REVIEW ARTICLE
Languages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation, by Ray Jackendoff, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1992, ix+200pp.
Reviewed by MITSUAKI YONEYAMA, Seikei University*
0. Introduction This is a review article on Jackendoff's Languages of the Mind: Essays on Mental Representation (henceforth, LM). LM is a collection of papers on semantics and cognition originally written independently within the framework of Conceptual Semantics. There is a certain amount of duplication in their contents, although we can see a consis- tent line of argument. And LM is not a book intended to present an alternative solution to a specific problem. In this paper, I will summa- rize the main points of LM and try to analyze verbs of motion within Conceptual Semantics.
1. Background
LM is Jackendoff's fourth book on semantics and cognition. It is in order here to look back at his three previous books because most of the papers in LM are based on his previous books. In Semantics and Cognition (1983) (henceforth, SC), he regards semantics as independent of syntax. In his framework, syntax, seman- tics, and phonology each have their own structure and function. In SC, he mentions four requirements on semantic theory which have
* This is a revised version of a paper read at the meeting of Tokyo University English Linguistic Circle in January 1994. Sections 4.1-4.3 are based on a part of a paper read at the symposium on lexical semantics in the 65th General Meeting of the English Literary Society of Japan held at the University of Tokyo in May 1993. I am grateful to John Scahill for checking the English data in this analysis and sug- gesting stylistic improvements. I am also indebted to two anonymous EL reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Needless to say, all remaining errors and inadequacies are my own. This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Grant No. 05301057.
English Linguistics 11 (1994) 267-290 -267- (C)1994 by the English LinguisticSociety of Japan 268 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994) been widely assumed: (1) Expressiveness, (2) Universality, (3) Com- positionality, and (4) Semantic Properties, and adds two more con- straints. The two constraints are called the Grammatical Constraint and the Cognitive Constraint. The former says that one should prefer a semantic theory that explains otherwise arbitrary generalizations about the syntax and the lexicon (SC: 13) and the latter says that there must be levels of mental representation at which information conveyed by language is compatible with information from other peripheral sys- tems such as vision, non-verbal audition, smell, kinesthesia, and so forth (SC: 16). His idea behind the Cognitive Constraint is that if there were no such levels, it would be impossible for us to talk about what we see and hear. And he proposes the following hypothesis (SC: 17): (1) The Conceptual Structure Hypothesis There is a single level of mental representation, conceptual structure, at which linguistic, sensory, and motor informa- tion are compatible. Jackendoff calls the approach developed in SC Conceptual Semantics. In Consciousness and the Computational Mind (1987) (henceforth, CCM), he tries to solve a fundamental issue of psychology "What makes our conscious experience the way it is?" (CCM: xi) in terms of a computational theory. He discusses language, vision, and music and claims that vision and music resemble language in their organization. These faculties have several levels of mental representation and each representation consists of primitives and principles of combination. He proposes the following hypothesis (CCM: 24): (2) Hypothesis of Conceptual Sufficiency Every phenomenological distinction is caused by/supported by/projected from a corresponding conceptual distinction. This hypothesis says that the organization of awareness is determined by the computational mind.1 (See 3.9) In Semantic Structures (1990) (henceforth, SS), he takes up two basic
1 In CCM, Jackendoff uses two notions of the mind. One, the phenomenologi - cal notion of mind, treats the mind as the seat of conscious awareness. The other, the computational notion of mind, treats the mind as an information-bearing and information-processing system. The computational mind is the locus of understand- ing. REVIEW ARTICLE 269
problems: the Problem of Meaning and the Problem of Correspon- dence. The Problem of Meaning is to develop a formal treatment of semantic intuitions and the Problem of Correspondence is to formalize the relation between syntax and semantics (SS: 1). And in SS, he tries to explore the interaction between these two problems.
