Languages of the Mind : Essays on Mental Representation.

Cambridge, MA Massachusetts Institute of Technology: M.I.T. Press [Bradford Books], 1992. Hardcover First Ed; later printing. Near Fine in Near Fine DJ: Both book and DJ show only minute indications of use. Book shows a slight waviness to the top edge of the text block, due no doubt to exposure of a moist environment, but no dampstaining, mildew, odor or other negative indication of same; the binding shows the slightest lean, but remains perfectly secure; text clean. DJ shows just a hint of wear to the extemities; else flawless; mylar-protected. Overall, very close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. 200pp. First Ed; later printing. Hardback with DJ. I've always regarded Ray Jackendoff as an anti-Chomsky Chomskian. Like Chomsky he believes in innate structure but unlike Chomsky he uses meaning rather than parts of speech to formulate his arguments. He also sits a bit uncomfortably, particularly in chapters 5 and 8, on the fence between philosophical and and psychological linguistics, which does make for good discussion. The language used in the book is not heavily laid with jargon though Jackendoff can be wordy and the level of presentation is aimed at an academic rather than a popular audience. "Languages" consists of 8 essays, some revised just for the book, which argue for the existence of underlying more primitive representations for thought. In chapters 2 and 3 Jackendoff reflects on the idea of concept, expressing his own approach and comparing it to Chomsky, Piaget and Fodor. He regards concepts as partially innate, partially learned and notes analogies of inference in different domains such as in ownership and spatial reasoning. Chapter 4 asks if there is a separate facility for social cognition and if so what are it's features and components. Aspects considered include face recognition, ideas of social structure and the differences between an internal (i-language/i-social) representations and external (e-language/e-social) verbalization; the ideas of transaction, ownership and property rights are considered - the transmission of ideas taken as a special case as transferring an idea does not entail loss of ownership by the giver. Chapter6 "Spatial Language and Spatial Cognition" is a comprehensive look at the limited number of English terms referring to the placement and orientation of objects and finds that with some differences other languages have more or less the same descriptive power. The completeness allowed by the small number of words makes this analysis more into a scientific analysis than philosophic discussion. There is a mismatch between language's ability to describe and visual cognition suggesting that different representations are at play. Chapter 7 "Musical Parsing and Musical Affect" promised to do the same for music. Alas, I'm a bit of an illiterate when it comes to recognizing and labeling musical patterns. I found the theorizing about internal musical parsers interesting but I didn't follow all of the specific examples - one of my limitations and your mileage may vary. Jackendoff is one of the great lights of modern linguistics. Readers should find that this book to be a reasonable exposure to his ideas. He also makes frequent references to Miller & Johnson-Laird's 1976 classic Language and Perception, a favorite of mine, which treated the ontology of language as a systematic program of observation and categorization rather than a series of anecdotes to support a theory of mind.