Géraldine Legendre (born 1953) is a French-American cognitive scientist and

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 on French grammar, on mathematical models for the development 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) ...

natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...

s including harmonic grammar and

Optimality Theory In linguistics, Optimality Theory (frequently abbreviated OT) is a linguistic model proposing that the observed forms of language arise from the optimal satisfaction of conflicting constraints. OT differs from other approaches to phonological ...

, and on

universal grammar Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible hum ...

and innate syntactic ability of humans in natural language. She is a professor of cognitive science at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

and the chair of the Johns Hopkins Cognitive Science Department.

Education and career

Legendre studied English literature at the

University of Tours The University of Tours (french: Université de Tours), formerly François Rabelais University of Tours (french: Université François Rabelais), is a public university in Tours, France. Founded in 1969, the university was formerly named after th ...

, earning a licentiate in 1974. She went to the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

for graduate study, and she completed her M.A. in 1984 and her Ph.D. in 1987. Her dissertation, ''Topics in French Syntax'', was supervised by David M. Perlmutter and

Sandra Chung Sandra (Sandy) Chung is an American linguist and distinguished professor emerita at the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on Austronesian languages and syntax. Education Chung earned h ...

. She became an assistant professor of linguistics at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...

and earned tenure there in 1994. In 1995, she moved to Johns Hopkins University, and in 2000, she was promoted to full professor. She became department chair in 2018.

Books

Legendre is the author of the book ''Topics in French Syntax'' (Routledge, 1994) and the coauthor with

Paul Smolensky Paul Smolensky (born May 5, 1955) is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Cognitive Science at the Johns Hopkins University and a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Redmond Washington. Along with Alan Prince, in 1993 he developed Opt ...

of the two-volume ''The Harmonic Mind'' (MIT Press, 2006). She is also a co-editor of

edited volume An edited volume or edited collection is a collection of scholarly or scientific chapters written by different authors. The chapters in an edited volume are original works (not republished works). Alternative terms for edited volume are ''contribut ...

s including ''Optimality-Theoretic Syntax'' (MIT Press, 2001) and ''Optimality-Theoretic Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics: From Uni- To Bidirectional Optimization'' (Oxford University Press, 2016).

References

External links

Faculty page from Johns Hopkins University
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Legendre, Geraldine 1953 births Living people French cognitive scientists Women cognitive scientists Linguists from the United States Women linguists University of Tours alumni University of California, San Diego alumni University of Colorado Boulder faculty Johns Hopkins University faculty