当代语言学通常分为两大阵营：形式主义和功能主义。两者的哲学基础和工作假设都有较大的分歧。不过，把两者结合得最好的，莫过于美国语言学家R．Jackendoff。他30多年的研究跨越了生成语言学和认知语言学，涉猎甚广，重点围绕自然语言的意义系统而展开，即语义是如何与人类的概念系统相关联的，语言中概念是如何表达的。他对传统哲学问题中推理和指称进行的思考体现在他的概念语义学(conceptUal semantics)中。

《语言的基础——大脑、意义、语法和演变》是Jackendoff多年来有关语言理论基础和理论研究模式的集大成，是对转换一生成语法理论的继承和发展。全书共13章，分三大部分：心理和生理基础(1～4章)；构造基础(5～8章)；语义和概念基础(9～13章)。

《语言的基础——大脑、意义、语法和演变》是Jackendoff多年来有关语言理论基础和理论研究模式的集大成。

《语言的基础——大脑、意义、语法和演变》是有关语言的理论基础和理论研究模式的集大成之作，融汇了心理学、神经科学、生物学、哲学以及生物进化论等相关研究领域的成果，在评价乔姆斯基关于普遍语法的种种观点之余．提出了语言处理的平行构架观作为人脑存储和处理语言的基本理论框架，为我们理解语言和交际，尤其是认识语法、词汇、语言习得、语言的起源以及语言和思维与真实世界的关系等提供了一个崭新的视角。

