back and forth

Jon Aske jaske at ABACUS.BATES.EDU
Fri Jan 10 23:12:31 UTC 1997


I think Tom is right on target.  All this reminds me of an interesting
quote in a recent interview with Ray Jackendoff, which suggests that the
pursuit of autonomy was not really inevitable. It resulted really from
not being able to come up with a way of making the form-function
connection work right.  He said:

"if you look back at Syntactic Structures, Chomsky said, "Semantics is
semi-systematically connected with syntax - systematically enough that
we want to account for it, but not systematically enough that we can use
it as a key to determine how the syntax works.  We have to do the syntax
autonomously."  His program was to show we have to (and can) do the
syntax autonomously.  And he never really worried about a systematic
connection to semantics.  I think it was really Katz and Postal who
forced him to it"" (Ray Jackendoff, in conversation with John Goldsmith;
in Huck and Goldsmith 1995:98-99).

--
Jon Aske
jaske at abacus.bates.edu
http://www.bates.edu/~jaske/
--
Balantza duen aldera erortzen da arbola
"The tree falls towards the side it's leaning."



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