Diane Massam facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Diane Massam
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| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Toronto |
| Doctoral advisor | Noam Chomsky |
Diane Massam is a Canadian linguist and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. A linguist is a scientist who studies human language. Professor Massam is known for her work on how sentences are built in different languages.
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Studying Language
Diane Massam earned her PhD in linguistics in 1985. She studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her main teacher there was a very famous linguist named Noam Chomsky.
From 1989 until 2017, she worked at the University of Toronto. She was a professor in the Department of Linguistics. When she retired in 2017, she became a Professor Emeritus. This means she keeps her title and connection to the university.
How Words Work Together
Professor Massam is an expert in the syntax of the Niuean language. Syntax is the study of how words are put together to form sentences. Niuean is a language spoken on the island of Niue. Niue is a small country in the South Pacific Ocean. Niuean is part of a group called Austronesian languages.
She studied a special way that verbs and nouns can combine. This is called noun incorporation. It's like when you combine "baby" and "sit" to get "baby-sit." Her research helped other linguists understand how words combine in many languages. She also looked at how the main part of a sentence (the subject) connects to what it does or is (the predicate).
Awards and Recognition
Diane Massam has received several honors for her work.
- In 2014, she was a keynote speaker at a big meeting. This was the 21st annual meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA). A keynote speaker is the main speaker at an event.
- She also helped guide important language journals. She was on the Advisory Board of the Canadian Journal of Linguistics. She was also on the Editorial Board of the journal Linguistic Inquiry.
Leading the Canadian Linguistic Association
Professor Massam was chosen to be the Vice-President of the Canadian Linguistic Association (CLA) in 2015. After two years in that role, she became the President of the CLA. She served as President from 2017 to 2019. The CLA is a group for linguists in Canada.
External Links
- Massam's faculty homepage at U of Toronto
- 50 years of Linguistics at MIT
- "A Conversation with Diane Massam", Sali Tagliamonte, 13 November 2017, Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto
See also
In Spanish: Diane Massam para niños