2. Contents of LM
So far, we have seen the theoretical background of LM. Jackendoff has at least three themes in LM. The first is a reaffirmation of the value of studying the mind in terms of formal symbolic descriptions of information structures (LM: vii). The second theme of the book is the modularity of mind and how it can be further articulated (LM: viii). And finally, he tries to show that it is possible to articulate a theory of the central levels of representation in the mind (LM: viii) LM consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 "Languages of the Mind" discusses the modularity of mind. Chapter 2 "What is a concept, That a Person May Grasp" summarizes the basic organization of conceptual structure. Chapter 3 "Word Meanings and What It Takes to Learn Them: Reflections on the Piaget-Chomsky Debate" discusses the prob- lem of learning. Chapter 4 "Is There a Faculty of Social Cognition?" develops an argument that there is a module specialized for social cognition. Chapter 5 "Unconscious Information in Language and Psychodynamics" discusses how the theory of mental representation can be applied to issues in psychodynamics. Chapter 6 "Spatial Lan- guage and Spatial Cognition", written with Barbara Landau, is con- cerned with the relation between conceptual structure and spatial repre- sentation. Chapter 7 "Musical Parsing and Musical Affect" examines how musical grammar bears on musical parsing. And finally chapter 8 "Problems of Reality" examines the consequences of the psychological approach to the mind on our view of human experience. In what follows, I will take up the main points of LM and try to clar- ify what Jackendoff has in mind. In section 4, I will analyze verbs of motion, making use of the points brought out in section 3.
3. Theoretical Framework of LM
3.1. Mental Representation At the basis of Jackendoff's theory of the mind lies the notion of 270 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994) mental representation. The computational theory of mind assumes that there are sets of levels of representation. A level of representa- tion consists of a structured repertoire of distinctions encoded by the computational mind. And this structured repertoire is built up from a finite set of primitive distinctions and a finite set of principles of com- bination. The combinatorial principles make it possible to build primi- tives into larger information structures. Jackendoff claims that it is im- possible to make any judgement or discrimination without having an appropriate representation. In LM, the term "level of representation" is a more technical term for a distinct form or "language" of informa- tion structure. Jackendoff says that the power of the brain is in part a result of having many different specialized forms of information many different "languages" of the mind (LM: 4). In LM, he proposes (3) as a fundamental tenet of the computational theory of mind (LM: 5): (3) The Tenet of Constancy Whenever a psychological constancy exists, there must be a mental representation that encodes that constancy.
3.2. Language In LM, Jackendoff takes up three faculties, language, vision, and music, as an illustration of the role of mental representation. As far as language is concerned, including the notion of I-language, Jacken- doff's approach is an extension of Chomsky's generative grammar. He presents the following organization of information structure involved in language (LM: 32): (4) phonological syntactic conceptual formation formation formation rules rules rules auditory vision input phonological syntactic conceptual action structures structures structures motor etc. output rules of inference
Jackendoff assumes an autonomous level of syntactic representation. He regards this autonomy as one of the differences between Concep- REVIEW ARTICLE 271 tual Semantics and Cognitive Grammar.2
3.3. Vision As to vision, Jackendoff adopts Marr's (1982) theory of the form of visual information. Jackendoff claims that in order to understand the workings of the mind, we must study not just quantity of information in the brain but also the forms of the information the brain processes. Marr's computational theory of vision characterizes the structure of the visual information. Jackendoff, following Marr, observes that in vi- sion, we should not expect a direct translation from retinal image into visual understanding. He assumes that there are three distinct levels of representation on the way from the retinal array to our visual under- standing: the primal sketch, 21/2D sketch and 3D model. The primal sketch, unlike the unstructured retinal array, is a hierarchical structure. It encodes bars and their terminations as primitives and the termina- tions are grouped into a set of oriented systems. The 21/2D sketch is a viewer-centered level of visual representation. It specifies the geome- try of the surfaces of objects visible to the viewer. There is still no no- tion of physical object. It is the 3D model that represents the notion of object constancy. The 3D model is object-centered and it encodes the shape and size constancy of objects in long-term memory. Jacken- doff tries to make explicit the relation between language and vision by linking conceptual structure and the 3D model. Jackendoff (CCM: 201-202) says as follows: ... By using linkages of 3D models with conceptual structure, one can begin to circumvent the limitations of the purely alge- braic systems to which semantics has been largely confined and at the same time begin to see how language can make contact with the world as perceived. It should be noticed here that in LM, Jackendoff and Landau regard the 3D model as the center of spatial representations. By the term spatial representation, they mean a level of mental representation de- voted to encoding the geometric properties of objects in the world and
