Ray Jackendoff

Ray Jackendoff is the Seth Merrin Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Tufts University, and former Co-Director of Tufts’ Center for Cognitive Studies. He received his BA from Swarthmore College (1965) and his PhD from MIT (1969), the latter under the direction of Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle. After teaching at Brandeis for 35 years, Ray finally graduated and joined the Tufts faculty in 2005. At Tufts, he was one of the founders of the interdisciplinary program in Cognitive Science and the Minor in Linguistics. He is cur\rently a Research Affiliate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.

Ray’s research and teaching bridge theoretical linguistics, cognitive science, music theory, and (some people would say) philosophy. He is the author of sixteen books, including Semantics and Cognition, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, Consciousness and the Computational Mind, Foundations of Language, and A User’s Guide to Thought and Meaning. He has been President of both the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and the Linguistic Society of America, and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the Jean Nicod Prize in Cognitive Philosophy in 2003 and the David Rumelhart Prize for Contributions to the Theoretical Foundations of Human Cognition in 2014, and he has been awarded honorary degrees from the Université du Québec à Montréal, Ohio State University, Tel Aviv University, Music University of Bucharest, and Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca (Romania). Perhaps the most meaningful of his awards were a 2015 Festschrift, Structures in the Mind, and a 2024 workshop “FoundationsFest,” both curated by his former students. 

Throughout his career, Ray has performed frequently as a classical clarinetist in orchestras, recitals, and chamber music. He never dreamed of making a CD, but he has made two: Romanian Music for Clarinet and Piano, with pianist Valentina Sandu-Dediu, and Cadenza! Modern American Duos for Clarinet or Basset Horn and Piano, with Tufts pianist/composer John McDonald.