Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution

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Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution by Ray Jackendoff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 477 pp. $40.00. ISBN 0-19-827012)

MANY SCIENTISTS outside the field of linguistics have been frustrated by the lack of connection between linguistic theory and psycholinguistic models or investigations of the brain bases of language. Jackendoff attempts to bridge this divide by laying out a model of language that clearly relates to models of language processing and that can guide investigations of neural systems underlying language. Given the primary focus of the book, Jackendoff could have stopped with the main title, Foundations of Language, but the subtitle, …