Language& Communication, Printed in Great Britain.

Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 69-93. 1985.

0271-5309/85 %3.00+ .OO Pergamon Press Ltd.

COGNITIVE CLOUDS AND SEMANTIC SHADOWS

JEAN AITCHISON Ray Jackendoff, Semantics and Cognition. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1983. 283 pages.
Introduction

A thought may be compared to a cloud shedding a shower of words, suggested the Russian psychologist Vygotsky (1962, p. 150), his point being that a thought (the cloud) has to be put into separate words (the raindrops), which may take several seconds to utter. His overall message was that there is no rigid correspondence between the units of thought and speech (1962, p. 149). Vygotskys is a fairly typical standpoint on the age-old question of the relationship between language and thought. This topic, despite its vastness, is a perennial source of fascination for people from various disciplines. Amidst the plethora of conflicting opinions, there seems to be just one point on which the different researchers tend to concur. They almost all agree that natural language is not translatable directly into thoughts, but that there is some mediating language or mentalese, which either links to thoughts, or alternatively, constitu;es the thoughts themselves. This mediating language has various names, depending on the discipline. Common ones are semantic representation in linguistics, mental representation in psychology, logical representation in philosophy, and machine language in artificial intelligence. Amidst the morass of speculation, we may isolate two crucial issues. These can be referred to as the inner code question and the master-file question. The inner code question deals with the nature of the internal representations into which the surface syntax is translated. These days, it is fashionable to couch the question in computer terminology. Computers typically perform their computations on an internal language which is usually fairly different from the language in which they accept their input and encode their outputs. An input language which is relatively similar to the computers own language is known as a low-level language, and one which is dissimilar is known as a high-level language. The question, then, is whether human language is a low-level or a high-level language in relation to mentalese. Both points of view are found in the literature. To take two well-known opposing viewpoints, Fodor (1975) speculates that the language of thought may be very like a natural language. It may be that the resources of the inner code are rather directly represented in the resources of the codes we use for communication (1975, p. 156). Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976), on the other hand, put forward proposals for an inner representation which is fairly different from the surface lexical items and the overt constituent structure. This is still an on-going issue, and one which shows no real sign of being solved.
Correspondence relating to this paper should be addressed
London School of Economics, Houghton St., London to Jean Aitchison, WCZA 2AE, U.K.
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Department of Language Studies,

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The second crucial issue, the master-file question, deals with the language specificity or otherwise of mentalese. Are the internal representations which are linked to surface utterances specific to language? Or do they represent an abstract internal code which underlies several modalities? In other words, is there a conceptual master-file at the interface of language, visual perception, tactile sense, and so on? Like the inner code question, the master-file question is still hotly disputed. On the one hand, there are those who support the notion that the mind has only one fundamental means of representation, and that all events or experiences are reduced or abstracted to this single form. This form, they argue, cannot be identified with any one modality, and must therefore be conceptual (e.g. Snodgrass, 1984). However, this viewpoint has not gone unchallenged. Indeed, as two objectors note: The preference for the common-code view seems to be motivated as much by (I priori assumptions as by any of the data obtained (Kolers and Brison, 1984, p. 111). The latter point out several reasons for preferring modality-specific representations: for example, recognition, of say, a face, is more readily accomplished in the visual mode, than via touch or smell. If the concept was modality independent, one should not predict this result. Furthermore, operations or procedures practised on one set of symbols do not necessarily transfer to other symbols. Of course, even if there are modality-specific representations, no-one would deny that there are processing links connecting them. Given, then, the choice between a modalityindependent set of concepts, and modality-specific representations linked by processing procedures, is it possible to reliably distinguish between the two? Some psychologists have argued that the question is not an empirical one. The evidence not only is but must in principle be indeterminate. Any pattern of findings that I can imagine would always be interpreted as consistent with either position comments Glucksberg (1984, p. 102), noting that The choice of one over the other is not empirical, but rather pragmatic. What kind of model is easier to build? (1984, p. 103). To date, then, both the inner code question unsolved, but perhaps unsolvable. and the master-file question are not only

Into these muddy waters, Jackendoff jumps with a resounding splash. In his recent book Language and Cognition which contains somewhat fewer than 300 pages, he claims to solve both the inner code question and the master-file question. On the one hand he specifies putative semantic representations in some detail, and on the other he argues that semantic representations are conceptual structures, claiming that When we are studying semantics of natural language, we are by necessity studying the structure of thought (p. x); To study semantics of natural language is to study cognitive psychology (p. 3). This book can therefore be judged in two ways: as a contribution to linguistic theory on the one hand, and to cognitive psychology on the other. Jackendoffs views on the relationship between semantics and cognition have become a decade ago bolder and more explicit over the years. In a major book published (Jackendoff, 1972), he made detailed proposals for the semantic component of a generative grammar. He envisaged four subcomponents which were possibly universal, and which interleaved with the syntax at various points. At this time, he was fairly cautious about the relationship between semantics and cognition, noting that The semantic interpretation, it is reasonable to hope, is very tightly integrated into the cognitive system of the human mind (1972, p. 1).

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Jackendoffs (1972) book was influential in the early 197Os, but it gradually faded from the forefront of attention as the version of transformational syntax within which he was working was drastically revised, partly as a result of his own work. Jackendoff, meanwhile turned his mind to syntax, proposing a theory of phrase structure, X-bar syntax (Jackendoff, 1977a), which was able to capture similarities of structure between the major phrasal categories (NP, VP, PP, etc). He did not, however, abandon semantics, and in 1978 published an article (Jackendoff, 1978) which can perhaps be regarded as an hors doeuvres to the current book. In this 1978 article, he gave a hint of his increasingly strong conviction that language and cognition are closely related, suggesting that semantic structure is a subdomain of conceptual structure and that grammatical evidence can play a direct role in forming or confirming theories of cognition (1978, p. 204). The current book, then, is to a large extent an elaboration outline in Jackendoff (1978). It not only develops the ideas relationship between language and cognition, but in addition theory with the syntactic hypotheses put forward in his book of the ideas presented in propounded there on the interweaves his semantic on X-bar theory (1977a).

Jackendoffs (1983) book is divided into four sections. In Section I, Basic Issues, he sets out the constraints on a semantic theory, and discusses the relationship between semantic structure, conceptual structure and the real world. In Section II, Cognitive Foundations of Semantics, Jackendoff outlines the framework found in his own semantic theory. In Section III, Word Meaning, he discusses lexical semantics, and in Section IV, Applications, Jackendoff attempts to give a detailed semantic description of certain key areas. It is useful to consider the book under Jackendoffs four section headings. However, Jackendoff has written this book in such a way that the claims he makes are continually elaborated and revised. In addition, the topics dealt with are inextricably interleaved and intertwined. This means that a detailed chapter-by-chapter treatment would be overlong and partially repetitive. This review therefore attempts to draw together the various strands from different parts of the book in order to assess each claim as a whole. It also deals with the major sections in a slightly different order from Jackendoff: Word Meaning is dealt with second, since the final section on Applications follows on logically from the section entitled Cognitive Foundations of Semantics. Inevitably also, it is necessary to be selective, since a full discussion of every issue raised by Jackendoff would fill several volumes. This review therefore concentrates on the following: I. Basic Issues: (a) Goals and constraints. (b) The role of the real world. II. Word Meaning: (a) Prototype theory. (b) Preference rules. III: Cognitive Foundations of Semantics: (a) Conceptual primitives. (b) Syntax-semantics mapping. IV. Applications: (a) Events and states. (b) Actions.

