. His approach to the problems of assigning truth-value to linguistic utterances as proposed by Gottlob Frege in On Sense and Reference and the locus of idiomatic grammar rules in the mind are particularly interesting.
Frege's model of determining the veracity of statements made with language has the advantage of being philosophically rigorous and appealing to a first-order level of intuition. However, because it insists that linguistic structures in the mind (that subsequently become communicated outward through speech and the written word) refer inherently to a state of affairs "in the world," his theory cannot articulate nor determine the veracity of statements about possibility or about imaginary events. To ascertain whether the phrase "it might rain today" is true, or what its being true even means is outside the power of his theory. Likewise, weighing the veracity of the statement, "Luke is the son of Darth Vader," is equally ambiguous. Jackendoff proposes that linguistic constructions "refer" not to a state of affairs in the world around us, but to a perceptual instantiation inside our own mind. This percept, as he calls it, can be the result of physical stimuli upon our nervous system, an extrapolation of that stimuli (as when we "see" something in the shadows), or generated within mind itself as through conscious imagining or nocturnal dreaming. What it means for a linguistic utterance to be true, now being decoupled from its conflation with reference, can be readdressed with fresh philosophical arguments. Jackendoff suggests that language is useful if it allows for two parties to share their notions of their own internal percepts in such a way as to cooperate together in a mutually beneficial fashion. Whether their percepts are identical or not is irrelevant for that task.
Jackendoff is a proponent of the Chomskyan-generated theoretical structure that suggests there exists within the human brain a neurologically hardwired grammar repository; that there is an innate ability to understand, recognize, and work within the set of syntactic relationships among words found in natural human languages. Chomsky desired to make all such relationships hardwired or derived from prior syntactic rules by hardwired derivation processes. The problem with this approach is that the logical contortions needed to arrive at certain idiomatic constructions defy our intuitions about grammar and language and our experience in learning those constructions. Jackendoff seeks to remedy this inelegancy by suggesting that the regular, common features of grammar are indeed hardwired into our brains, but that the exceptions and idiomatic constructions that are found throughout natural languages are not subtle logical derivations from the baseline syntactic regularity; rather, each lexical item needing unique syntactic consideration has such considerations "attached" to the item itself, that such considerations must be explicitly learned when first encountering the lexical item, and that such considerations override the baseline grammatical rules. This "plug and play" theory of syntax allows for arbitrarily complex statements to be uttered and understood without recourse to a massively (perhaps infinitely) complex instantiation of grammatical hardware in the brain."
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