When Professor of Philosophy Ray Jackendoff first came to Tufts in 2005, a huge task lay in front of him. Jackendoff, a linguistics specialist who had just left Brandeis University after teaching there for 34 years, had been brought in to design a cognitive science program for Tufts students.
Just two years later, he has already succeeded: Cognitive science is now offered as a free-standing minor or as an area of concentration within the psychology major.
Jackendoff, now a renowned and respected linguist, began his academic career as a math major at Swarthmore College. Even then, he said, he knew his passion was elsewhere.
"I realized around junior year that I was not going to be a great mathematician," he said.
Since he had enjoyed the one and only linguistics class offered at Swarthmore, Jackendoff decided to take a chance and apply to graduate school in linguistics.
The decision paid off: Jackendoff found he had a natural talent for linguistics.
He attended graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied under renowned linguists like Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle. There, Jackendoff developed the roots for his work in linguistics.
Since he began his linguistics work in 1965, Jackendoff's main interest has been the development of his "theory of meaning," which attempts to describe how and why the meaning of language is interpreted.
"Language is a human activity and it is highly structured," Jackendoff said.
He described language as a "very intricate set of principles" that allows people to communicate with one another.
Though it had long been thought that meaning was purely derived from the use of language, Jackendoff said his early work focused on expanding that definition. He said meaning is "the thoughts that give you something to talk about rather than something that language generates."
Jackendoff's theory rests on the idea that all animals, not only humans, have a thought process.
"They have things to talk about," he said. "We have things to talk about, but we can talk and they can't."
The second major thread of Jackendoff's work has been the study of the conscious versus the unconscious in language.
"Consciousness plays a role, because the things you talk about are typically things you are conscious of," he said. "So that brings up the question of what role does consciousness play in ecology of the mind."
But Jackendoff said humans do many things unconsciously while forming language as well. For example, "we have no awareness of how we put sentences together," he said.
One of Jackendoff's most personal areas of linguistic study is musical cognition, and how people understand the rhythm and harmonic structure of music.
In his spare time, Jackendoff is a classical clarinetist; he has performed as a soloist for the Boston Pops and played first-chair clarinet for the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston for 20 years.
He has also recorded a CD, "Romanian Music for Clarinet and Piano," with pianist Valentina Sandu-Dediu.
His musical background drew Jackendoff to musical cognition. His book on the subject, "Generative Theory of Tonal Music," which he co-authored with composer Fred Lerdahl, will celebrate its 25th anniversary on shelves next summer with a series of conferences commemorating the ideas laid forth, many for the first time, in the book. One of the conferences is slated to be held at Tufts in the summer of 2008.
Jackendoff's ambition in his field is reflective of the ambition he displayed in his first few years at Tufts.
"The first thing I did at Tufts was get together with all of the people on the faculty interested in cognitive science," he said.
The faculty organized the first course in cognitive science at Tufts, which was co-taught by 12 members of the Tufts faculty.
From there, Jackendoff worked with Professors of Psychology Phillip Holcomb and Robert Cook, Professor of Philosophy Daniel Dennet and Professor of Computer Science Diane Souvaine to develop the curriculum in cognitive science that exists today.
Next year, the university plans to hire two more people, specializing in psychology and in computer science, to further advance the development of the program, Jackendoff said.
Jackendoff has also helped to organize several conferences at Tufts centered on the concepts of linguistics and how they can be best applied.
Among the workshops organized was a psychology department conference, "Building Meaning from Language," at which Jackendoff spoke. The second conference, organized with Professor of Child Development Maryanne Wolf, focused on ways to teach linguistics to school teachers who teach reading and the English language.
In his time at Tufts, Jackendoff said, he has found the administration very receptive and encouraging in the development of his program. He said he attributes the success of the cognitive language program to the "tremendous fundraising abilities," of University President Lawrence Bacow.
However, Jackendoff realizes that the program in cognitive science and linguistics will need to progress slowly before it reaches its full potential.
"One step at a time; I don't want to have any grand visions," he said. "The trick is to find a way to make maximum use of the resources you've got."