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I. Basic issues
Since a number of Jackendoffs more controversial claims spring from assumptions made in the section on basic issues, these issues need to be considered in some detail. In particular, we need to consider firstly, his avowed aims and the constraints he sets on a semantic theory, and secondly, his views on the role of the real world. (a) Goals and constraints In common with other generative linguists, Jackendoff claims to be pursuing his theory primarily in the structure mode (p. 6), leaving it to others to work out the consequences for processing (p. 7). In other words, Jackendoffs overt purpose is to formally characterize sets of information and the relationships between them, but to make no attempt to show how this information is processed in real time. He defends this mode of operation by reiterating the often-heard statement that without a theory of structure, we cannot know what a theory of process has to explain (p. 6). In line with the avowed aims of previous semanticists, Jackendoffs goal is to specify the nature of semantic representation, and show its relationship to syntactic form. He pursues this investigation in terms of two questions: (a) What are the semantic well-formedness rules like? i.e. rules which according to Jackendoff contain at the very least, the inventory of semantic primitives and the principles for combining them (p. 8). (b) What are the correspondence rules like? i.e. rules which relate semantic structure to syntactic structure. A theory attempting to answer these questions will, according to Jackendoff, need to meet six requirements. Four of these have been widely assumed in the literature, and Jackendoff deals with them briefly. The remaining two are controversial. They are, to Jackendoff, of utmost importance (p. 11) and merit considerable discussion. The four constraints which are widely assumed are: (1) Expressiveness: a theory of semantic structure must be observationally adequate, i.e. able to express all the semantic distinctions made by a natural language. (2) Universality: the stock of semantic structures available to be used by particular languages must be universal. (3) Compositionality: a semantic theory must provide a principled way for the meanings of the parts of a sentence to be combined into the meaning of the whole sentence. (4) Semantic properties: a semantic theory should be able to account for so-called semantic properties of utterances, such as synonymy, anomaly, analyticity, and presupposition. These need little discussion: expressiveness, the need for a theory to account for all the data, is a necessity for any scientific theory. Compositionality and semantic properties are standard requirements for a semantic theory, as is universality, even though it is not always clear what should be universal. The above requirements, Jackendoff notes, do not bear directly on how the syntactic form of language reflects the nature of thought (p. 13). For this, he proposes two further criteria on semantic theory, which he labels the Grammatical Constraint and the Cognitive Constraint. The status of and motivation for these constraints needs careful consideration. 77re grammatical constraint (CC). The CC says that one should prefer a semantic theory that explains otherwise arbitrary generalizations about the syntax and the lexicon (p. 13).

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In other words, a good semantic theory should, as far as possible, specify a regular and transparent relationship between syntax and semantics. The point of this constraint is to attempt to minimize the differences of syntactic and semantic structure, not to expect to eliminate them altogether (p. 4). Although a constraint of this type is intuitively satisfying, it is not generally held to be important, and is even considered a disadvantage by some (e.g. Halvorsen, 1983). So why should Jackendoff regard it as crucial? Jackendoff gives two motivations for the CC, the task of the language learner; second, the assumption that language is an efficient tool for the encoding of information. These are both weak arguments. Let us consider each in turn. As far as the language learner is concerned, no one would dispute the fact that there must be at least some overlap between syntax and semantics in order for acquisition to take place. This overlap, however, need not be large: there must simply be some in order for the child to find a way in to the language. It might be the case that the overlap is exploited mainly in the early stages of acquisition. As the child progressively reorganizes his language system, the divergent nature of syntax and semantics could become more apparent. By the time an adult-type system is reached, syntax and semantics might be to a large extent autonomous. And there is some evidence that this scenario is a not unrealistic one. It is widely attested that in early language acquisition there is a close correspondence between syntax and semantics. However, once this initial stage has been passed, the child progressively moves away from a simple syntax-semantics correspondence. The comparative ease with which children pick up quite complex and arbitrary syntactic co-occurrence restrictions suggests that they are specially attuned to cope with such phenomena without semantic aid. Indeed, a number of researchers have argued that children are more sensitive to syntactic co-occurrence restrictions than to semantic-syntactic correspondences (e.g. Karmiloff-Smith, 1979; Maratsos, 1982). In brief, child language does not provide good evidence for positing the GC: children need only a minimal semantic-syntactic overlap to get into the system, after which the syntax and semantics may be linked only indirectly. Jackendoffs second motivation for the GC, that language should be regarded as an efficient tool for the encoding of information, is equally weak. Jackendoff simply maintains that, since language serves the purpose of transmitting information it would be perverse not to take as a working assumption that language is a relatively efficient and accurate encoding of the information it conveys (p. 14). Jackendoff seems to ignore the fact that languages can and do acquire quite arbitrary and crazy rules for a variety of reasons unrelated to semantics. The fact that Jackendoffs motivations for the GC can be dismissed does not, of course, mean that one could not find some other justification for it: the GC might perhaps be motivated by the need for descriptive economy. That is, a theory of language in which the syntax is largely explainable in semantic terms might require fewer rules than one in which the two failed to correspond. And economy is, of course a standard requirement in any scientific theory. Note, however, that descriptive economy need not correlate with psychological reality. As Householder noted some years ago: A linguist who could not devise a better grammar than is present in any speakers brain ought to try another trade (Householder, 1966, p. 100). The postulation of the GC raises a number of problems. First, how should it be used? It

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differs in nature from the more generally assumed constraints, in that it cannot be used as an objective measure of success. One can tell whether a theory fulfils requirements of expressiveness, compositionality, accounting for semantic properties, and universality, without reference to any other theory. But the GC appears to function only as an evaluation device, in order to judge between theories or alternative formalizations. For example, Jackendoff invokes it to show that his own theory is superior to one using traditional quantificational logic. One is inevitably reminded of McCawleys comment (1982, p. 160) that it has become common for linguists to attempt to resolve disputes among competing analyses by drafting sweeping restrictions on grammars so as to give one of the competing analyses a legal monopoly. If, charitably, we assume that such an evaluation device is a useful one, we face further problems. Above all, how should one measure syntactic-semantic closeness? Jackendoff assumes that the notion is intuitively obvious, and never sets up clear criteria. Yet this enables him to invoke the GC when it suits him, but ignore it when it does not. For example, he uses it to motivate a close connection between major phrasal constituents and semantic structure constituents. Yet he rejects the strongest possible version of the compositionality of syntax vis-a-vis semantics, namely that every syntactic constituent in a sentence must correspond to an independent and identifiable piece of semantic structure. Instead, he espouses a medium version (p. 76), something one would not expect, given the GC. In addition, Jackendoffs analysis of a number of verbs in chapter 10 seems to virtually ignore the GC. For example, he criticizes traditional quantificational logic for bringing in variables twice when they occur only once in the syntax (p. 14), yet he repeats Amy in his analysis of Amy kept the doll (p. 192): [CAUSE

WJW,

WAY,,,, (DOLL1 3Lee AT,,,,WMWIN)I.

Let us suppose that it was possible to set up a correspondence index, i.e. a set of semantic-syntactic closeness criteria (e.g. preservation of embedding relations, same number of semantic and syntactic constituents, etc). How would we then manage to evaluate two theories which preserved different aspects of closeness? We would, it seems, be faced with all the problems of a trading relationship involved in simplicity metrics. Similarly, suppose that in testing out a theory on two languages, we found that one rated higher on the correspondence index than the other. Would we conclude that our correspondence index was unreliable? Or that we should alter our theory to bring about equal semantic-syntactic closeness in all languages? Or that languages genuinely differ in their level of transparency (i.e. clear form-meaning relationships)? There are no easy answers to these problems.