2 For other differences between Conceptual Semantics and Cognitive Grammar, see LM, chapter 2. In LM (p. 53), Jackendoff describes himself as follows: Being myself a deeply committed Chomskian, though not an altogether orthodox one, ... 272 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994) the relationships among them in space (LM: 99). Marr (1982) formu- lates the 3D model as part of vision, but in LM Jackendoff and Landau claim that the 3D model should be capable of accepting input derived from haptic and auditory sources as well. In LM, the 3D model is re- garded as a non-modality-specific level of representation, as shown in (5) (LM: 100)3 (See 3.7): (5) visualrepresentations (21/2Dsketch) syntactic linguistic spatial structures representations representations haptic representations (conceptual (3Dmodel) structures) representations for auditory localization motor representations
3.4. Music Music is an important theme for Jackendoff. While he plays the clarinet, he is concerned with the analysis of music. The analysis of musical structures in LM is based on A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (1983), written with Fred Lerdahl. Their basic question is, how does the listener put the notes together into a coherent organization that is responsible for the musical affect? (LM: 12) They take this problem to be parallel to the problems of linguistic and visual under- standing. Jackendoff mentions five levels of musical representations: musical surface, grouping structure, metrical structure, time-span reduction and
3 In CCM, Jackendoff presents the followi ng overall organization of levels of visual representations (CCM: 186): (i) primal sketch 21/2D sketch 3D model conceptual formation rules formation rules formation structure rules formation rules
retinal array⇔primal sketch⇔21/2D sketch⇔3D model⇔conceptual
structure REVIEW ARTICLE 273
prolongational reduction. The musical surface encodes the music as discrete pitch-events, but it provides only the basis from which musical cognition takes place. The grouping structure encodes a hierarchical segmentation of the musical surface into motives, phrases and sections. The metrical structure organizes strong and weak beats that listeners impose on music. The time-span reduction organizes the pitch-events of music into a rhythmic hierarchy. Finally, the prolongational reduc- tion expresses the relative importance of all the pitch-events of a piece in hierarchical fashion. Jackendoff claims that these internal computa- tions over abstract mental representation enable a listener to hear a piece of music as more than just a sequence of notes. He presents the following forms of musical information (after Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983)) (LM: 12): (6) grouping formation time-span prolongational rules reduction reduction formation formation grouping rules rules structures
auditory musical time-span prolongational input surface reductions reductions
metrical structures
metrical formation rules
3.5. Conceptual Structure The status of conceptual structure is the central issue of Conceptual Semantics. Jackendoff's basic idea is that there is a level of mental representation which (1) encodes the meaning of linguistic expressions, (2) permits a formal account of linguistic inference, and (3) serves as an interface between language and other mental faculties (CCM: 158). Conceptual structure is the form in which speakers encode their con- 274 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994) strual of the world. In LM, he regards conceptual structure as an innate combinatorial system. He claims that most if not all lexical concepts are composite; that is, they can be decomposed in terms of the primitives and principles of combination of the innate grammar of lexical concepts (LM: 25).4 Conceptual structure is built up from the Conceptual Well-Formedness Rules, which are based on Gruber's (1965) Thematic Relations Hypothesis.5 He presents the following ex- amples (LM: 37): (7) a. Spatial location and motion i. The bird went from the ground to the tree. ii. The bird is in the tree. iii. Harry kept the bird in the cage. b. Possesion i. The inheritance went to Philip. ii. The money is Philip's. iii. Susan kept the money. c. Ascription of properties i. The light went/changed from green to red. Harry went from elated to depressed. ii. The light is red. Harry is depressed. iii. Sam kept the crowd happy. d. Scheduling of activities i. The meeting was changed from Tuesday to Mon- day. ii. The meeting is on Monday. iii. Let's keep the trip on Saturday. He observes that these examples are realizations of the basic concep- tual functions given in (8) (LM: 38): (8) FROM ([]) a. [EventGO ([],[ PathTO ([])])] b. [StateBE ([], [Place])] c. [Event STAY ([], [Place])]
4 Jackendoff's view of lexical concepts is different from Fodor's (1975) "Language of Thought" Hypothesis. For details, see LM, chapter 2. 5 For discussion of Thematic Relations Hypothesis, see Gruber (1965) and Jack- endoff (1972, 1976, 1983). REVIEW ARTICLE 275
That is, the four semantic fields shown in (7) have parallel conceptual structure. They share the same functional structure and differ only in the semantic field feature. In connection with language acquisition, Jackendoff claims that it is easier for a child to extend a word to a new field than to learn a new word. Jackendoff's approach based on the Thematic Relations Hypothesis is different from the assumptions of Cognitive Grammar. Lakoff (1987), for example, assumes that ab- stract concepts are derived from concrete concepts by metaphorical ex- tension (See 3.8).6
3.6. Aggregation and Boundedness In (9), we can see an indefinite repetition of an inherently bounded event: (9) Until noon, the light flashed. LM discusses how this sense of iteration should be encoded in concep- tual structure. In (9), the light flashed is inherently a bounded event and could not be subject to the extrinsic bounding imposed by until noon. Jackendoff solves this problem by assuming a function intro- duced by a rule of construal.7 Jackendoff (1991: 41) assigns the fol- lowing conceptual structure to (9):8
(10) [+b [DIM 1d DIR] -b, +i +b COMP([ PL([ [DIM 0d DIR] LIGHT FLASH])]) SitBDBY+([Time NOON])]
