Ans van Kemenade (born

1954 Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The fir ...

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

at the

Radboud University Nijmegen Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, nl, Radboud Universiteit , formerly ''Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen'') is a public research university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The university bears the name of Saint Radboud, a 9th century D ...

specializing in the history of the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

Biography

Van Kemenade studied English and linguistics at

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

, and received her doctorate there in 1987 with a thesis titled ''Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English''. Following positions at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

and the

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

she was appointed professor and chair of English linguistics at the Radboud University Nijmegen in 1999. Van Kemenade has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours. In 2015 she was appointed as a member of the Permanent Committee for Large Scale Research Infrastructures advising the

Dutch Research Council The Dutch Research Council (NWO, Dutch: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course of ...

. In 2017 she was the recipient of a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

, Word Order Change in Acquisition and Language Contact, edited by

Bettelou Los Bettelou Los is a linguist and philologist specializing in the history of the English language. Since 2013 she has held the Forbes Chair of English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Academic career Los received her MA from the University of ...

and Pieter de Haan. She was elected as a member of the Academia Europaea in 2018. In 2020 she was made a Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands.

Research

Van Kemenade works on language variation and change, particularly in the histories of English and Dutch. A major focus of her recent work has been the interplay of

syntax 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) ...

and

information structure In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is formally packaged within a sentence.Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. ''Information structure and sentence form.'' Cambridge: Cambridge Univer ...

in word order change.

Selected publications

* van Kemenade, Ans. 1987. ''Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English''. Dordrecht: Foris. * Hulk, Aafke, and Ans van Kemenade. 1995. Verb second, pro-drop, functional projections and language change. In Adrian Battye & Ian Roberts (eds.), ''Clause structure and language change'', 227-256. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * van Kemenade, Ans, and

Nigel Vincent Nigel Vincent is a British linguist. He is Professor Emeritus of General and Romance Linguistics at the University of Manchester. He is best known for his work on morphology, syntax, and historical linguistics, with particular focus on the Romance ...

(eds.). 1997. ''Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * van Kemenade, Ans. 1997. V2 and embedded topicalisation in Old and Middle English. In van Kemenade & Vincent (eds.), 326-352. * Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman and Wim van der Wurff. 2000. ''The syntax of early English''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * van Kemenade, Ans. 2000. Jespersen’s Cycle revisited: formal properties of grammaticalization. In Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas & Anthony Warner (eds.), ''Diachronic syntax: models and mechanisms'', 51-74. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * van Kemenade, Ans, and

(eds.). 2006. ''The handbook of the history of English''. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. * van Kemenade, Ans, and Bettelou Los. 2006. Discourse adverbs and clausal syntax on Old and Middle English. In van Kemenade & Los (eds.), 224-248.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:van Kemenade, Ans Living people Grammarians from the Netherlands Corpus linguists Syntacticians Historical linguists of English Academic staff of Radboud University Nijmegen Utrecht University alumni Knights of the Order of the Netherlands Lion 1954 births