Foundations of Language by Ray Jackendoff, Oxford University Press, 拢25, ISBN 0198270127
FROM the moment you started reading this sentence, various mental processes let you extract meaning from a bit of ink on a page. In a conversation, your brain derives meaning from sequences of sounds, or transforms thoughts into tongue movements and so on to produce sounds. In general, the mental processes by which we perceive or produce language are spontaneous and effortless, so you may be unaware of how complex a phenomenon language actually is.
In his latest book, Foundations of Language, Ray Jackendoff, a leading researcher in linguistics and cognitive science during the past 30 years, provides an excellent overview of the complexities of language. He not only considers intriguing properties of language but also integrates it into the larger context of psychology, neurobiology, philosophy, and evolutionary theory.
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Jackendoff鈥檚 book is rooted in the tradition of generative linguistic theory founded by Noam Chomsky in the late 1950s. The central goal of generative linguistics is to formalise the properties of language to let you develop a model of the linguistic knowledge stored in a speaker鈥檚 mind. The focus is thus on language as a mental (rather than social) phenomenon. Another important goal of generative linguistics is explaining how speakers acquire their linguistic knowledge. The main problem Chomsky identifies is that the linguistic examples children are exposed to don鈥檛 seem to be enough to account for the entire linguistic knowledge they acquire. Generative linguistics deals with this problem by proposing that language acquisition is the result of the interaction between exposure to linguistic examples and an innate capacity to acquire language, known as Universal Grammar.
Jackendoff adopts both the mentalist point of view and the innateness hypothesis of generative grammar, but not without considering alternative views. The idea that humans have a hardwired talent for acquiring language remains particularly controversial. Opponents of this view argue, for example, that general learning strategies do indeed account for language acquisition, or that considering language as an inbuilt ability may raise problems with respect to the question of genetic transmission.
Jackendoff addresses these issues, and presents a wide range of arguments in favour of a biological specialisation for language learning. He concludes that some form of the Universal Grammar hypothesis is supportable, but that linguists have to find a biologically realistic version of Universal Grammar. The commonly held view of Universal Grammar as an indecomposable 鈥済rammar box鈥�, isolated physically and computationally and with a high degree of prespecification, may not meet this requirement.
Although Jackendoff adopts some of the basic concepts of generative linguistics, the model of language he develops in here differs substantially from mainstream鈥攖hat is, Chomskyan鈥攇enerative theory, in which syntax plays a central role. In Jackendoff鈥檚 鈥淧arallel Architecture鈥� model, syntax is just one of several interacting components of linguistic structure. One of the attractive consequences of this approach is that it provides insights into issues on which mainstream generative theory has little to say. For example, Jackendoff deals with psycholinguistic issues related to language perception and production, as well as the question of how the language faculty emerged in the evolution of the human species. He also tackles topics linked to meaning and the nature of thought.
Foundations of Language covers an impressive range of data, giving us a wonderful illustration of the open-mindedness to different areas of research that Jackendoff calls for in the preface. Given the breadth of evidence covered, several aspects of his model inevitably remain rather sketchy. But the book鈥檚 main points are convincing鈥攖hat the study of language will ultimately depend on close interdisciplinary collaboration.