6 For relevant discussion of metaphorical extension, see Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff and Turner (1989), and Jackendoff and Aaron (1991).7 For relevant discussion of the sense of repetition, see Talmy (1978). And for other rules of construal, see Jackendoff (1991). 8 The example sentence in Jackendoff (1991) is The light flashed until dawn. I have changed [Time DAWN] into [Time NOON] in (10). In (10), ±b stands for ±bounded; +i means the presence of internal structure; [DIM 1d DIR] means that the entity in question is 1-dimensional and directional; COMP is a function which maps its argument into an individual; BDBY+ stands for the end of the event. For details, see Jackendoff (1991). And for relevant discussion of the bounded/un- bounded distinction, see Declerck (1979). 276 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994)
In (10), PL, inserted by a rule of construal, is a function that maps a single event [LIGHT FLASH] into a repeated sequence of events of the same type. That is, in (9), the light flashed is construed as an in- definite repetition. The function PL in (10) has the same semantic value as the plural marker, which maps a thing into a collection of things of the same type. I will return to this matter in 4.1.
3.7. Faculty Psychology Within the framework of faculty psychology-the position that the apparent heterogeneity of mental life is supported by a genuinely heter- ogeneous collection of psychological mechanisms (CCM: 260)-it is generally assumed that the mind can be divided into a number of facul- ties or modules. That is, language and vision, for example, are not re- garded as diverse uses of a single general psychological mechanism. LM, following CCM, maintains that the central capacities too can be divided into domain specific modules.9 Within the central capacities, Jackendoff mentions three major modules: conceptual structure (see 3.5), spatial cognition (see 3.3), and social cognition. Based on faculty psychology, Jackendoff assumes that the modules of mind include a faculty specifically devoted to social cognition.10 Social cognition is a central module and its task is to develop an integrated picture of the self in society. He is interested in the fact that despite variation among cultures, there are widespread common aspects. In the social domain, notions like dominance, authority, right, value, and so forth serve as components of concepts. He assumes that social cognition can be studied along lines similar to those followed in the study of language. Jackendoff (LM: 81) claims that our social cogni- tion has meaning that is in large part determined by the biological structure of our brains; that is, it is not an arbitrary artifact imposed by the environment.
9 This is one of the main differences between Jackendoff's approach and Fodor's modularity theory. For details, see LM. CCM (p. 261) presents six characteristics of modules: (1) Modules are mandatory; (2) Modules are fast; (3) Modules have fixed neural architecture; (4) Modules suffer characteristic and specific breakdowns; (5) Modules are domain specific; (6) Modules are informationally encapsulated. For further discussion, see CCM. And for discussion of faculty psychology, see Fodor (1983) and CCM. 10 For relevant discussion of social cognition, see Jackendoff (1993). REVIEW ARTICLE 277
3.8. Word Learning LM takes up the problem of word learning, taking into consideration the Piaget-Chomsky debate in Piattelli-Palmerini ed. (1980). Fodor (1975: 64), for example, says that one cannot learn a first language un- less one already has a system capable of representing the predicates in that language and their extensions. Fodor assumes that lexical con- cepts are innately given as unstructured primitives and that inferences are stated in terms of meaning postulates. Jackendoff (LM: 59) claims, on the other hand, that learning a word meaning is to be viewed as constructing a structured combination of the primitives and principles of combination. As mentioned in 3.5, Jackendoff assumes that most lexical concepts are composite. In LM, he assumes that word learning is an active constructive process, not just a passive pro- cess of association.11 For Jackendoff, an important issue is to establish a plausible set of primitives and principles of combination. It is claimed in LM that the Conceptual Well-Formedness Rules, a set of primitives and principles of combination, are innate and that in order for a child to acquire concepts in a new domain, this domain must be within the possibilities provided by the Conceptual Well-Formedness Rules. He assumes that the Conceptual Well-Formedness Rules can provide an infinite number of possible concepts. In LM (p. 59), Jackendoff says that one of Piaget's important hypotheses is that children acquire their repertoire of concepts in a cer- tain order; that is, abstract concepts are built by extending perceptual concepts. LM (p. 60) regards Lakoff's theory of metaphor as similar to Piaget's theory of genetic epistemology (see Lakoff (1987), Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff and Turner (1989)). Lakoff's claim is that abstract concepts are constructed from basic perceptual concepts by a process of metaphor. Although Jackendoff accepts Lakoff's cognitivist perspective, he presents a different view (Jackendoff and Aaron (1991: 328)): ... the conceptual structures expressed by natural language are organized in terms of a set of abstract parameters that are most clealy revealed in language about space, but that apply to many other semantic fields as well. It is not that space is taken as a
11 LM (p. 59) says that this latter view is shared by the Piagetian school. For further discussion, see LM, chapter 3 and Piattelli-Palmerini ed. (1980). 278 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994)
METAPHOR that supplants or enriches the conceptualization of these fields; rather, this common organization is the ONLY way we have of conceptualizing them.
