Joan Bresnan
Encyclopedia
Joan Wanda Bresnan is Professor of Linguistics
at Stanford University
. She is best known as one of the architects (with Ronald Kaplan
) of the theoretical framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar
.
Bresnan earned her doctorate in linguistics in 1972 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, where she studied with Noam Chomsky
. In the early and mid 1970s, her work focused on complementation and wh-movement
constructions within transformational grammar
, and she frequently took positions at odds with those espoused by Chomsky.
Her dissatisfaction with transformational grammar led her to collaborate with Kaplan on a new theoretical framework, Lexical-Functional Grammar (or LFG). A volume of papers written in the new framework and edited by Bresnan, entitled The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, appeared in 1982. Since then, Bresnan's work has focused on LFG analyses of various phenomena, primarily in English, Bantu languages
, and Australian languages. She has also worked on analyses in optimality theory
, and has pursued statistical approaches to linguistics. She has a strong interest in linguistic typology
, which has influenced the development of LFG.
Joan Bresnan was honored in August 2005 with a festschrift entitled Architectures, Rules, and Preferences: A Festschrift for Joan Bresnan, to be published by CSLI Publications.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. She is best known as one of the architects (with Ronald Kaplan
Ronald Kaplan
Ronald M. Kaplan is Chief Scientist and a Principal Researcher at the Powerset division of Microsoft Bing. He is also a Consulting Professor in the Linguistics Department at Stanford University and a Principal of Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information...
) of the theoretical framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar
Lexical functional grammar
Lexical functional grammar is a grammar framework in theoretical linguistics, a variety of generative grammar. It is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar. The development of the theory was initiated by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan in the 1970s, in reaction to...
.
Bresnan earned her doctorate in linguistics in 1972 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, where she studied with Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
. In the early and mid 1970s, her work focused on complementation and wh-movement
Wh-movement
Wh-movement is a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause...
constructions within transformational grammar
Transformational grammar
In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars...
, and she frequently took positions at odds with those espoused by Chomsky.
Her dissatisfaction with transformational grammar led her to collaborate with Kaplan on a new theoretical framework, Lexical-Functional Grammar (or LFG). A volume of papers written in the new framework and edited by Bresnan, entitled The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, appeared in 1982. Since then, Bresnan's work has focused on LFG analyses of various phenomena, primarily in English, Bantu languages
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
, and Australian languages. She has also worked on analyses in optimality theory
Optimality theory
Optimality theory is a linguistic model proposing that the observed forms of language arise from the interaction between conflicting constraints. OT models grammars as systems that provide mappings from inputs to outputs; typically, the inputs are conceived of as underlying representations, and...
, and has pursued statistical approaches to linguistics. She has a strong interest in linguistic typology
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
, which has influenced the development of LFG.
Joan Bresnan was honored in August 2005 with a festschrift entitled Architectures, Rules, and Preferences: A Festschrift for Joan Bresnan, to be published by CSLI Publications.