Ray Jackendoff (born 1945) is an influential contemporary linguist who 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 all-important thesis of generative linguistics) and to giving an account of language that meshes well with the current understanding of the human mind and 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 is indeed the title of his most recent monograph (2002): Foundations of Language. Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution, Pleasure. 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. Jump to: navigation, search 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... The following is a list of linguists, those who study linguistics. ... Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. ... Cognitive linguistics is a school of linguistics and cognitive science, which aims to provide accounts of language that mesh well with current understandings of the human mind, and is generally opposed to the more syntactocentric approaches to meaning in generative linguistics. ... Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans. ... Wiktionary has a definition of: Cognition The term cognition is used in several different loosely related ways. ... Jump to: navigation, search Research is an active, diligent, and systematic process of inquiry in order to discover, interpret or revise facts, events, behaviours, or theories, or to make practical applications with the help of such facts, laws, or theories. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... The term natural language is used to distinguish languages spoken by humans for general-purpose communication from constructs such as computer-programming languages or the languages used in the study of formal logic, especially mathematical logic. ... Look up Cognition on Wiktionary, the free dictionary The term cognition is used in several different loosely related ways. ... A lexicon is a list of words together with additional word-specific information, i. ... Fred Lerdahl, Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University, is a composer and music theorist, best known for his work on pitch space and cognitive constraints on compositional systems or musical grammars. ... Conceptual Semantics is a framework for semantic analysis developed mainly by Ray Jackendoff. ...

Jackendoff studied under famed linguist Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), where he received his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1969. 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). Jump to: navigation, search Avram Noam Chomsky, Ph. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research and educational institution located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA with an endowment of just under six billion dollars, the sixth-largest in the United States. ... Harvard Square, May 2000 Cambridge is a city in the greater Boston area in Massachusetts, United States. ... Jump to: navigation, search A professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) (prof for short) is a senior teacher, lecturer and researcher, usually in a college or university. ... Jump to: navigation, search Brandeis University is a small, private university in Waltham, Massachusetts. ... Tufts University is a private university located in Medford, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. ... Medford is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. ... Jump to: navigation, search A professor (Latin: one who claims publicly to be an expert) (prof for short) is a senior teacher, lecturer and researcher, usually in a college or university. ... Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942) is a prominent American philosopher. ...

Selected works

• Jackendoff, Ray (1983) Semantics and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Jackendoff, Ray (1990) Semantic Structures. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Jackendoff, Ray (2002) Foundations of Language (Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
• Peter Culicover & Ray Jackendoff (2005) Simpler syntax. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

See also

• Conceptual Semantics
• Mentalist Postulate

Conceptual Semantics is a framework for semantic analysis developed mainly by Ray Jackendoff. ... The Mentalist Postulate is the thesis that meaning in natural language is an information structure that is mentally encoded by human beings. ...

External link

• Website at Brandeis University
• Website at Tufts University
• Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University