3.9. Form and Process Jackendoff (1987, LM) stresses the distinction between form and pro- cess and claims that we can study them independently of their neurolo- gical instantiation. In LM, he adopts a functionalist view of mental in- formation in the computational mind, in which the workings of the mind are studied in terms of computations over systems of symbols. He proposes the following condition (LM: 89), which is almost the same as (2): (11) Correspondence Condition (revised) Every distinction present in consciousness is supported by a corresponding distinction in the information structure pre- sent in the computational mind. This condition says that the content of consciousness proceeds in a principled way from underlying information structures and the proc- esses that operate on them. Chapter 7 of LM asks what is going on in a listener's mind during the processing of music. As to the perception of music, Jackendoff assumes that it involves the unconscious construction of abstract musi- cal structures. And he assumes, following Dennet (1991), that the brain is always developing multiple representations and only the most stable interpretation appears in awareness. LM (p. 141) claims that we are conscious of only one analysis at a time, but this leaves open the possibility that other analyses are present unconsciously, inaccessi- ble to attention. He proposes that the processor contains a selection function. It is a device that evaluates the currently active analyses for relative plausibility and designates one of them as most salient. And LM (p. 153) claims that musical affect is produced not just by hearing the musical surface but by the activity of deriving all the details of ab- stract musical structure. The musical structure has intrinsic points of instability or tension, which require resolution and therefore result in affect. LM assumes that a parallel line of argument can be made for lan- guage processing. Each word of a heard sentence is assigned all possi- ble analyses, but the processor culls out those that are disconfirmed by the surrounding context. REVIEW ARTICLE 279
4. An Analysis of Verbs of Motion
4.1. Rules of Construal Jackendoff claims that in (9), repeated here as (12), the sense of iteration is encoded by a rule of construal: (12) Until noon, the light flashed. In this case, the function PL, introduced by the rule of construal, maps a single event into a repeated sequence of events. Jackendoff (1991: 20) classifies objects and substances into four types, using binary fea- tures, as shown in (13): (13) a. +b, -i: individuals (a pig) b. +b, +i: groups (a committee) c. -b, -i: substances (water) d. -b, +i: aggregates (buses, cattle) And he proposes six functions that map one combination of the fea- tures b and i into another, as shown in (14):12 (14) Including functions: PL COMP CONT Extracting functions: ELT GR PART In (12), a bounded event (or individual) is construed as an unbounded event (or aggregate). Consider the following sentences:13 (15) a. Bill took the elevator to the lobby. b. Bill took a bus to his office. Took the elevator and took a bus are not inherently verbs of motion, but they each take a bounded path. How should we account for this phenomenon? A possible solution would be to devise a function.
