The Parallel Architecture: Origins and Prospects, Ray Jackendoff
I will briefly trace the development of the Parallel Architecture, from its origin in the dispute between generative semantics and interpretive semantics in the late 1960s to its coming of age in Foundations of Language. Along the way, I will mention a number of important influences that helped motivate the eventual form of the theory, some from within linguistics and some reaching beyond language. What convinces me that this is the right theory of language is that, over the twenty years since Foundations, it has continued to broaden its scope, as testified by the range of phenomena addressed in this workshop.