The cognitive constraint (CC). Jackendoff notes: There must be levels of mental representation at which information conveyed by language is compatible with information from other peripheral systems such as vision, nonverbal audition, smell, kinesthesia, and so forth (p. 16). This is simple common sense: we know that people can link up the smell, the sight, and the feel of an onion with the word onion, for example. Jackendoff, It is reasonable to make a simplifying assumption however, goes further. He continues: that, if true, places interesting constraints on the theory of mental processing. The Conceptual Structure Hypothesis. There is a single level of mental representation, conceptual structure, at which linguistic, sensory and motor information are compatible (p. 17).
The CC, then, is essentially commitment to the Conceptual Structure Hypothesisthe claim that input from all modalities is translated into one mental language. In other

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words, the word onion, or the sight of an onion, or the smell of an onion will each access the same conceptual representation, that of ONION. Jackendoff emphasizes that there is no logical necessity for the existence of such a unified level, but argues that At worst . . . the Conceptual Structure Hypothesis is a plausible idealization, at best, it is a strong unifying hypothesis about the structure of the mind (p. 17). Let us now consider what the CC buys Jackendoff. it, and how does he use it? In other words, why does he need

At the most practical level, it allows him to generalize from one modality to another. For example, he is able to point to the findings of Gestalt psychologists on object perception and generalize these to language. This is perfectly legitimate. It is sensible to use one modality as a source of interesting hypotheses about another, and can lead to important insights. One problem which arises, however, is that Jackendoff claims to have adopted a Structure approach. Yet many of the psychological findings which he cites relate to process, i.e. the actual behaviour of humans. For example, the process of object identification (i.e. perception/recognition) which looms large in his arguments does not tell us anything about the mental representation of objects. There might well be interesting similarities between recognition and storage: for example, one might identify objects by looking for those features which figure most prominently in a stored representation. But since Jackendoff has explicitly rejected a process approach, it is inconsistent to utilize psychological processes in his arguments. More problematic is Jackendoffs use of the CC as a constraint rather than a hypothesis. This leads him to make ambitious psychological claims. For example, The Cognitive Constraint, then, is a specific statement of the psychological reality of linguistic information (p. 18). However, as we noted earlier, the claim that there is a conceptual master-file of the type proposed by Jackendoff is certainly an unsolved question, and perhaps an unsolvable one, since the issue may not be an empirical one, but purely one of theoretical convenience. In these circumstances, one must reiterate that Jackendoffs adoption of the CC must be regarded as a simple matter of theoretical convenience. It is a convenient working hypothesis. Problems arise because his hypotheses are treated as constraints, and his constraints are given the status of axioms. A confusion of working hypotheses with constraints is in fact characteristic of contemporary linguistics. For example, Katz and Postals (1964) suggestion that transformational rules should never change meaning was in origin a working hypothesis. They note: The principle, it should be stressed, is not . . . a statement in linguistic theory, but rather it is a rule of thumb . . . (Katz and Postal, 1964, p. 157). As Partee (1972, p. 2) comments: The principle presented by Katz and Postal as an empirical hypothesis gained support very quickly, to the point where it was widely accepted as one of the more solidly established generalizations in linguistic theory and used as a criterion for T-rules. Combining the CC and CC. To conclude our discussion of these we need to distinguish sharply between the conventional constraints which are perhaps true constraints, in that they are requirements semantics must fulfil if it is to be taken seriously, and Jackendoffs which must be regarded as interesting working hypotheses. two constraints, then, on a semantic theory, which any theory of two extra constraints

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Let us therefore forget about the misleading word constraint and talk about two interesting working hypotheses: (1) That there is a close relationship between syntax and semantics (GC). (2) That experiences in any modality are integrated at a single level of conceptual structure (CC). These hypotheses are logically independent of one another, though some of Jackendoffs more ambitious claims are due to the fact that he uses one to support the other on the assumption that both are true. Note that each, if true, has interesting implications. The CC, taken alone, raises an interesting question of directionality. Suppose there is a reasonably close link between syntax and semantics. What is the direction of influence? There are at least five possibilities: (1) That the similarities are accidental (unlikely). (2) That syntactic structure is based on conceptual/semantic structure (Jackendoffs view). (3) That conceptual/semantic structure is based on syntactic structure (a Whorfian viewpoint not pursued by Jackendoff, though mentioned briefly in footnote 12, p. 242). (4) That convergence has taken place in order to minimize memory load and processing problems. That is, syntactic structure has partially assimilated itself to conceptual/semantic structure, and conceptual/semantic structure is strongly influenced by syntax. (This viewpoint is not pursued in depth by Jackendoff, though is mentioned as a possibility in chapter 10.) (5) That both semantic and syntactic structures are built by the same factory, using the same tools. The CC, if valid, supports the second directionality possibility, namely that conceptual/ semantic structure influences grammar rather than vice versa (and this, as we have seen, is Jackendoffs view). Furthermore, the CC suggests not only that we can use visual perception to find out about language, but also the reverse: that we can use language to develop theories about cognition in general. This is Jackendoffs claim. He regards it as the most important advance of the present work, for it integrates linguistic theory and methodology fully into the fabric of cognitive psychology (p. 211). This is a claim we must assess carefully. (b) The role of the real world In order to understand Jackendoffs viewpoint on the mind, we need to clarify relationship between the constructs he proposes and the real world.

the

Jackendoff repeatedly stresses that he is not concerned with the real world, but with the projected world, the world filtered to us by our brain/mind. He argues (chapter 2) that we cannot perceive the real world as it is, as is shown by the fact that we are unable We have conscious access only to the projected to overcome certain visual illusions. world-the world as unconsciously organized by the mind (p. 29). The real world simply serves as one kind of fodder for the organizing processes that give rise to the projected world (p. 29). For example, electromagnetic radiation in the real world is experienced as #color# in the projected world. (Projected world entities are placed between hatched brackets.) Language therefore conveys information about the projected world, not the real world, since the theory claims that our experimental subjects can speak only of the projected world (p. 3 1).

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Jackendoff insists, then, on the importance of dealing with the projected world rather than the real world. Furthermore, he claims that he is doing something novel and important in applying the real world/projected world distinction to the semantics of natural language. This is all somewhat puzzling, and his claim to originality is odd. Most linguists are well aware that our brains/minds structure and reorganize real world input into mental models which may well differ from reality (e.g. Lyons, 1981, p. 165). Indeed, Jackendoff appears to be demolishing a straw man with all the vigour of a hungry horse. Even those semanticists who use the term real world would be likely to agree that it is simply a convenient shorthand for the external world as perceived by humans. Since humans all live in the same world, and have similarly structured brains/minds, the illusions and distortions emphasized by Jackendoff will presumably affect most people equally, or with only minor variations (e.g. some people are color-blind). Therefore the notion real world seems to be a harmless, conventional shorthand for projected or experienced world. Furthermore, the notion projected world brings with it a bundle of further problems. In particular, how do we know that peoples projected worlds are the same? Jackendoff grants that language must be subjective, but states that the fact that we are all human beings, with similar mental structure, guarantees that in a vast range of useful cases our projections are for most purposes compatible. Thus we can reasonably operate under the assumption that we are talking about the same things (p. 31). What then is the point of Jackendoffs insistence on the projected world? His overt purpose is to question the centrality to natural language semantics of the notions of truth and reference as traditionally conceived (p. 29), since he claims that truth is generally regarded as a relationship between a certain subset of sentences . . . and the real world, reference is regarded as a relationship between expressions in a language and things in the real world that these expressions refer to (p. 29). Since Jackendoff insists that the reference of linguistic expressions is to the projected world, not the real world, he feels justified in rejecting outright any theory of semantics which talks about the real world, something he regards as a characteristic of truth-conditional theories. In fact, truth-conditional models normally refer to possible worlds not to real worlds. There seems little difference between Jackendoffs projected world and a possible world, except for the fact that a possible world is generally regarded as determinate, i.e. a fixed totality of facts. If this was Jackendoffs complaint, then he could have equally well argued for indeterminacy in the real world, instead of setting up a projected world. However, Jackendoff rejects possible worlds also, partly on grounds of determinacy. Yet in spite of his condemnation of theories involving truth, he himself appeals to truth and truth values (pp. 105,201). This is both puzzling and paradoxical. We may suggest that Jackendoffs real motivation for concentrating on a projected world is a less overt one: once he has established that humans live in a projected world, not the real world, then he can formulate the composition of this projected world in a way that suits his theories. Since the projected world is a mental world, Jackendoff can then assume that it is indistinguishable from conceptual structure. He does this by making what is to him the reasonable assumption that the mapping between projected mental information and the projected world is an isomorphism. That is, the character of #color#, for example, is to be accounted for directly in terms of the information constituting COLOR (p. 34). (According to his notational conventions, projected world entities are put between hatched brackets, and conceptual structure in upper case.)

