Abstract
The question of whether generative grammar offers insights into the mind turns on whether and how a generative grammar is an account of what is in the mind. A potentially useful perspective on this question can be achieved by looking at a cognitive phenomenon that is similar in many respects to language but crucially different, namely jazz. Jazz performance is apparently rule-governed and improvisational, like language. It is useful to take jazz as the exemplar of a complex cognitive task and to think of language as different from jazz in several critical respects that may account for some of its special design features, as well as the fact that it is acquired naturally and without explicit instruction. One difference that may have considerable explanatory force is that language is used to encode and communicate Conceptual Structure, while in the case of jazz (and music in general), what is communicated is the form itself.
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
