Ellen F. Prince (born

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, February 29, 1944 – died

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, October 24, 2010) was an American

linguist 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 ...

, known for her work in linguistic

pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

Education and career

Prince earned her PhD from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1974. She served on the faculty there from 1974 until her retirement in 2005, including serving as chair of the department from 1993 to 1997. During her career, she contributed to more than 60 publications, 150 talks and presentations. She supervised 20 doctoral dissertations and served on dozens of dissertation committees at

and other universities around the world.

Research

Prince pioneered in the area of linguistic

. Her research contributed largely to pragmatic borrowing, syntax and discourse functioning, and centering theory. Research on centering theory was one of her main focuses later in her career, which marries the three areas of

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 ...

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

, and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

to produce one theory on

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...

. She is well known for her

typology Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...

of information statuses in discourse, basing her conclusions on the study of naturally occurring data. Many of her papers have been – and remain – highly influential in the field of pragmatics. She analyzed the pragmatic functions of syntactic constructions in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

, including varieties of

cleft A cleft is an opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation. Cleft may refer to: Linguistics * A cleft sentence, a type of grammatical construction Anatomy * Cleft lip and palate, a congenital deformity * A cleft chin, a dimple on the chin * The ...

and left-periphery constructions, such as

topicalization Topicalization is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position further to the right). This involves a phrasal ...

and left-

dislocation In materials science, a dislocation or Taylor's dislocation is a linear crystallographic defect or irregularity within a crystal structure that contains an abrupt change in the arrangement of atoms. The movement of dislocations allow atoms to sl ...

. Her interest in

was so strong that between 1985 and 2001 a considerable portion of her academic publications were focused on some aspect of Yiddish linguistics or syntax.

Honors and distinctions

Ellen Prince was a visiting professor at numerous universities, including

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Tel-Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

Yeshiva University Yeshiva University is a private Orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York City."About YU
on the Yeshiva Universit ...

and many more. Prince served as the

President of the Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for linguistics founded in December 1924. At the first meeting, the LSA membership elected Hermann Collitz as their first president. Since then, there have been presidencies, with dif ...

in 2008. She was elected as a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

in 2009. She was born on leap day of the month of February and was therefore able to celebrate only 16 birthdays in the 66 years she lived.

Selected publications

*Prince, Ellen. 1978. ''A comparison of wh-clefts and it-clefts in discourse''. ''Language'' 54, 883-906. *Prince, Ellen. 1981. ''Toward a taxonomy of given-new information.'' In Peter Cole (ed.), ''Radical Pragmatics.'' New York: Academic Press, 223-254. *Prince, Ellen. 1992. The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information-status. In William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson (Eds.), ''Discourse Description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text''. John Benjamins, Philadelphia, pp. 295–326. *Prince, Ellen, 1997. On the functions of left-dislocation in English discourse. In: Kamio, A. (Ed.), ''Directions in Functional Linguistics''. John Benjamins, Philadelphia, pp. 117–144. *Prince, Ellen, 1998. On the limits of syntax, with reference to topicalization and left-dislocation. In: Cullicover, P., McNally, L. (Eds.), ''Syntax and Semantics'', vol. 29. Academic Press, New York, pp. 281–302

References

External links

Yiddish Linguistics - Ellen Prince's Home Page
*2011
''Ellen F. Prince,'' obituary in ''Language''
87: 866-872. (By Gregory Ward, Betty J. Birner,

Laurence R. Horn Laurence Robert Horn (born 1945) is an American linguist. He is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University with specialties in pragmatics and semantics. He received his doctorate in 1972 from UCLA and for ...

, Barbara Abbott, Pauline Jacobson, and Jerrold M. Sadock.) {{DEFAULTSORT:Prince, Ellen 1944 births 2010 deaths Linguists from the United States Women linguists 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science University of Pennsylvania alumni University of Pennsylvania faculty Linguistic Society of America presidents Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America