Jackendoff deals extensively with aspects of linguistics that involve semantics and neuroscience. In this, he operates differently than most linguists, who generally emphasize issues of syntax rather than semantics.
The problems seem related somehow to those of materiality in written language.
ON COMBINATORIALITY (38-67)
"To sum up, a theory of how language is instantiated in the brain must grapple with four problems that arise from the combinatoriality of launguage: the massiveness of binding in linguistic structure, the problem of multiple instances of a known unit in a novel structure, the necessity forecoding and instantiating typed variables, and the relation between long-term and short-erm memory encodings of structure" (67).
One addresses all these (if not solving them outright) by considering linguistic and neural distinctions as fuzzy or incompletely discrete at each scale and level. That is, if we consider morpheme, phoneme, word, phrase, as not referring to an entity that is atomistic, discrete, and single. Here goes:
Massive Binding
"The binding problem is usually stated this way: we have found that the shape and the color of an object are encoded in different regions of the brain, and they can be differentially impaired by brain damage. How is it, then, that we sense a particular shape and color as attributes of the same object?" (59).
The problem here arises from the categorization "different regions of the brain." This construction is partly true and partly false; that is, it describes the stituation, but with a distortion. Being creatures with relatively discrete skin boundaries ourselves, we think of space and object in terms of such discrete things. Neuroelectric waves operate differently. We think of shape and size as being relatively fixed or related to identity, location or activity as being relatively changeable. Here the shape of the brain is relatively fixed, but the shapes and shifts of modality in neural firing are not. The relationships are not between a piece of coding here and a piece there, but more the code involves this area(s) as opposed to that area(s), or, better, this composition as opposed to that. Also, what we're describing involves temporal variation, too. And we know, for instance, that the skin contains various receptors for different kinds of sensations and that pain travels on separate or relatively separate neural pathways, so there's some degree of specialization between neurons. Consequently, any impression(s), including that-those provoked by parole, involve a composition of patterns -- a composition of compositions.
It may be easier to conceive of all this if we recall that we never do experience a one object. I experience the gentleman speaking at the next table here at Starbucks as a composition of my reception of the light bouncing off of him and hitting each of my two eyes, arranged in relation with the other light and dark areas of the room and triangulated so as to create an impression of depth; the sound-vibrations he produces, again triangulated between two ears, but also classified according to my aural and linguistic experience. The woman who leans across the table towards him may feed into her impressions the touch of his hand and perhaps the sampling of chemicals he exudes that we call his smell. None of these are the gentleman, none exactly components of him. But they are precisely components of the gentleman I know, and my experience of him is exactly a composition of these and related elements.
To look at this a different way, the composition does not occupy a point or a box, but something more like ripples on a lake, radio and TV and cell phone vibrations simultaneously passing through a room, light sound simultaneously passing through a space. Put another way, the location of electricity by its nature involves time and movement. Electricity refers to a movement; consequently, it's position is not fixed, though certainly the whole activity involves extensibility and space and duration in time. To use another metaphor, as a stream flows to sea, it simultaneously involves water in the mountains and in the sea. It also involves water that has seeped out of what people usually call the stream, seeped into the surrounding soil; that's why trees on an otherwise dry-ish plain follow each bank of the river that snakes through it. When we enjoy the cool air under a tree by its banks, we enjoy the moister feel of the air that leaves it. Regarding the stream as an object obscures these things.
Likewise, certainly certain perceptions will be lost when the brain receives physical damage in one or another location. A lost component of the larger pattern will change the pattern; the subject will not synthesize certain aspects of the surroundings that others may perceive. So we might say, "He doesn't hear the man talk." But it isn't the man that he doesn't perceive; it's that part of the pattern that would allow the identification of talk. It's not a no-pattern, it's a pattern without a component, in this case a major one. Now, nothing in this indicates that the impression of the gentleman was solely or primarily a question of localization any more than the nature of a stream or a tree is primarily a function of its geographical locale.
In all these phenomena, the region of an object or action are categorizations one makes, not characteristics proper to what one describes. If word is a pattern of patterns, aspects of these may live in the same place at the same time, or overlap spatially and temporally.
Apparently, they must.
Multiple Instances of a Known Unit in an Novel Structure
Consider yet again sentence (23), in which there are two occurences fo the word star [The little star's beside the big star]. If the first occurrence simply activates the lexical entry in long-term memory, what can the second occurrence do? It cannot just activate te word a second time, since . . . the word has to remain activated the first time in order for the sentence to receive full interpretation" (61).
Here, of course, if either or both activations form part of a larger pattern, distinctions in that pattern should not be more difficult than any other distinction just because a particular segment of pattern repeats, or, put differently, because the pattern involves similar elements at different places or times or in different movements. Just the fact that we may call these patterns should clue us that they're composite; being composite, they're neither discrete nor homogenous, but involve a continuum of distinction(s).
Encoding and Instantiating Typed Variables
The example Jackendoff examines is rhyme.
Consider the problem of encoding a two-place relation such as 'X rhymes with Y.' The breain cannot list all the rhymes in the language . . . . Nor can we figure out its rhymes by analogy, reasoning for example, 'Well, ling sounds sort of like the word link, and link rhymes with think, so maybe ling rhymes with think.
He goes on to mention that new rhymes can be invented and that rhyme can be distinguished in a language one does not understand.
This problem solely consists of the assumption that the units are discrete and self-identical units. Without this assumption, it's difficult to even understand the question that's placed.
Long and Short-Term Memory
If one treats a word or phrase as an associative constellation rather than an atomistic unit, it's not surprising that greater or lesser or variant associations get generated on the fly or have greater or lesser durability. As with the prior points, far more detail remains unresolved than resolved, but already one might posit that these are differences in a pattern that may be considered as global. For instance, when speaking of the gentleman early, I could speak of his touch or smell although I did not and have not experienced them because I made categorical generalizations based on memories and processing of memories. These associations are part of global patterns of patterns.
Part of what is necessary to understand in this is that the relation described as association is fuzzy, and may be partial. [See discussions of Chomsky and Deleuze].
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