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In this section on Basic Issues, then, Jackendoff has made a number of assumptions which are crucial for underpinning his arguments, assumptions which he claims are reasonable, but are in fact probably unreasonable, and certainly insufficiently reasoned. To summarize, he has set up the grammatical constraint largely on the grounds that it would be perverse not to take as a working assumption that language is a relatively efficient encoding of the information it conveys (p. 14). He sets up the cognitive constraint on the grounds that it is reasonable to make a simplifying assumption that . . . there is a single level of mental representation, Conceptual Structure, at which linguistic, sensory and motor information are compatible (p. 17). And he further makes the reasonable assumption that the mapping between projected mental information and the projected world is an isomorphism (p. 34). This, then, is the insubstantial infrastructure on which he will proceed to build his cognitive house of cards. II. Word meaning Chapters 7 and 8 deal specifically with word meaning, and these chapters are in some ways the most interesting in the book. However, even though only these two chapters are explicitly devoted to the lexicon, he lays the basis for his views on the topic in earlier chapters, in particular in chapters 3 and 5. This section of the review therefore will concentrate on chapters 7 and 8, though will mention topics brought in in earlier chapters. (a) Prototype theory Jackendoffs views on word meaning are perhaps revolutionary for a linguistic semanticist, since linguists in general have tended to disapprove of prototype theory (though see Pulman, 1983). Jackendoff, however, attempts to show how a version of prototype theory could be incorporated into a theory of semantics. Jackendoffs views are hinted at from early in the book. In chapter 3, he argues, following Gestalt psychologists, that it is impossible to establish a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the recognition of #thing# hood (tokens), since there are cases when we cannot be sure whether we are dealing with a single #thing# or not. For example, if subjects are shown a rectangle with a shaded area on either side of it, it is often unclear whether the two shaded portions constitute a single #thing# extending under the rectangle, or two #things# either side. People make graded judgements, yes+not sure+ no about such phenomena. These judgements are made creatively, rather than in accordance with some finite set of templates, and are influenced by a persons needs, intentions and knowledge. In chapter 5, he notes that the lack of firm divide lines between visual objects can be generalized to verbal behaviour, both as regards tokens (individual things) and types (categories). Here also, judgements are made creatively, and not in accordance with some fixed set of conditions. These observations, then, lay the groundwork for Jackendoffs chapters on word meaning, where following others such as Lakoff (1972) he points out the problems inherent in lexical analysis, namely that it is impossible to establish sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. This has proved futile because of the two crucial problems of fuzziness, and family resemblances. To illustrate fuzziness, Jackendoff quotes Labovs example (1973) of peoples inability to decide whether a particular container was a bowl, a cup, or a vase. They made creative, graded judgements on a yes-not sure -no scale, with no firm boundary between the containers. As an example of family resemblances, he quotes Wittgensteins well-known

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example of games (1953), in which each game has certain characteristics shared by other games, but there is no common factor unifying them all.

likely to be

For dealing with word meaning, therefore, Jackendoff espouses a version of prototype theory. Jackendoff argues, like other proponents of prototype theory (e.g. Rosch, 1975), that people deal with word meaning by analysing the characteristics of a protypical instance, and then matching possible new instances against this prototype. That is, a decision as to whether something is a bird will depend on how well it matches up to a prototypical bird, such as a robin, which has a beak, feathers, wings, flies, builds a nest and so on. Prototype theories seem to be a convincing answer to the fuzziness and family resemblance problem. They have, however, run into a number of problems and criticisms. It seems to be as hard to specify the characteristics of many prototypes as it was to specify necessary and sufficient conditions. Also, it is not clear whether the prototype characteristics are used for identification (e.g. a bull may be identified by a ring through its nose) or represent codified knowledge (e.g. most people know that bulls are male). Above all, there has been little attempt to sort these multifarious features into a coherent structure. Most prototype theories have simply listed bundles of features which characterize the prototype, with little attempt to distinguish between them. One of Jackendoffs innovations is to try and distinguish between the different features of the prototype. He suggests that any prototype is likely to involve at least three different types of conditions. First, necessary conditions: for example, it is probably necessary for a daughter to be female. However, by themselves, necessary conditions are inadequate. In addition, we need centrality conditions. These cope with gradability by specifying central characteristics: for example, there are good and bad examples of adult in that a man of 25 is more of an adult than a 17 year old, and some reds are redder than others. Finally, we need typicality conditions in order to cope with family resemblances. These specify typical characteristics, rather than necessary ones. For example, birds typically fly, though it is still possible to regard an ostrich as a bird, even though it does not fly. Jackendoff suggests that words differ in the kinds of condition associated with them. For example, kinship terms such as brother, father, mostly have necessary conditions, colours tend to have centrality conditions, whereas objects such as apples have mainly typicality conditions. The interest of Jackendoffs proposals, however, lies not only in his attempt to distinguish these different kinds of conditions, but also in the mechanisms which he proposes for dealing with ambiguous situations and cases in which the various conditions clash. Here he invokes the notion of preference rules. Jackendoff explains the notion of a preference rule system by outlining some of Wertheimers (1923) findings on the perceptual principles which organize collections of shapes into larger units. Wertheimer noted that shapes tended to form a visual group if they were close together (i.e. a proximity principle), or if they were the same shape, size or colour (i.e. a similarity principle). Such principles appear to be generalizable across sensory modalities. For Jackendoff, however, the crucial point is the way in which these principles interact: when they reinforce one another, the resulting grouping intuition is quite strong. But when they conflict, the resulting intuition is ambiguous. In short, the principles of proximity and similarity are both graded conditions, nether of which is sufficient and neither of which is necessary to bring about a grouping judgement. The judgement that emerges depends on the relative strength with which the principles apply.

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Jackendoff then moves on to a more complex example, principles of grouping for music. He notes that there are grouping preference rules of two types. On the one hand, there are local rules, i.e. those which attend to only a small part of the structure at any one time, and these include elaborated versions of the principles of proximity and similarity. On the other hand, there are global rules, which apply to the structure as a whole, for example, we find one principle which prefers subdivided groups to contain two parts of roughly equal length, and another which prefers constituent groups to be parallel in internal structure. The concept of a musical group, therefore, is revealed as a complex interweaving of well-formedness conditions and preference rules (p. 134). These rules of grouping have all the properties we have come to expect in a word meaning (p. 135). Although some of the rules are necessary conditions there is no subset of the rules that is both necessary and sufficient. We note that stereotypes are nowhere directly described in the theory-they arise from the maximal reinforcement of the preference rules. In brief, such a preference rule system has the correct formal properties to account for the characteristics of word meaning, in particular to cope with the gradation of judgements and with the existence of exceptions to many apparently defining conditions. We can thus include in word meaning all those conditions that people seem to consider crucial, such as two-leggedness in humans, or stripedness in tigers-they are simply marked as typicality conditions rather than as necessary conditions. Word meaning, then is a large heterogeneous collection of such conditions dealing with form, function, purpose, personality, or whatever else is salient. As the importance of information for individuation and categorization drops off, it shades towards encyclopaedia rather than dictionary information, with no sharp line between the two types. Jackendoff For example, shows how one might cope with exceptions in terms of typicality a bird has a typicality condition CAN FLY: conditions.

l?EN (where P (x) means that x is a preferred

or typical condition).

