Beth Levin (; born 1955) is an American linguist who is currently the William H. Bonsall Professor in the Humanities at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Her research investigates the

lexical semantics Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings.Pustejovsky, J. (2005) Lexical Semantics: Overview' in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, Volumes 1-14Ta ...

of verbs, particularly the representation of events and the kind of morphosyntactic devices that English and other languages use to express events and their participants.

Career

She received her Ph.D. from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1983 and then spent four years at the MIT Center for Cognitive Science, where she had major responsibility for the Lexicon Project. From 1987 to 1999 she was a professor in the Department of Linguistics at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

, serving as the Department chair from 1996-1999. She joined the Stanford Department of Linguistics in September 1999 and served as the department chair there from 2003-2007 and 2010-2011. In 1999-2000 she was a fellow at the

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University that offers a residential postdoctoral fellowship program for scientists and scholars studying "the five core social a ...

. In 2008 she was named a fellow of the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

. She was inducted as a Fellow of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

in 2014. In 2019 she was named a fellow of

Cognitive Science Society The Cognitive Science Society is a professional society for the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. It brings together researchers from many fields who hold the common goal of understanding the nature of the human mind. The society prom ...

Awards and honors

*Fellowship, Cognitive Science Society (2019) *GradEd Champion, Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education, Stanford University (2018) *Fellowship, the

in 2014. *Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Excellence in Graduate Education, Stanford University, (2013-2014) *Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2008) *Erskine Fellowship, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, (2004) *Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1999-2000)

Key publications

Levin. B. and S. Pinker (eds.). 1992. ''Lexical and Conceptual Semantics''. Blackwell. Levin, B. 1993. ''English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation,'' University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Levin, B. and M. Rappaport Hovav. 1995. ''Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface'', Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 26, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. M. Rappaport Hovav and B. Levin. 2001. "An event structure account of English resultatives." ''Language.'' Levin, B. and M. Rappaport Hovav. 2005. ''Argument Realization,'' Research Surveys in Linguistics Series, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Christopher Kennedy and Beth Levin. 2008. "Measure of Change: The Adjectival Core of Degree Achievements,” ''Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics and Discourse,'' Oxford University Press. Levin, B. 2015. "Semantics and Pragmatics of Argument Alternations," ''Annual Review of Linguistics, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 63-83.

External links

* * Video
50 years of Linguistics at MIT, Lecture 1, Lexicon-syntax interactions

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Levin, Beth Linguists from the United States Women linguists Stanford University Department of Linguistics faculty MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Living people 1955 births Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Semanticists