12 In (14), CONT maps its argument into an entity containi ng the argument as a part. ELT maps an aggregate into a single element of the aggregate. GR maps its argument into a substance or aggregate of which the individual or group is com- posed. And PART extracts a bounded part. For details, see Jackendoff (1991).13 The sentences of (15) may be paraphrased as follows: (i) a. Bill went to the lobby by taking the elevator. b. Bill went to his office by taking a bus. Sentence (15a) was adapted from Beyond Culture (1976) by Edward Hall. 280 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994)
Jackendoff (1991: 26) uses the function GR to explain (16): 14 (16) There was dog all over the street. In (16), all over the street is interpreted as a distributive location and dog as a substance. As to GR, Jackendoff (1991: 27) says as follows: In the verbal system, GR appears to be (one of) the reading(s) of the progressive aspect in English. For example, Bill is run- ning to the store can be construed as "the process out of which the event Bill runs to the store is composed". It might be possible to apply the function GR to (15). Then we may say that a bounded event is construed as an 'activity' of Vendler (1957) or a 'process' of Pustejovsky (1991a) by the function.15 It seems to me that took the elevator and took a bus in (15) are construed as processes. Consider next the following sentences: (17) a. *Bill ate a hamburger to the station. b. *Bill sang a song to the station. In (17), it is difficult for each of ate a hamburger and sang a song to take a bounded path. We can say that rules of construal do not apply to (17). In (17) ate a hamburger, for example, is inherently a bounded
14 Jackendoff (1991: 26) assigns the following conceptual structure to dog in (16): (i) -b, -i +b, -i dog (substance)=[ GR([ Mat] MatDOG]) For relevant discussion of distributive location, see Jackendoff (1986). 15 Pustejovsky (1991a: 56), for example, classifies events into three types: State(S), Process(P) and Transition(T), as illustrated in (i) (where E is a variable for any event types): (i) a. b. c.
In (i), S stands for a single event, which is evaluated relative to no other event. P stands for a sequence of events identifying the same semantic expression. And T stands for an event identifying a semantic expression, which is evaluated relative to its opposition. Pustejovsky cites the following sentences to demonstrate that a sentence denoting a process is transformed into a transition by the presence of a bounded path (p. 62): (ii) a. Mary ran. b. Mary ran to the station. (iii) a. John pushed the wagon. b. John pushed the wagon to Mary. (iib), for example, is assigned the following structural representation (p. 62): REVIEW ARTICLE 281 event and cannot be construed as a process. But notice that (18) is better than (17a): (18) (?)Bill ate hamburgers to the station. (18) seems better than (17a) because ate hamburgers is easier to con- strue as a process. Consider further the following sentences: (19) a. She wore a green dress to the party. (Talmy (1980: 66)) b. Bill got on a lift to the top. It seems to me that the grammaticality of the sentences in (19) indi- cates that wore a green dress and got on a lift are construed as pro- cesses. To conclude, although (15) and (17) have the same syntactic structure, neither of the verb phrases in (17) can be construed as a process.16
4.2. Ill-Formedness Jackendoff (1991: 17) cites the following example to show that we have to postulate a rule of construal:
(iv) T
ES: P
LCS': Mary ran to the store
LCS: [run(m)] [at(m, the-store)] cause (act(m), become (at(m, the-store)) BY run) In (iv), LCS is a lexical semantic representation which takes the form of a predicate decomposition. LCS' is an LCS-like structure. Verb class distinctions are char- acterized in terms of LCS'.
(20) [One waitress says to another:] The ham sandwich in the corner wants another cup of cof- fee. As to (20), Jackendoff says that there is a general principle of construal that may be stated roughly as: "A constituent identifying an individual X may be used/understood to identify an individual contextually associ- ated with X." In (20) the literal interpretation is ill-formed because a ham sandwich cannot want anything, and this ill-formedness motivates the application of the rule. That is, rules of construal are used to understand otherwise ill-formed or pragmatically inappropriate utter- ances. The same is true of (9), repeated here as (21): (21) Until noon, the light flashed. In (21), the light flashed is inherently bounded and could not be subject to the extrinsic bounding imposed by until noon. It is this ill-formed- ness that motivates the application of a rule of construal. It seems to me that we can see another kind of ill-formedness in (22): (22) a. The mouse ran under the table. b. The mouse ran behind the piano. It is well-known that each of these sentences in (22) does not take to even when under the table and behind the piano are assigned goal read- ings. Yoneyama (forthcoming) tries to account for this phenomenon by using a rule of construal. In (22a), under the table is regarded as a thing instead of a place. This interpretation seems to be licensed by the Zero Rule of Jackendoff (1991: 30): (23) (Zero rule-idealizing object as point)
X [X +b +b ⇔[ DIM 0d DIM nd] [DIM nd]]
This rule says that a bounded object can be idealized as a point. Under this idealization, the object's intrinsic dimensionality becomes secondary and the primary dimensionality is 0d. Consider (24), cited from Jaworska (1986: 359): REVIEW ARTICLE 283
(24) Behind the hedge is difficult to see.17 Jaworska observes that prepositional phrases can appear as subjects and objects. If under the table is regarded as a thing in (22a), the se- quence ran under the table would be ill-formed. This ill-formedness motivates the application of a rule of construal. Run has a path semantically, and this semantic path argument is realized as [TO [UNDER THE TABLE]] in (22a).18 We can account for (22b) in the same way. This line of argument can explain why run in (25) requires from: (25) a. The mouse ran from under the table. b. The mouse ran from behind the piano. In (25), under the table and behind the piano are regarded as things and this is why run requires a preposition. (25) indicates that the source reading is the marked case.
