Toward the Union of Generative Grammar, Cognitive Linguistics and Emergentism in Biolinguistics

In this book, I propose reconciling Generative Grammar, Cognitive Linguistics and Emergentism in Biolinguistics. I specifically intend to combine these three fields of research into a variant of Ray Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture, in which the semantic-conceptual structure is unfolded into a semantic structure and a pragmatic structure. To do so, I will firstly support Jackendoff's critiques of Noam Chomsky's syntacticocentrism, adding in also critiques of Ronald Langacker's semanticocentrism, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's metaphorocentrism as well as of Michael Tomasello's culturalism. Secondly, I will refute the premise that Cognitive Linguistics and Generative Grammar are incompatible and irreconcilable. Instead, I claim that cognitivism and generativism are complementary research programs since generativists and cognitivists focus on different aspects of language in their studies. Finally, I aim to contribute to the acknowledgment of greater empirical adequacy of linguistic models in Parallel Architecture in comparison to competing theoretical frameworks, such as Chomsky's Minimalist Program, Lakoff and Johnson's cognitivism, and Langacker's and Tomasello's Cognitive-Functional Linguistics.