In linguistics, syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.
Robert D. Van Valin Jr. is an American linguist and the principal researcher behind the development of Role and Reference Grammar, a functional theory of grammar encompassing syntax, semantics, and discourse pragmatics. His 1997 book Syntax: structure, meaning and function is an attempt to provide a model for syntactic analysis which is just as relevant for languages like Dyirbal and Lakhota as it is for more commonly studied Indo-European languages.
Generative grammar, or generativism, is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistics, deriving from logical syntax and glossematics. Generative grammar considers grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. It is a system of explicit rules that may apply repeatedly to generate an indefinite number of sentences which can be as long as one wants them to be. The difference from structural and functional models is that the object is base-generated within the verb phrase in generative grammar. This purportedly cognitive structure is thought of as being a part of a universal grammar, a syntactic structure which is caused by a genetic mutation in humans.
The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: Language, the open access journal Semantics and Pragmatics, and the open access journal Phonological Data & Analysis. Its annual meetings, held every winter, foster discussion amongst its members through the presentation of peer-reviewed research, as well as conducting official business of the society. Since 1928, the LSA has offered training to linguists through courses held at its biennial Linguistic Institutes held in the summer. The LSA and its 3,600 members work to raise awareness of linguistic issues with the public and contribute to policy debates on issues including bilingual education and the preservation of endangered languages.
Syntactic Structures is an important work in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky, originally published in 1957. A short monograph of about a hundred pages, it is recognized as one of the most significant and influential linguistic studies of the 20th century. It contains the now-famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", which Chomsky offered as an example of a grammatically correct sentence that has no discernible meaning, thus arguing for the independence of syntax from semantics.
Eric Pratt Hamp was an American linguist widely respected as a leading authority on Indo-European linguistics, with particular interests in Celtic languages and Albanian. Unlike many Indo-Europeanists, who work entirely on the basis of written materials, he conducted extensive fieldwork on lesser-known Indo-European languages and dialects, such as Albanian, Arbëresh and Arvanitika; Breton; Welsh; Irish; Resian and Scots Gaelic.
Brian James MacWhinney is a Professor of Psychology and Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. He specializes in first and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and the neurological bases of language, and he has written and edited several books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these subjects. MacWhinney is best known for his competition model of language acquisition and for creating the CHILDES and TalkBank corpora. He has also helped to develop a stream of pioneering software programs for creating and running psychological experiments, including PsyScope, an experimental control system for the Macintosh; E-Prime, an experimental control system for the Microsoft Windows platform; and System for Teaching Experimental Psychology (STEP), a database of scripts for facilitating and improving psychological and linguistic research.
The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences is the college of liberal arts and sciences of the George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. The Columbian College is especially known for its programs in forensic science, political sciences, history, English, and economics in the United States.
Angela K. Wilson is an American scientist and former (2022) President of the American Chemical Society. She currently serves as the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, associate dean for strategic initiatives in the College of Natural Sciences, and director of the MSU Center for Quantum Computing, Science, and Engineering (MSU-Q) at Michigan State University.
Waded Cruzado is a Puerto Rican professor of Spanish language and Spanish literature. She served as Interim President of New Mexico State University from 2008 to 2009, and since 2010 has served as the 12th President of Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.
Steve C. Currall is an American psychological scientist and academic administrator, and served as the seventh president of the University of South Florida. He previously served as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Southern Methodist University from January 1, 2016. From 2009 to 2014, Currall served as Dean of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. He has also held leadership roles at University College London and Rice University. On March 22, 2019, Currall was named to succeed Judy Genshaft as president of the University of South Florida, and took office July 1, 2019. He announced his resignation due to health and family reasons on July 19, 2021.
Bruce Eisenstein is an engineering educator serving as the Arthur J. Rowland Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was formerly Interim Dean and Vice Dean of the College of Engineering at Drexel University. He has published nearly 50 papers in the areas of digital signal processing, pattern recognition, deconvolution, along with biomedical engineering. He also served as president of the IEEE in 2000.
Keren D. Rice is a Canadian linguist. She is a professor of linguistics and serves as the Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives at the University of Toronto.
Glyne Piggott is an emeritus professor of linguistics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. During his four decades at McGill, he served terms as associate dean of the faculty of arts, as well as director of undergraduate studies, graduate program director, and chair of the department of linguistics. He was the vice-president and president-elect of the Canadian Linguistic Association from 2002 to 2003.
Diane Lillo-Martin is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. She is currently the Director of the university's Cognitive Sciences Program as well as its Coordinator of American Sign Language Studies. She spent 12 years as Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut.
Robert B. Schnabel is an American computer scientist. He was executive director and CEO of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from November 1, 2015 to 2017. He is now professor and external chair of computer science at University of Colorado Boulder.
Angel G. Jordan was a Spanish-born American electronics and computer engineer known as the founder of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and co-founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and served on its faculty for 55 years, since 2003 as Emeritus. He was instrumental in the formation of the School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon. He has made contributions to technology transfer and institutional development. He served as Dean of Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering and later as the provost of Carnegie Mellon University.
Georgia M. Green is an American linguist and academic. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research has focused on pragmatics, speaker intention, word order and meaning. She has been an advisory editor for several linguistics journals or publishers and she serves on the usage committee for the American Heritage Dictionary.
Amy Brand is an American academic. Brand is the current Director and Publisher of the MIT Press, a position she assumed in July 2015. Previously, Brand served as the assistant provost of faculty appointments and information at Harvard University, and as a vice president at Digital Science.
Lisa Cheng is a linguist with specialisation in theoretical syntax. She is a Chair Professor of Linguistics and Language at the Department of Linguistics, Leiden University, and one of the founding members of the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition.