4.3. Rules of Construal and Event Composition It is interesting to notice that LM and Pustejovsky (1991a) assign different interpretations to the following sentences: (26) a. ?Until noon/For hours, Bill ran into the house. (LM: 40) b. Mary ran into the house for 20 minutes. (Pustejovsky (1991a: 73)) In LM, (26a) is assigned a repetition reading. On the other hand, Pustejovsky (1991a: 73) says that the interval of 20 minutes denotes the time Mary spent inside the house rather than the duration of the act of running itself. Why do they assign different readings to similar sen- tences? Jackendoff assumes that sentence (26a) is interpreted as an indefinite repetition of an inherently bounded process. The sense of repetition is encoded by a rule of construal. This analysis is parallel to that of (9).
17 Jackendoff (SC: 150) cites the following sentence: (i) Bill saw under the table. He says that (i) is ambiguous: it may mean that Bill's gaze terminated at a point under the table or that his gaze passed under the table to a point beyond. I will not take the latter reading into consideration here. 18 For discussion of run, see SS. Jackendoff assumes that run, which expresses a GO-function, requires two arguments: the thing in motion and the path that speci- fies the trajectory of motion. 284 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994)
Pustejovsky (1991a) regards (26b) as a shift from a process to a tran- sition (see 4.1 and note 15). He assumes that a complex event struc- ture allows modification by a durative adverbial of one of its subevents. In (26b), the prepositional phrase is able to project its own event struc- ture, the state of Mary's being at the house. Consider further the following sentences: (27) a. Bill went to the bank for an hour. b. Bill went across the border for an hour. (27a) is acceptable if it has a reading that Bill went to the bank and stayed there for an hour. The same is true of (27b). Within the framework of LM, it is impossible to derive such a 'stay' reading. How should we solve this problem? Each of the sentences in (27) in- volves a kind of ill-formedness because a bounded event takes a dura- tive adverbial. But it seems difficult to solve this problem by using a function in (14). It seems to me that we have to assume a rule which allows a durative adverbial to modify a subevent of the entire event. It is helpful here to consider the following examples: (28) a. John ran to the corner and then stood at the corner. (Greenbaum and Quirk (1990: 192)) b. She went into her office and stayed in her office. (ibid.) (29) a. The company sent John the book for ten days. (Pustejovsky (1991a: 73)) b. Yesterday John lent me his bicycle until tomorrow. (Ota and Kajita (1974: 635)) As to (28), Greenbaum and Quirk (1990) observe that there is a cause- and-effect relation between the notions of directional movement and static position. In (29a), Pustejovsky (1991a) says, for ten days refers to the state of John's having the book. In (29b), until tomorrow refers to the period during which I can keep his bicycle. Examples (27)-(29) seem to indicate that Jackendoff's framework has to incorporate a no- tion of event composition similar to that of Pustejovsky (1991a). But Pustejovsky's framework, on the other hand, cannot assign a repetition reading to (26b).
