Jackendoff and Construction-Based Grammar

In this paper it is observed that much of Jackendoff's research program can be seen to be quite parallel to that done by cognitive linguists. One of the main differences is the view of autonomous syntax that Jackendoff adopts: that syntactic generalizations can make no reference to semantic generalizations except at an Interface. However, Jackendoff is apparently moving in the direction of construction-based grammar, which makes the “interface” the heart of the entire grammar. Assuming Jackendoff continues on thepath indicated by his recent work, his research could well converge more and more with work being pursued by many within the cognitive linguistics Community.