The Architecture of the Language Faculty (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

Rating:
Summary: Architecture needs foundations
Review: This book is essential to understand where Chomsky's theory stands today. Jackendoff was the linguist in Chomsky's school who tried to cope with the problem of semantics, but he is an orthodox syntactical generativist. So he was only able to cope with syntactic functions in an interpretative approach, i.e. a semantic approach. In spite of what Chomsky said that syntactic functions were ermbedded in the derivational tree, hence in syntax, he took that semantic approach. This book is the last step before the end of this approach. Beyond there is no future. Beyond we, linguists, have to reformulate the axiom and go to the hypothesis that syntactic functions, perfectly well mapped and analyzed by Jackendoff from the very start, must be understood as syntactic and not semantic. This would enable structural linguistics to finally understand that the foundation of language is thought, that the foundation of the sentence structure is functional, starting as mental functions (known as the « lexie » in Culioli's approach) and becoming syntactic functions as the organizing architecture of language from the very start, in the deepest of deep structure. Without then entering details, that would enable structural linguistics to understand that nothing has any value by itself but only in the architecture in which any element is entering. But yet, this book is essential to put together all the necessary elements. For instance that could enable us, linguists, to capture the real order of the components of language not as being horizontal as Jackendoff states page 39, Figure 2.1, but as being vertical. In other words, and as a conclusion, I will say that this book gives us some of the essential cornerstones on which we, linguists, can reorganize the whole theory and include what is known as semantics, or most of it, into the syntax. And that is a lot more potent than any interpretative semantics, that has no value whatsoever for the speaker who does not interpret but generates discourse. Jackendoff looks at language from the receiver's point of view, forgetting that there is a speaker BEFORE a listener. We must start from a generative point of view, not from an interpretative point of view. The latter can only be second, hence meaningless for us, linguists. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universitezs IX and II.

Rating:
Summary: Architecture needs foundations
Review: This book is essential to understand where Chomsky's theory stands today. Jackendoff was the linguist in Chomsky's school who tried to cope with the problem of semantics, but he is an orthodox syntactical generativist. So he was only able to cope with syntactic functions in an interpretative approach, i.e. a semantic approach. In spite of what Chomsky said that syntactic functions were ermbedded in the derivational tree, hence in syntax, he took that semantic approach. This book is the last step before the end of this approach. Beyond there is no future. Beyond we, linguists, have to reformulate the axiom and go to the hypothesis that syntactic functions, perfectly well mapped and analyzed by Jackendoff from the very start, must be understood as syntactic and not semantic. This would enable structural linguistics to finally understand that the foundation of language is thought, that the foundation of the sentence structure is functional, starting as mental functions (known as the « lexie » in Culioli's approach) and becoming syntactic functions as the organizing architecture of language from the very start, in the deepest of deep structure. Without then entering details, that would enable structural linguistics to understand that nothing has any value by itself but only in the architecture in which any element is entering. But yet, this book is essential to put together all the necessary elements. For instance that could enable us, linguists, to capture the real order of the components of language not as being horizontal as Jackendoff states page 39, Figure 2.1, but as being vertical. In other words, and as a conclusion, I will say that this book gives us some of the essential cornerstones on which we, linguists, can reorganize the whole theory and include what is known as semantics, or most of it, into the syntax. And that is a lot more potent than any interpretative semantics, that has no value whatsoever for the speaker who does not interpret but generates discourse. Jackendoff looks at language from the receiver's point of view, forgetting that there is a speaker BEFORE a listener. We must start from a generative point of view, not from an interpretative point of view. The latter can only be second, hence meaningless for us, linguists. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universitezs IX and II.