4.4. Transparency Jackendoff assumes that conceptual structure is universal and the fol- lowing difference in grammaticality is a matter of syntax (SS: 90): (30) a. John ran to the station. REVIEW ARTICLE 285
b. ?John-wa eki-e hashitta. John-top station-to ran But Yoneyama (1986) demonstrates that Japanese verbs of motion can take unbounded paths, as shown in (31): (31) a. John-wa eki-e-mukatte hashitta. John-top station-toward ran b. John-wa toori-ni-sotte hashitta. John-top street-along ran Jackendoff (1991) assigns the conceptual structure (32) to TO X and two possible structures (33) to TOWARD X: (32) TO X=[+b, -i DIM 1d DIR Space BDBY+ ([Thing/Space X])]
(33) a. TOWARD X=[-b, -i DIM 1d DIR +b, -i GR([ DIM 1d DIR
Space] BDBY+ ([X])])
b. TOWARD X=[-b, -i DIM 1d DIR Space BDBY+ ([X])]
But he does not say which we should take as a conceptual structure of toward. It is in order here to introduce a property of "morphological trans- parency" from Jackendoff (1991: 21) He uses this property to decide between the conceptual structures of dogs, as shown in (34): (34) a. [+b, -i =a dog Mat DOG] b. [-b, +i =dogs Mat DOG] c. [-b, +i +b, -i ] =dogs PL([ Mat DOG]) Mat 286 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994)
Jackendoff adopts (34c) as the conceptual structure of dogs because it has morphological transparency. He claims that addition of syntactic information (including morphology) does not change features of the base element, but adds operators around the base. As to toward, Jackendoff (1991: 37) says that (33a) treats TOWARD X as a "ground- up" version of TO X, that is, roughly as the "path-substance" of which TO X is made. We might say that (33a) is morphologically transpar- ent. If toward cannot be reduced to to, we should assume that they are separate paths.19 If this is the case, the difference in grammatical- ity between (30b) and (31a) is not surprising. This implies that we do not have to conclude that Japanese verbs of motion cannot take paths in general. Yoneyama (to appear) claims that English and Japanese are different in their tendency toward goal orientation.20 English is more goal-oriented than Japanese. But the point is that any language has the concepts of TO (or bounded) and TOWARD (or unbounded). It is of interest to consider the following contrasts, cited from Yoneyama (to appear): (35) a. Gakusei-wa eikoku-taishikan-e students-Top British Embassy-to demo-o shita. demonstration-Acc did. b. John-wa IBM-e shuushoku-(o) shita. John-Top IBM-to getting a position-(Acc) did (36) a. *The students demonstrated to the British Embassy. b. *John got a position to IBM. In (35), demo-o-suru, for example, is regarded as a verb of motion and it can take a bounded path. On the contrary, in English, demonstrate is regarded as a verb of action.21
19 The following contrasts seem to show that to and toward are separate concepts: (i) a. Bill moved a book toward Mary. b. *Bill gave a book toward Mary. (LM: 64) (ii) a. ?Bill moved a book to Mary. b. Bill gave a book to Mary. 20 For relevant discussion of the contrast between English and Japanese, see Ike- gami (1981, 1985). 21 In English, the equivalents of the sentences in (35) might be (i): (i) a. The students demonstrated in front of the British Embassy. The student demonstrators marched to the British Embassy. b. John got a position in IBM. REVIEW ARTICLE 287
It seems to me that the property of transparency plays an important role in metaphors, too. Jackendoff and Aaron (1991: 334), for exam- ple, say as follows:22 ... What is the outcome of creating a relationship between the incommensurable source and target domains? L(akoff) & T(ur- ner) claim that it is an understanding of the target domain in terms of the source domain. We suspect there is more, some- thing like 'fusion' or 'superimposition' of the source and target domains. .... Rather, the entities of the source domains are vividly present to us, but carry in addition extra identities, those of corresponding entities in the target domain.
5. Concluding Remarks We have seen the theoretical framework of LM and analyzed verbs of motion within the framework of Conceptual Semantics. Jacken- doff's Conceptual Semantics has given us a new way of studying lan- guage and the mind. It seems to me that LM will broaden our view of human beings. It is of interest to postulate a module specialized for social cognition. But the following needs to be considered (LM: 81): If we are interested in studying universals of culture, does this place us in the uncomfortable position of not being able to make value judgements about different means of social organizations? Are we forced to say that fascism isn't bad, it's just another kind of culture? I think the answer here is this: just because one as a scientist may find that a repressive society provides an interest- ing source of evidence, that does not exempt one from con- demning it as a human being. This passage seems to show that Jackendoff's ideology is founded on humanism. We have discussed the differences between to and toward in 4.4, but
22 The same seems to be true of musical perception. LM (p. 153) says as fol- lows: ... since alternative analyses are being processed concurrently, the points of tension in each individual analysis may or may not coincide with those of its cohorts. This tension among the conflicting analyses may also surface in the listener's experience as affect, even though only one of the analyses is ex- pressed at the moment as "the structure of music." 288 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 11 (1994)
it will be necessary to define more clearly the roles of 'bounded' and 'unbounded' paths in Conceptual Semantics. As to 'rules of con- strual', we have to examine what motivates their application. Jacken- doff (1991) says that a rule of construal is triggered by a certain kind of ill-formedness. It will be necessary to compare rules of construal with metaphors which also presuppose a certain kind of semantic ill-formed- ness. And we will have to refine the functional system of (14) in order to account for sentences such as (15). Finally, Jackendoff assumes that most lexical concepts are composite. It will be necessary to con- sider whether meaning in natural language is composite in general.
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Department of English Faculty of Humanities Seikei University 3-3-1, Kichijoji-Kitamachi Musashino-shi, Tokyo, 180