FLJ
\r

Now robins, being instances of birds, inherit the feature P (CAN FLY). However, ostriches which cannot fly must be marked as an exception. Now suppose Roberts the robin cannot fly, but Ollie the ostrich can, we would need to mark Roberts as being an exception to P (CAN FLY) and Ollie as being an exception to the exceptionality of ostriches, so we shall have a double exception:

/ TYPE ROBIN [ INSTANCE f TOKEN ROBERTS INSTANCE OF CANNOT FLY

[ !gN

FLY)]

OF [BIRD] I

TYPE OSTRICH INSTANCE OF [BIRD] _ [ P (CANNOT FLY) f TOKEN OLLIE INSTANCE OF [OSTRICH] CAN FLY

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Such taxonomies can be further revised to express the notion of two subordinates being at the same level in the taxonomy (e.g. robins and ostriches). We can then state a preference rule which says that if two [TYPES] are arranged as sister subordinates, then the [TYPES] are preferably disjunct. Such a rule creates pressure toward modifying sister TYPES so that they are indeed disjoint. For example, the primary color names in a language will tend to adopt non-overlapping ranges of application, together exhausting the color solid (though there are of course numerous counterexamples, which shows that we are dealing with a preference rule rather than an absolute condition). Further preference rules say that a taxonomic arrangement of TYPES is more stable than a heterogeneous collection of subordinates: given two subordinates, it is preferable to organize them as sisters or as hierarchically embedded. By this view, then, we note that new concepts can not only be formed, but in addition these new concepts create pressures on existing concepts in an effort to make their own niche in the taxonomy. An accumulation of instabilities here and there in a conceptual system may sometimes be relieved by a more global restructuring, or one may simply learn to live with local instabilities. (This is, of course, simply as formalization of certain aspects of semantic field theory: and the notion of restructuring is a familiar one in historical linguistics.) So far, all Jackendoffs examples have referred to nouns. He then goes on to show that verb meanings have similar characteristics. For example, verbs of motion, e.g. walk, run, spring, share a set of necessary conditions having to do with travelling in physical space. However, each will have its own centrality condition of manner, specifying a characteristic gait and speed. The verb see provides an example of the need for typicality conditions. Take the sentences: I must have looked at that a dozen times, but I never saw it. I must have seen that a dozen times, but I never noticed it. Linguists have devoted a considerable amount of time to a discussion of whether we are dealing with one or two lexical items see. According to the view adopted by Jackendoff, we have one lexical item see which has two typicality conditions, that xs gaze goes to y and that y entered xs awareness. In normal stereotypical seeing, both are satisfied. In the case of hallucinations, the first is broken; in the case of looking at, but not seeing, the second is broken. In brief, Jackendoff has recapitulated the family resemblance argument, showing that preference rules apply to verbs as well as nouns. How are we to view this section? Jackendoffs attempt to deal with the wilderness of word meaning is interesting, and even exciting from the psycholinguistic point of view. It has a number of advantages. It not only attempts to build a prototype model into a formal system, but it also tries to come to grips with the plethora of different conditions associated with any prototype. Furthermore, Jackendoffs application of the notion of preference rules to word meaning is new and stimulating, even though, as he notes, preference rules are well known in linguistics under different names such as perceptual strategies, or conversational maxims. In particular, these preference rules appear to offer new insights into the analysis of verb meaning. But Jackendoffs proposals concerning word meaning are not, alas, a panacea. Let us consider some of the problems involved. The first problem is that Jackendoffs proposals inevitably suffer from all the defects found in any theory which involves lexical decomposition (Pulman, 1983): it turns out to

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be just as hard to specify the characteristics of a prototype as it is to find a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. This is particularly so in Jackendoffs case, since he insists on necessary conditions. These are notoriously difficult to find. There appear to be coreless concepts, that is, words which just do not have a hard core of meaning. As Armstrong et al. (1983) note: Its not at all hard to convince the man on the street that there are three legged, lame, toothless, albino tigers, that are tigers all the same. Of course, the tigers are growing less prototypical, but what keeps them tigers? (1983, p. 296). A second problem is that it is likely to be quite hard to distinguish between the various kinds of conditions Jackendoff proposes. For example, is it a necessary condition of a table that it has legs? Or is this a typicality condition? And is an inability to speak likely to be a centrality condition or a typicality condition for a baby? A third problem is that Jackendoff does not distinguish between linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge. In his view, which may well be a realistic one, these two types of knowledge merge into one another. This means that the number of different conditions we must set up is likely to be indefinitely large. A fourth problem is the immense power of the proposed preference rules, and their lack of predictive ability. This is due to the interaction between preference rules of different strengths. Rule strength, as Jackendoff notes, is virtually impossible to quantify: we would be faced with a computational explosion. In particular, he notes, the balancing of local (bottom-up) rules vs global (top-down) rules is a formidable obstacle to a completely formalizable theory of preference rule interaction (p. 139). Moreover, since, as noted above, Jackendoff makes no distinction between linguistic knowledge and encyclopaedic knowledge there is no end to the typicality conditions which these preference rules have to consider. To borrow Goughs comment on perceptual strategies (1971, p. 269), one wonders what couldnt be accomplished with an armful of preference rules. A fifth problem is the level at which these rules come into play. As we noted earlier, Jackendoff claims to be dealing with structure, rather than process. Yet the interaction of preference rules appears to operate at the level of processing. At the level of structure, all we need are the sets of conditions which apply. The interaction of these conditions under the preference rules is something which is likely to occur as part of linguistic processing: for example, is that funny-shaped container in front of me a dish or a finger-bowl or a cup? Indeed, Jackendoff seems to have fallen into the trap of all prototype theories which typically confound features required for the identification of an entity with intrinsic properties which are perhaps invisible. Jackendoffs failure even to discuss this issue is in line with the structure-process confusion which persists throughout the book. A sixth problem, which is the most curable one, is a straight lack of information. Above all, one would have liked more examples beyond the overworked example of bird for nouns, and the single example of see for verbs. Unfortunately, however, no more examples are given. In the final section, Applications, Jackendoff appears to have forgotten about the existence of preference rules, even though there are times when a preference rule explanation might have been appropriate. This can be illustrated by his treatment of the verb go, when he argues that go expressing motion is a different lexical item fron go expressing extent:
Amy wentfrom Denver to Indianapolis (motion). Highway 36goesfrom Denver to Indianapolis (extent).

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This is particularly problematical in cases where the meaning is ambiguous between the two: The Ganges goes from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. The po wer of prayer goes round the world. Considering Jackendoffs preference rule explanation of the different types of see (p. 150), it seems somewhat surprising that no mention is made of preference rules in relation to go. The different uses of this verb seem to be fairly obvious candidates for such treatment. That is, one could possibly cope with all instances of go in terms of broken typicality conditions. For example, prototypical go might fulfil a number of typicality conditions, such as, say: (Pl) (P2) (P3) (P4) (PS) Xmoves. X starts at point A. X ends at point B. X traverses the path between A and B. Xis no longer at point A.

Thus we get: Mary wentfrom Denver to Indianapolis (prototypical go). High way 36 goes from Denver to Indianapolis (P 1 and P5 broken). Mary went along the road (P3 broken). Theprice of mangoes went up (P4 broken). The problem, from Jackendoffs point of view is that Pl is a necessary condition for motion go. However, as we noted earlier, it might not be possible to specify any necessary conditions. If so, then it is reasonable to cope with go in terms of typicality conditions and preference rules. Jackendoffs failure to even mention this possibility in the Applications section is symptomatic of the way in which the various parts of the book do not intermesh as they should, but seem to have been written in isolation from one another. To summarize, this section on word meaning encapsulates exciting insights which no psycholinguist or semanticist can afford to ignore. At the same time, it raises a host of very real problems, which need considerable attention.
III. Cognitive Foundations of semantics

For Jackendoff, conceptual structure, which is for him isomorphous with semantic structure, consists of a set of primitives and rules for combining them. His first major task in this section, then, is that of identifying conceptual primitives. His second is to outline the principles by which they are combined, something which for Jackendoff crucially involves the syntax of the sentence, since the Grammatical Constraint requires a fairly transparent syntax-semantics mapping. In this section, therefore, both these issues will be discussed in turn. (a) Conceptualprimitives Jackendoffs starting point for identifying conceptual primitives is the phenomenon of pragmatic anaphora, i.e. proforms referring to phenomena external to language. Following Hankamer and Sag (1976), Jackendoff notes that there are many different sorts of pragmatic anaphora. We find, for example, I bought that yesterday, where that refers to a #thing# Your coat is here, where here refers to a #place#; He went thataway, where thataway refers to a #direction+ Can you do that? where do that