Preface

Acknowledgments

PART 1 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS

1 The Complexity of Linguistic Structure

 1.1 A sociological problem

 1.2 The structure of a simple sentence

 1.3 Phonological structure

 1.4 Syntactic structure

 1.5 Semantic/conceptual and spatial structure

 1.6 Connecting the levels

 1.7 Anaphora and unbounded dependencies

2 Language as a Mental Phenomenon

 2.1 What do we mean by "mental" ?

 2.2 How to interpret linguistic notation mentally

 2.3 Knowledge of language

 2.4 Competence versus performance

 2.5 Language in a social context (all too briefly)

3 Combinatoriality

 3.1 The need for an f-mental grammar

 3.2 Some types of rule

3.2.1 Formation rules and typed variables

3.2.2 Derivational (transformational) rules

3.2.3 Constraints

 3.3 Lexical rules

3.3.1 Lexical formation rules

3.3.2 Lexical redundancy rules

3.3.3 Inheritance hierarchies

 3.4 What are rules of grammar?

 3.5 Four challenges for cognitive neuroscience

3.5.1 The massiveness of the binding problem

3.5.2 The Problem of 2

3.5.3 The problem of variables

3.5.4 Binding in working memory vs. long-term memory

4 Universal Grammar

 4.1 The logic of the argument

 4.2 Getting the hypothesis right

 4.3 Linguistic universals

 4.4 Substantive universals, repertoire of rule types, and architectural universals

 4.5 The balance of linguistic and more general capacities

 4.6 The poverty of the stimulus; the Paradox of Language Acquisition

 4.7 Poverty of the stimulus in word learning

 4.8 How Universal Grammar can be related to genetics

 4.9 Evidence outside ,linguistic structure for Universal Grammar/Language Acquisition Device

4.9.1 Species-specificity

4.9.2 Characteristic timing of acquisition

4.9.3 Dissociations

4.9.4 Language creation

 4.10 Summary of factors'involved in the theory of Universal Grammar

PART Ⅱ ARCHITECTURAL FOUNDATIONS

5 The Parallel Architecture

 5.1 Introduction to Part Ⅱ

 5.2 A short history of syntactocentrism

 5.3 Tiers and interfaces in phonology

 5.4 Syntax and phonology

 5.5 Semantics as a generative system

 5.6 The tripartite theory and some variants

 5.7 The lexicon and lexical licensing

 5.8 Introduction to argument structure

 5.9 How much of syntactic argument structure can be predicted from semantics?

5.9.1 Number of syntactic arguments

5.9.2 Category of syntactic arguments

5.9.3 Position of syntactic ~irguments

5.9.4 Locality of syntactic arguments, and exceptions

 5.10 A tier for grammatical functions?

6 Lexical Storage versus Online Construction

 6.1 Lexical items versus words

 6.2 Lexical items smaller than words

6.2.1 Productive morphology

6.2.2 Semiproductive morphology

6.2.3 The necessity of a heterogeneous theory

 6.3 Psycholinguistic considerations

 6.4 The status of lexical redundancy rules

 6.5 Idioms

 6.6 A class of construetion~il idioms

 6.7 Generalizing the notion of construction

 6.8 The status of inheritance hierarchies

 6.9 Issues of acquisition

 6.10 Universal Grammar as a set of attractors

 6.11 Appendix: Remarks on HPSG and Construction Grammar

7 Implications for Processing

 7.1 The parallel competence architecture forms a basis for a processing architecture

 7.2 How the competence model can constrain theories of processing

 7.3 Remarks on working memory

 7.4 More about lexical access

7.4.1 Lexical access in perception

7.4.2 Priming

7.4.3 Lexical access in production

7.4.4 Speech errors and tip-of-the-tongue states

7.4.5 Syntactic priming

 7.5 Structure-constrained modularity

7.5.1 Fodor's view and an alternative

7.5.2 Interface modules are how integrative modules talk to each other

7.5.3 The "bi-domain specificity" of interface modules

7.5.4 Multiple inputs and outputs on the same "blackboard"

7.5.5 Informational encapsulation among levels of structure

8 An Evolutionary Perspective on the Architecture~

 8.1 The dialectic

 8.2 Bickerton's proposal and auxiliary assumptions

 8.3 The use of symbols

 8.4 Open class of symbols

 8.5 A generative system for single symbols: proto-phonology

 8.6 Concatenation of symbols to build larger utterances

 8.7 Using linear position to signal semantic relations

 8.8 Phrase structure

 8.9 Vocabulary for relational concepts

 8.10 Grammatical categories and ,the "basic body plan" of syntax

 8.11 Morphology and grammatical functions

 8.12 Universal Grammar as a toolkit again

PART Ⅲ SEMANTIC AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS

9 Semantics as a Mentalistic Enterprise

 9.1 Introduction to part III,

 9.2 Semantics vis-a-vis mainstream generative grammar

 9.3 Meaning and its interfaces

 9.4 Chomsky and Fodor on semantics

 9.5 Some "contextualist" approaches to meaning

 9.6 Is there a specifically linguistic semantics?

 9.7 Four non-ways to separate linguistic semantics from conceptualization

9.7.1 Semantics = "dictionary"; pragmatics = "encyclopedia"

9.7.2 Logical vs. nonlogical semantic properties

9.7.3 Grammatically realized vs. grammatically irrelevant content

9.7.4 Language-specific semantics implying a special linguistic semantics

10 Reference and Truth

 10.1 Introduction

 10.2 Problems with the common-sense view: "language"

 10.3 Problems with the common-sense view: "objects"

 10.4 Pushing "the world" into the mind

 10.5 A simple act of deictic reference

 10.6 The functional correlates of consciousness

 10.7 Application to theory of reference

 10.8 Entities other than objects

 10.9 Proper names, kinds, and abstract objects

10.9.1 Proper names

10.9.2 Kinds

10.9.3 Abstract objects

 10.10 Satisfaction and truth

 10.11 Objectivity, error, and the role of the community

11 Lexical Semantics

 11.1 Boundary conditions on theories of lexical meaning

 11.2 The prospects for decomposition into primitives

 11.3 Polysemy

 11.4 Taxonomic structure

 11.5 Contributions from perceptual modalities

 11.6 Other than necessary and sufficient conditions

11.6.1 Categories with graded boundaries

11.6.2 "Cluster" concepts

 11.7 The same abstract organization in many semantic fields

 11.8 Function-argument structure across semantic fields

11.8.1 Some basic state- and event-functions

11.8.2 Building verb meanings

 11.9 Qualia structure: characteristic activities and purposes

 11.10 Dot objects

 11. 11 Beyond

12 Phrasal Semantics

 12.1 Simple composition

12.1.1 Argument satisfaction

12.1.2 Modification

12.1.3 Lambda extraction and variable binding

12.1.4 Parallels in lexical semantics

 12.2 Enriched composition

 12.3 The referential tier

 12.4 Referential dependence and referential frames

 12.5 The information structure (topic/focus) tier

 12.6 Phrasal semantics and Universal Grammar

 12.7 Beyond: discourse, conversation, narrative

13 Concluding Remarks

References

Index