Joan L. Bybee, linguistics professor, has been named UNM's 49th Annual Research Lecturer. The lecture, "Say it again: how usage shapes language," will be presented on Friday, April 30, at 7 p.m. in the Continuing Education Building.
The annual research lecturer title is the highest honor UNM awards faculty members. Bybee is credited by many of her peers with developing a new paradigm or linguistics. "When I came into the field of linguistics, all the attention was focused on abstract linguistic structures and it was assumed that meaning and patterns of use were not important," says Bybee. "I thought right away that there was a lot missing from this picture. My research has involved applying the study of meaning and usage to the question of why languages have grammar and why grammar takes the form it does."
Bybee is a leader in the development of two major theoretical innovations that have had an enormous impact on the field of linguistics: grammaticization and usage-based grammar. She has written and co-edited a number of books, journal articles and book chapters. Bybee has received seventeen grants and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, five National Science Foundation grants, and grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition to her work at UNM, she currently serves as president of the Linguistic Society of America, the largest organization of its kind in the world.
Contact: Karen Wentworth (505) 277-5627
Posted by Sumrow at April 20, 2004 10:43 AM