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refers to an #action#; That had better not happen again, where that. . . happen refers to an #event#, and so on. The projected world entities #thing#, #place#. #action#, #event+& have as their conceptual structure counterparts the conceptual components [THING], [PLACE], [DIRECTION], [ACTION], [EVENT]. (Square brackets designate a conceptual constituent, defined as a unitary piece of mental representation (p. 42).) These ontological categories are not just a random collection. Each one correlates with a major linguistic category: a [THING] is represented by an NP; a [PLACE] or a [DIRECTION] is represented by a PP; an [ACTION] by a VP; and an [EVENT] by an S. And each of these linguistic categories can undergo similar linguistic processes. For example, a wh-question can be formed on each, and the wh-question can receive a reduced answer of the appropriate syntactic category, as in Where is my coat? which could receive a PP such as In the bathtub as an answer. One can also quantify over each, as in Bill picked up everything that Jack picked up, and Bill went everywhere that Jack went, and so on. Jackendoff notes that it is difficult to reduce these ontological categories further, and argues that a more productive approach would be to abandon the goal of reduction and claim that the ontological categories expressed by the pragmatic anaphors are all present as primitives of conceptual structure (p. 51). The reader is cautioned against imagining that the few examples given exhaust the ontological categories available. They are simply those for which linguistic and visual evidence is most prominent. A different sort of case, he suggests, would be That sounds like Brahms which motivates a category of #sounds#. He notes: The level of conceptual structure must contain a rich range of ontological categories, corresponding to different categories of projected entities. . . . The total set of ontological categories must be universal: it constitutes the basic dimension along which humans can organize their experience, and if a language other than English were hence it cannot be learned (p. 56). Furthermore, to display different varieties of pragmatic anaphora, this would not lead to an argument that speakers of this language have different conceptual structures . . . only that this language happens to have proforms for a different selection of ontological categories (P. 56). There are two points to comment number of ontological categories. on here: first, the question of innateness; second, the

Over Jackendoffs claim that the major ontological categories are universal and innate, since he uses reference to establish the categories, it would not be surprising to find that there was considerable overlap between languages, since humans all live in similar worlds (real or projected). However, even if these categories proved to be universal, this would not necessarily involve innateness. On the number issue, the possibility of indefinitely proliferating ontological categories is a worrying one, and one would like some guidance as to what these further categories might be, and how they might be constrained. Jackendoffs only comment in this chapter (as far as I could find) was in parenthesis on p. 51, where he speaks of various others such as SOUND, SMELL and TIME. This is all somewhat confusing. Is Jackendoff really claiming that anything to which proforms can refer is a universal, innate, ontological since he category? This is the impression given. Yet obviously this is not his intention, asserts that the existence of a particular ontological category . . . is an empirical psychological

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issue, to be determined on the basis of its value in explaining behaviour of humans and other organisms (p. 52).

the experience

and

Since Jackendoff speaks of the existence of a particular ontological category as an empirical psychological issue, it may at this point be relevant to consider the evidence which he brings to bear on one of these categories in the final section of the book, which deals with applications of the theory. The category in question is that which has so far been labeled DIRECTION. It is somewhat surprising to find that in chapter 9, DIRECTION is considered to be a subcategory of PATH, since PATH is subdivided into bounded paths (e.g. to the river), directions (e.g. towards the river) and routes (e.g. along the river). This is a problem. Should one assume that Jackendoff failed to inform us that major ontological categories can be subcategories of super-major categories? This seems unlikely, since Jackendoff claims that only one can be present as the major feature of a conceptual constituent (p. 51). A further problem is that Jackendoffs original example of DIRECTION, John ran thataway could be interpreted either as John ran towards that point X (direction) or John ran along that route I (route). The simplest solution to this discrepancy is simply to assume that Jackendoff has inadvertently changed the name of a category: perhaps the major ontological category referred to as DIRECTION in chapter 3 has simply changed its name to PATH in chapter 9. This seems plausible, as it fits in with a single unexplained comment in chapter 4 that prepositions typically map into PLACE and PATH. (This type of inconsistency occurs several times in the book, and is the cause of considerable frustration.) Assuming, then that PATH is the major ontological category originally called DIRECTION, Jackendoff claims to have found an interesting bit of nonverbal evidence for the psychological reality of paths (p. 169). This evidence is that an intelligent animal such as a dog, when confronted with food behind a transparent barrier will run in a smooth curve round the fence to the new food. Jackendoff claims that an animal who behaves in such a way must be able to formulate concepts of spatial organization that fall under . . . the major ontological category of paths (p. 170). If one accepts dogs running in curves as an argument for the psychological reality of paths, then one could presumably proceed to argue that dogs have similar innate ontological categories and conceptual well-formedness rules as humans on the grounds that they can respond to all the types of pragmatic anaphora that humans can: Fetch that, Fido (thing); Bring it here, Bonzo (place); Naughty dog, dont do that again (action), and so on. In brief, Jackendoffs way of dealing with this empirical psychological issue is not convincing. Overall, Jackendoffs conceptual primitives seem to be based, albeit indirectly, on perception. We are left, therefore, with the unsatisfactory impression that Jackendoff could propose and justify as conceptual primitives just about anything that can be perceived by humans and referred to in language. (b) Syntax-semantics mapping Jackendoffs proposed semantic framework is at Taking a version of X-bar theory, he argues for syntax and conceptual structure (p. 67). A crucial corresponding to each lexical category (V, N, A, (S, NP, AP, PP) which maximizes the possible

first sight refreshingly straightforward. a quite simple relationship between characteristic of X-bar theory is that P) there is a major phrasal category modifiers of the lexical category. In

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Jackendoffs semantic theory, every major phrasal constituent corresponds to a conceptual constituent that belongs to a major ontological category (i.e. [THING], [PLACE], [EVENT], etc.), and the lexical head X of a major phrasal constituent corresponds to a function in conceptual structure. The argument places are filled by the readings of the major phrasal constituents strictly subcategorized by X, and some of these arguments themselves have internal structure which duplicates the syntactic structure. For example, The man put the book on the table would have an approximate conceptual structure as follows: EVENT ( PUT THING CTHEMAN

1 [
,

THING

THEBOOK

1
,

PLACE ( ON THING THE TABLE !;I ) )

The semantics of the head determines which major ontological category is expressed by a particular major phrasal constituent. A verb such asput maps onto an [EVENT], whereas stative verbs such as know, believe, map into [STATES]. Nouns typically map into [THINGS], e.g. table, house, but not necessarily, e.g. destruction maps into [EVENT], and mile maps into [AMOUNT]. Adjectives typically map into [PROPERTIES] and prepositions into [PLACE]. The relationship between syntactic and ontological categories is not crucially one to one, as variation among languages in their repertoire of syntactic categories does not damage the theory. According to Jackendoff, what must be universal is (1) the distinction between lexical categories and major phrasal categories and (2) a system of subcategorization in which lexical categories subcategorize major phrasal categories. This framework, Jackendoff notes, uses the same formal device as first-order logic (function-argument structure), but with a much richer range of function-argument types. Jackendoff notes, however, that not all conceptual relations are of the functionargument type. Modifiers of various kinds are not strictly subcategorized by the head of the phrase, and so need a different treatment. Jackendoff demonstrates that his theory is able to capture the fact that restrictive modification works uniformly across categories. In Jackendoffs notation, the modifier itself forms a conceptual constituent, which in turn forms part of the conceptual constituent expressed by the major phrasal category that contains it. For example, red in the NP the red hat, straight in the PP straight down the street, quietly in the AP quietly obnoxious, quickly in the S Jack quickly dropped the diamonds would all have parallel representations: e.g. c.f.

