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Géraldine Legendre

Geraldine Legendre is Professor of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University and a preeminent syntactician of French.

Titles by This Author

The Harmonic Mind

From Neural Computation to Optimality-Theoretic Grammar Volume I: Cognitive Architecture
By Paul Smolensky and Géraldine Legendre

The Harmonic Mind

From Neural Computation to Optimality-Theoretic Grammar Volume II: Linguistic and Philosophical Implications
By Paul Smolensky and Géraldine Legendre

Despite their apparently divergent accounts of higher cognition, cognitive theories based on neural computation and those employing symbolic computation can in fact strengthen one another. To substantiate this controversial claim, this landmark work develops in depth a cognitive architecture based in neural computation but supporting formally explicit higher-level symbolic descriptions, including new grammar formalisms.

Titles by This Editor

Optimality-Theoretic Syntax

Edited by Géraldine Legendre, Jane Grimshaw and Sten Vikner

Recent work in theoretical syntax has revealed the strong explanatory power of the notions of economy, competition, and optimization. Building grammars entirely upon these elements, Optimality Theory syntax provides a theory of universal grammar with a formally precise and strongly restricted theory of universal typology: cross-linguistic variation arises exclusively from the conflict among universal principles.