Ray Jackendoff

Jackendoff argues against a syntax-centered view of generative grammar (which he calls syntactocentrism), at variance with earlier models such as the standard theory (1968), the extended standard theory (1972), the revised extended standard theory (1975), the government and binding theory (1981), and the minimalist program (1993), in which syntax is the sole generative component in the language. Jackendoff takes syntax, semantics, and phonology all to be generative, interconnected via interface components. The task of his theory is to formalize the proper interface rules. While rejecting mainstream generative grammar due to its syntactocentrism, the cognitive semantics school has offered an insight that Jackendoff would sympathize with, namely, that meaning is a separate combinatorial system not entirely dependent upon syntax. Unlike many of the cognitive semantics approaches, he contends that neither syntax alone should determine semantics, nor vice versa. Syntax need only interface with semantics to the degree necessary to produce properly ordered phonological output (see Jackendoff 1996, 2002; Culicover & Jackendoff 2005). ==Contribution to musical cognition==

Jackendoff, together with Fred Lerdahl, has been interested in the human capacity for music and its relationship to the human capacity for language. In particular, music has structure as well as a "grammar" (a means by which sounds are combined into structures). When a listener hears music in an idiom he or she is familiar with, the music is not merely heard as a stream of sounds; rather, the listener constructs an unconscious understanding of the music and is able to understand pieces of music never heard previously. Jackendoff is interested in what cognitive structures or "mental representations" this understanding consists of in the listener's mind, how a listener comes to acquire the musical grammar necessary to understand a particular musical idiom, what innate resources in the human mind make this acquisition possible and, finally, what parts of the human music capacity are governed by general cognitive functions and what parts result from specialized functions geared specifically for music (Jackendoff & Lerdahl, 1983; Lerdahl, 2001). Similar questions have also been raised regarding human language, although there are differences. For instance, it is more likely that humans evolved a specialized language module than having evolved one for music, since even the specialized aspects of music comprehension are tied to more general cognitive functions. ==Selected works==

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