Structuring Sense explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes, of which this is the first, that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language.

• 1. Exo-Skeletal Explanations


• 1: Structuring Sense: Introductory Comments


• 2: Nuts and Bolts


• 2. Determining Structures


• 3: The Proper Way: Some Introductory Comments in the Context of Proper Names


• 4: Some Stuff on the Mass-Count Distinction


• 5: Things that Count: Null D


• 6: Things that Count: Null # and Others


• 3. Another Language, Another System


• 7: One is the Loneliest Number


• 8: Cheese and Olives, Bottles, and Cups

Hagit Borer received her Ph.D. in Linguistics at MIT in 1981. She has held positions at the University of California at Irvine and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and is currently the chair of the linguistics department at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include syntax, morphosyntax, the syntax-semantics interface, and the acquisition of syntax.