Diane Massam facts for kids

Diane Massam is a Canadian linguist. A linguist is a person who studies language. She is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. This means she is a retired professor who still holds an honored title.

Studying Languages

Diane Massam earned her PhD in linguistics in 1985. She studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her main teacher was Noam Chomsky, a very famous linguist.

From 1989, she worked at the University of Toronto. She was a professor in the Department of Linguistics. She retired in 2017 and became a professor emeritus.

What She Researches

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 an Austronesian language. These languages are spoken in places like Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Niuean is spoken in Niue, a small country in the South Pacific.

She studied a special way that verbs and nouns can combine. This is called noun incorporation. Her work helped other linguists understand similar language patterns. She also offered new ideas about how a sentence's subject (who or what does the action) connects to its predicate (what the subject does or is).

Awards and Roles

Diane Massam has been recognized for her work in linguistics.

• In 2014, she was a main speaker at a big meeting. This was the 21st annual meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA).
• She served on the Advisory Board for the Canadian Journal of Linguistics.
• She was also on the Editorial Board for the journal Linguistic Inquiry.

Massam held important leadership roles too.

• In 2015, she became the Vice-President of the Canadian Linguistic Association.
• After two years, she became the President of the CLA. She served as President from 2017 to 2019.

See also

In Spanish: Diane Massam para niños