This then is the basic outline of Jackendoffs model. On the question of the compositionality of syntax with regard to semantic structure, Jackendoff opts for an intermediate version. His theory is clearly not in line with the weakest version of compositionality,

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in which each part of the sentence somehow contributes to the whole, but in no clearly specified way, nor does it adopt the strongest possible version, in which every syntactic constituent corresponds to an independent and identifiable contiguous piece of semantic structure. Instead he has opted for an intermediate version, which is nearer to the strong than to the weak: that every major phrasal constituent corresponds to a conceptual constituent in the semantic structure of the sentence. The strongest version cannot be maintained, since, with one exception, there are no intermediate single- and double-primed phrase categories that correspond to conceptual constituents. (The one exception is the conceptual category [ACTION] which corresponds to VP (V).) Jackendoff explains his viewpoint by saying that the extra phrase categories help make up for the lack of differentiation in syntactic dependency compared to the variety of semantic dependencies, noting in support of this that the syntax tends to group modifiers of different types under different intermediate nodes. Given the Grammatical Constraint, however, we might have expected him to espouse the strongest version. Moreover the conceptual category [ACTION] will cause considerable problems, as will be shown when the conceptual constituents relating to the major ontological categories are examined in the next section. Jackendoffs semantic theory is, then, appealing in outline due to its apparent clarity and simplicity. However, as he has so far given only a few straightforward examples, we need to examine whether the theory can cope with less highly selected instances. Can it remain simple and clear? Or will it acquire the collection of bells, knobs and whistles which tend to attach themselves to simple systems when faced with complex data? In addition, does Jackendoff give sufficient information to allow us to reliably translate English into his system, or will the translation remain something that only he is able to undertake with a mixture of intuition and ad hoc guesses? In brief, is the system consistent, well-defined, and equipped with clearcut rules of inference? Let us therefore turn to the section which purports to deal with applications of the theory.

IV. Applications

Disappointingly, this whole section appears not to have been fully integrated into the rest of the book. One suspects that Jackendoff has simply tried to incorporate several previous papers into the book without fully checking on their relationship to the parts that have gone before. Indeed, as Jackendoff admits in his notes, the three chapters which make up this section are all recastings of material originally published elsewhere. Chapter 9 deals with the semantics of spatial expressions, and chapter IO extends this to other semantic fields. These two chapters, which are essentially revised versions of Jackendoff (1976, 1977b, 1978) fall together as a unit and fit reasonably well into the fabric of the book. Chapter 11, on the other hand, is a rewriting of Jackendoff (1975, 1980) which deals with beliefs and representations, and its connection with the rest of the book is not particularly clear, its main link being extensive appeal to the GC and the CC. Owing to the enormous amount of material in this section, it is impossible to deal with all the issues raised by Jackendoff. The discussion therefore has been restricted to his attempts to deal with the conceptual constituents [EVENTS] and [ACTIONS], which Jackendoff regards as being of major importance earlier in the book, since these major ontological categories were highlighted in his discussion of pragmatic anaphora, [EVENTS] corresponding to Ss, and [ACTIONS] to VPs.

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(a) Events Jackendoff discusses [EVENTS] in chapter 9, which deals with the semantics of spatial expressions. He begins by positing a major division in the class of spatial sentences into those that express [EVENTS] and those that express [STATES]-a distinction alluded to in passing in chapter 4 (p. 68). Since events happen, but states do not, he regards the what happens test as a clear linguistic test (p. 170):

What happened was that the mouse ran up the clock [EVENT]. ? What happened was that the rug lay on the floor [STATE].
We are immediately faced with a problem, in that the what happened test seems to be fairly unreliable. As we saw, Jackendoff uses this test as an [EVENT] vs [STATE] diagnostic, claiming that EVENT verbs pass, but STATE verbs fail. Yet most state verbs can pass this test if the duration of the state is specified: The storm blew the rug off the wall. What happened was that it lay on the floor for a week. This is partly due to the ambiguity of happen which can mean either This event occurred or, alternatively, The result of this event was. It is also partly due to the fact that states of restricted duration can be regarded as events-a fact which Jackendoff exploits in his analysis of stay and remain as events:

What happened was that the bird stayed in its nest.

The assumption here, presumably, perhaps until its eggs had hatched. is that the bird stayed in its nest for a limited duration,

Jackendoff appears not to realize that stay and remain pass the what happened test only when they deal with events of limited duration, since he regards these verbs as intrinsically event verbs. Yet it is possible to find examples of stay and remain which seem to be true states, and these examples fail the what happened test:

Algernon remained an unbeliever. ? What happened was that Algernon remained an unbeliever. Twiggy stayed thin. ? What happened was that Twiggy stayed thin.
A similar [CAUSE problem arises in chapter 10, where Jackendoff analyzes the verb keep as as in Louise kept Fred in the attic. But what about Louise Lent STAY]], kept rabbits, which surely fails the what happened test? (? What happened was that

Louise kept rabbits.)

These examples suggest that Jackendoffs confidence in the fundamental distinction between EVENTS AND STATES is misplaced, or at least, cannot be diagnosed by the what happened test. Furthermore, since earlier in the book Jackendoff claims that the existence of a particular ontological category is an empirical psychological issue, it is interesting to note that some recent research on child language suggests that the distinction is one which children have to learn (McShane et al., in press). In brief, Jackendoffs treatment of [EVENTS] so far is unconvincing, in that he has not shown either that it is an innate ontological category, or even that he can satisfactorily identify [EVENTS]. Another argument used by Jackendoff over the [STATE] vs [EVENT] distinction is equally unsatisfactory. He argues against an analysis in which one regards [STATES] as basic, and [EVENTS] as subportions of states, or successions of states, as frequently

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found in the literature. Jackendoff argues that GO cannot be treated as expressing a change of state from one position to another, claiming (among other objections) that whatever the particulars of the path, GO expresses the traversal of every point of it (p. 174). Yet this is certainly not true of all uses of GO. Consider: The price of mangoes has gone up. This is likely to specify that the price of mangoes was X but has jumped to Y. Unfortunately for the mango buyers, the gap between the prices was left untraversed. Numerous other sentences are ambiguous as to whether GO implies traversal, as in The situafion has gone from bad to worse. Was this a slow decline, or a sudden leap? As noted earlier, Jackendoff might have been able to cope with this problem if he had made some reference to preference rules, but this type of solution apparently did not occur to him. Jackendoff runs into yet more trouble with his [EVENT]/[STATE] distinction in his treatment of CAUSE. He begins innocuously enough by proposing that the function CAUSE permits either a [THING] or an [EVENT] as its first argument: John made us laugh. CAUSE (Lg JOHN, LentWE LAUGW)I. [Even, Johns blowing bubbles made us laugh. WE LAUGH])]. [ Event CAUSE &vent JOHN BLOW BUBBLES], [Even, This is, on the face of it, not implausible as a treatment of CAUSE, even though it is unclear how he arrived at this representation, or what inferences we can draw from it. More problematic, however, is Jackendoffs claim that the second argument of CAUSE is explicitly an [EVENT], not a [STATE] (p. 177). He presents two alternative analyses for Amy put the flowers in the vase:
Event CAUSE ([Thing
([Thing

IEvent

CAUSE

GO FLOWERS19[Path INTo VASE1)I )I * AMYI 9[event ([Thing AMYI9LateBE ([Thing FLOWERS19[place VASE1) 111. IN

Although he notes that either is superficially plausible (p. 177), he regards the latter as odd-sounding: what Amy really did was bring about an event whose end-state is the situation in question. This is invariably the case in causative sentences that appear to have a [STATE] as a second argument. Thus I will maintain that the second argument of CAUSE is an [EVENT] (p. 177-8). For further information he refers to Jackendoff (1976). This treatment is, however, inconsistent with his treatment of prepositions: a preposition such as into expressed both a path-function and a place-function (p. 163) where we need: [Path ( [Place IN ( [Thing TO VASE1)I )I. Since [PATHS] are related to [EVENTS], and [PLACES] related to [STATES], then it seems that correspondingly, for put one needs to specify both an Event GO and a State BE. Even if we accept Jackendoffs argument that end-states need not be explicitly mentioned for a verb such as put, it seems likely that we would need to posit one for verbs of creation such as paint, carve, create, compose, where the end-state is a critical part of the meaning. It is also odd that Jackendoff does not feel it necessary to specify an end-state for a number of sentences analyzed in chapter 10. He treats as simple events: Elise became a mother. The coach changed into a pumpkin. The coach remained a pumpkin. Sol made Gary a celebrity. Sol kept Gary a celebrity.

