Irene Roswitha Heim (born in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

, Germany, on October 30, 1954) is a

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 ...

and a leading specialist in

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

. She was a professor at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

and

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

before moving to the

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 1989, where she is Professor Emerita of Linguistics. She served as Head of the Linguistics Section of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Biography

Heim's parents were German-speakers born in then-

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

, who had emigrated to Germany after World War II. She attended school in Munich, and studied at the

University of Konstanz The University of Konstanz (german: Universität Konstanz) is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Its main campus was opened on the Gießberg in 1972 after being founded in 1966. The university is Germany's ...

and the

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

, graduating from the latter in 1978 with an MA in Linguistics and Philosophy and a minor in mathematics. Following this, she studied for a PhD at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

, completing her dissertation in 1982. After short-term postdoctoral positions 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 ...

MIT 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 m ...

, the

(1983-1987), and

, she took up a faculty position at

in 1987, receiving tenure as an associate professor in 1993 and becoming promoted to full professor in 1997.

Research

Heim's 1982 dissertation ''The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases'' is considered a classic text and a major milestone in formal semantics. In the second chapter of the work she argued (developing an insight by the philosopher David Lewis) that indefinite

noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...

s like ''a cat'' in the sentence ''If a cat is not in Athens, she is in Rhodes'' are not quantifiers but free variables bound by an existential operator inserted in the sentence by a semantic operation that she dubbed

existential closure In formal semantics, existential closure is an operation which introduces existential quantification. It was first posited by Irene Heim in her 1982 dissertation, as part of her analysis of indefinites. In her formulation, existential closure is ...

. In the third chapter of the work she developed a compositional dynamic theory of (in)definites. This work, along with

Hans Kamp Johan Anthony Willem "Hans" Kamp (born 5 September 1940) is a Dutch philosopher and linguist, responsible for introducing discourse representation theory (DRT) in 1981. Kamp was born in Den Burg. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from UCLA in 19 ...

's roughly contemporaneous 'A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation' (1981), became the founding work in the influential tradition of

dynamic semantics Dynamic semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics that treats the meaning of a sentence as its potential to update a context. In static semantics, knowing the meaning of a sentence amounts to knowing when it is true; in dynami ...

and the first compositional dynamic fragment. She is the co-author with Angelika Kratzer of ''Semantics in Generative Grammar'', an influential textbook of formal semantics, and was a founding co-editor (also with Kratzer) of the journal ''

Natural Language Semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

''.

Awards

In 2010 Irene Heim was awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Zukunftskolleg at the

. In 2012 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 Heim 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 ...

, ''The Art and Craft of Semantics''.

References

External links

* Heim's MIT faculty page {{DEFAULTSORT:Heim, Irene Linguists from the United States Living people University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Humanities and Fine Arts alumni University of Texas at Austin faculty University of California, Los Angeles faculty MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty Semanticists Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Women linguists 1954 births