In terms of this organization, the linguistic structure elaborated in Fig. 1.1 can be seen as the consequence of
constructingstructures inallthedomainsofFig. 5.4, withphonologicalstructurefurtherdifferentiatedas inFigure5.3;
the subscripts of Fig. 1.1 designate the links among these structures established by the interfaces.
Fig. 5.4 is relatively coarse, and we can“zoo min”on details of these major components, revealing a finer-scale
organization of tiers and interfaces such as is found in phonology. In particular, the syntax–phonology interface is a
connection to the morphophonological tier, not to phonology as a whole. Similarly, a major component of the
phonology—semantics interface is a connection from the metrical grid of phonology to the“information structure”
tier of semantics (see section 12.5).
Fig. 5.4 reveals clearly the role of syntax in the parallel architecture. Following traditional views, language as a whole
can be thought of as a mapping between sounds and meanings; phonological structure is the specifically linguistic
encoding of sounds, and conceptual structure is the encoding of meanings. Syntactic structure serves as a “way-
station”between these twostructures, making the mapping between them more articulate and precise. Thus, although
syntax is in thecenter in Fig. 5.4, thegrammar is no longer syntactocentricin thesense of section5.2. Rather,syntax is
simply one of the threemajor generative components in the grammar. Syntax is, however, special in the sense that it is
the most“isolated”component: unlike phonology and semantics, it does not have multiple interfaces with other
cognitive capacities. The reasons for this will emerge in Chapter 8.
Many other theories and sub-theories of grammar in the literature can be viewed as variants and elaborations of Fig.
5.4 or parts thereof. Chomsky's syntactocentric grammars (Fig. 5.1) can all be seen (roughly) as Fig. 5.4 minus the
phonological and conceptual formation rules and the phonology–semantics interface: phonology and semantics get
their properties entirely through their (rather rigid) interfaces with syntactic structure. Alternatively, a theory that
denied the existence of an autonomous syntax would omit the syntactic formation rules, leaving all properties of
syntactic structure to be determined by its interfaces with phonology and meaning. Or one could go farther and deny
the existence of syntactic structure altogether, leaving only phonology, semantics, and their interfaces.
More interesting are theories that propose more ramified architecture. Modern autosegmental phonology, as we have
seen,is an elaborationof phonological structure and its formation rules into independentsubcomponents that interact
in the same general fashion, as shown in Fig. 5.3. Lexical-Functional Grammar (Fig. 5.5a) elaborates the syntactic
component into two parallel components: c-structure