Marina Nespor

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Marina Nespor (born 3 November 1949 in Milan, Italy) is a Professor of linguistics at the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in Trieste, Italy, [1] and senior researcher in the ERC PASCAL Project, a project investigating language acquisition and the nature of the biological endowment that allows humans to learn language. [2] Much of Dr. Nespor's research focuses on the interaction of phonology and syntax: what the prosodic structure of an utterance communicates about its grammatical structure. [1]

Nespor received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977. She was elected as member of the Academia Europaea in 2008. [3] She has served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, including Lingua, The Linguistic Review , and Linguistics.

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The 1986 book Prosodic Phonology by Marina Nespor and Irene Vogel is considered a classic work within its subfield. [4] It introduced an analysis of prosodic structure, including elements such as meter, syllable structure, and stress patterns, within a framework of generative grammar. [5] Using evidence from many different languages, the book investigates ways in which syntax and phonology affect one another, and how these in turn affect language perception. [6] The book was reissued in 2007 by De Gruyter as part of their Studies in Generative Grammar series. [4] [7]

L'animale parlante ("The speaking animal") by Nespor and Donna Jo Napoli (2004) [8] is an introduction to linguistics and closely related fields, aimed at readers new to the field. The book, written in Italian, introduces the standard elements of language – phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics – commonly encountered in linguistics courses. In addition, it provides an overview of language acquisition, speech and language pathology, signed languages, and language variation and change, in addition to discussing the relationship between human language and animal communication in other species. [9]

Work by Nespor and colleagues considers gestures that accompany speech part of a broad system of communication prosody. Their experiments suggest that gestures help adults understand unintelligible speech or resolve ambiguity. Based on their findings, the authors propose a general system of prosody that includes gesture as well as phonological elements of speech. [10] [11]

Related Research Articles

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Donna Jo Napoli is an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, as well as a linguist. She currently is a professor at Swarthmore College teaching Linguistics in all different forms. She has also taught linguistics at Smith College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Pennsylvania.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Marina Nespor". Language, Cognition and Development Lab. SISSA. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
  2. ↑ "PASCAL: Processing Activates Specific Constraints for Language Acquisition". SISSA Cognitive Neuroscience Sector. July 2011. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
  3. ↑ "Nespor, Marina". The Academy of Europe. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
  4. 1 2 Bakovic, Eric (December 21, 2007). "Nespor & Vogel, 1986/2007". phonoblog. Retrieved 11 March 2021.
  5. ↑ James, Allan (1988). "Review article: Marina Nespor & Irene Vogel (1986). Prosodic phonology.". Phonology. 5: 161–168. doi:10.1017/S0952675700002219. S2CID   62283269.
  6. ↑ Weinberger, Steven (1989). "Review: Prosodic Phonology". Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 11: 114–116. doi:10.1017/S0272263100007981. S2CID   145381359.
  7. ↑ Nespor, Marina; Vogel, Irene (2007). Prosodic Phonology. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN   978-3-11-019789-1.
  8. ↑ Nespor, Marina; Napoli, Donna Jo (2004). L'animale parlante: introduzione allo studio del linguaggio (in Italian). Carocci.
  9. ↑ Nespor, Stefano (26 September 2011). "L'animale parlante". Stefano Nespor (in Italian). Retrieved 11 March 2021.
  10. ↑ Hite, Emily (24 June 2014). "Talk from the hand: the role of gesture in verbal communication". Scope 10k. Stanford Medicine. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
  11. ↑ Guellaï, Bahia; Langus, Alan; Nespor, Marina (7 July 2014). "Prosody in the hands of the speaker". Frontiers in Psychology. 5: 700. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00700 . PMC   4083345 . PMID   25071666.
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