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To summarize, Jackendoffs treatment of [EVENTS] has in no way convinced us that we are dealing with an innate ontological category which has psychological reality. It may be that the [EVENT]/[STATE] dichotomy is a useful one in the semantic description of English, but, if so, its role needs to be specified with considerably more care than in this chapter. Furthermore, this section on [EVENTS] reveals serious inconsistencies and gaps in his system. One begins to suspect that Jackendoff is simply supplying an idiosyncratic translation of English into a pseudo-logical system which only he can manipulate.

Even if, charitably, we accepted Jackendoffs [EVENT] vs [STATE] distinction, there are further problems in his treatment of [ACTIONS]. This is perhaps the oddest and most ad hoc part of this chapter. [ACTION] was regarded as a major ontological category in earlier sections of the book. In chapter 3, he claims that The conceptual distinctness of DIRECTION, EVENT, ACTION, MANNER, and AMOUNT can be demonstrated (p. 51). Of these major ontological categories, he asserts that only one can be present as the major feature of a conceptual constituent (p. 51). Yet in chapter 9, Jackendoff argues that sentences that express [ACTIONS] are a subset of those that express [EVENTS] (p. 179), which appears to directly contradict his claim that only one major ontological category can be present at a time. Jackendoffs assertion that [ACTIONS] are a subset of [EVENTS] is based on two diagnostics. He argues that what X did sentences, a diagnostic for VPs and therefore [ACTIONS], are a subset of what happened sentences, his diagnostic for [EVENTS]: Thepig ran away [ACTION] + [EVENT]. What happened was that the pig ran away.

What thepig did was run away. c. f. Fred heard about the accident [EVENT]. What happened was that Fred heard about the accident. *What Fred did was hear about the accident.
This diagnostic seems to work for the majority of actions, but unfortunately for Jackendoff, there is a small set of verbs which require a mixture of experiencer + actor as subject. These fail the what happened [EVENT] test, but pass the what X did [ACTION] test:

Fred endured the pain. *What happened was that Fred endured the pain. What Fred did was endure the pain. Louise adored Bill. *What happened was that Louise adored Bill. What Louise did was adore Bill.
Perhaps it is as well that Jackendoffs action test fails, because we then have no need to enter into a detailed discussion of the baroque extravagances which he claims to need in order to formalize sentences contajning [ACTION]. Departing from his usual functionargument structure, he brings in an ACTOR:
ACTOR [ EVent
Thmg MAN

i, 1

[ Acuon CAUSE(

i, [Even, GO(

[Thing BOOK),

[Path TO

ON

TABLE1

) 1) 1 1 .

This clumsy

derivation

requires

a special

well-formedness

rule (or rule of conceptual

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reanalysis) (p. 180). Thus [ACTION] is quite odd: it requires the special formulation of an [ACTOR], and it corresponds to a double-primed category VP (V): with this one exception, there are no conceptual constituents corresponding to single- and double-primed categories (p. 76). Not only does Jackendoff appear to have abandoned the GC, but, in addition, his formalization with its double event structure is approaching the type of discontinuous expression which he castigates so severely in traditional quantificational logic (p. 14). Moreover, his treatment of [ACTION] suggests that, unlike truly formal semantic systems, Jackendoffs system allows one to add on extra bits ad hoc, as they are needed, with little attention to coherence and consistency. A further well-known problem, briefly alluded to by Jackendoff, is that there are conditions on what can count as an actor, since an actor must display a certain capacity for autonomy, and it is not clear how to define this. Animacy is too strong, or clouds would be excluded: What Fred did was go to Philadelphia. What the clouds did was roll over Philadelphia. Jackendoff leaves the problem unsolved, which is a tricky one: even if we allowed actors to include natural forces (clouds, avalanches, storms, etc), what about trains and planes? What the train did was stop at Delhi. More problems arise over Jackendoffs attempt to distinguish wilful actions from unwilful ones. Jackendoff is concerned (pp. 181-2) over the ambiguity of John broke the window. Was this broken wilfully or not? Jackendoff suggests the presence or absence of a marker WILFUL attached to the VP. By itself, this idea is not unreasonable. Jackendoff, however, goes further. He suggests that imperatives should be treated as bare VPs that express WILFUL ACTIONS. He claims that Know the answer and Receive u letter are not possible commands because they do not express ACTIONS. Yet Know the answer by Tuesday is a perfectly good sentence, as is Please receive a call from New York from a telephone operator. In chapter 9, then, Jackendoffs analysis of [EVENTS] and [ACTIONS] is so confused and contradictory that one might suppose that conceptual structure, if it looks anything like Jackendoffs proposals, is the level at which all linguistic misunderstandings take place. The treatment of [EVENTS] and [ACTIONS], it should be noted, have not been singled out because they have been dealt with especially badly. In particular, inconsistencies between the earlier and later parts of the book can be found in abundance. For example, one might expect the representation of A is a dog (pp. 79-80) to resemble that of Elise is a pianist (p. 194). Yet they are dissimilar, the conceptual structure of the latter supposedly being: [state BEldent( [Thing ELISEI 9 Lace AT~ent ([Thing PIANIST1 )I )I * Token type To summarize this final section, then, we note that it shows a disappointing lack of consistency with the earlier part of the book. Not only that, but it throws doubt on analyses which earlier on had seemed plausible. As the book proceeds, it seems less and less like a coherent semantic system, and more and more like a collection of random ideas, some insightful, others mistaken. In brief, this section needs extensive revision before anyone can begin to consider Jackendoffs system as a serious alternative to existing ones.

92

JEAN AITCHISON

Conclusions

Let us now draw together our conclusions over Jackendoffs book. As we have seen, this is an exciting and creative work. Jackendoff presents an Aladdins cave of ideas and arguments, but, as with many treasure troves, it needs a considerable amount of sifting in order to distinguish genuine gems from fakes. In Jackendoffs case, important and perhaps sustainable claims are interspersed with impressive-sounding empty ones. Jackendoff has the imagination and breadth of view to embrace a considerably wider field than most semanticists. Yet like many creative people, he is led on by the excitement of his ideas to make some possibly outlandish claims about the human mind. The most interesting and worthwhile chapters are perhaps those on lexical semantics. Here, Jackendoff has drawn together ideas from psychology and music and produced some stimulating suggestions about how people understand words. Jackendoffs other proposals are less impressive. Although intuitively, it seems desirable to have a fairly transparent syntax-semantics mapping, he has not produced convincing evidence that his theory can cope satisfactorily with the complexities of language. His examples are few, and the section on applications appears to have been produced in isolation from the rest of the book, resulting in serious inconsistencies. The overriding impression is that he has presented a translation of English into a type of pseudo-logic which has few firm principles, and which only he can manipulate. Furthermore, Jackendoff seems to be working in something of a vacuum. He repeatedly castigates first order logic for its failure to deal with problems, yet few linguists still take such a framework seriously. In order to convince people that his system is the best, Jackendoff would need to show that his theory is superior to Montague semantics, which he barely mentions. Perhaps Jackendoffs own title sums up the book best. He calls it semantics and cognition. That is, he makes some interesting suggestions about semantics, and some interesting suggestions about cognition, but he has not substantiated his claim that semantics is cognition. Many of his ideas deserve to be followed up by both semanticists and psychologists. Perhaps this is the most that can be said of any book which attempts to break new ground.
Acknowledgements-1

am very grateful to Anjani K. Sinha, of Delhi University, with whom I had many stimulating hours of discussion about this book. I would also like to thank Brian Butterworth and Steve Pulman for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this review.

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