Conceptual semantics
Jackendoff’s Conceptual Semantics framework is an important approach to meaning (Jackendoff 1983, 1990, 1991, 2002, 2007). Conceptual Semantics shares a key commitment with the cognitivist approaches we looked at in the last chapter: Jackendoff rejects any distinction between meaning and conceptualization, stating (2002: 282) that ‘we must consider the domain of linguistic semantics to be continuous with human conceptualization as a whole’. As a result, Jackendoff aims to situate semantics ‘in an overall psychological framework, integrating it not only with linguistic theory but also with theories of perception, cognition, and conscious experience’ (1990: 2). Conceptual Semantics differs from Cognitivist approaches, however, in two important ways.
• It is committed to a strict distinction between syntax and semantics. Conceptual Semantics is designed to be compatible with generative grammar, one of whose tenets is an autonomous level of syntactic organization. Consistent with this, Jackendoff sees linguistic ability as involving an interface between conceptualization on the one hand and phonology and syntax on the other.
• It uses a formalism, rather than the somewhat vague diagrams and similar notational conventions deployed in cognitivist semantics. (See Jackendoff 1990: 16 for discussion of more differences between the approaches.)
Both of these features will be discussed more below.
