Jane Barbara Grimshaw (born 1951) is a Distinguished Professor meritain the Department of Linguistics at

Rutgers University-New Brunswick Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was a ...

. She is known for her contributions to the areas 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) ...

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 ...

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...

, and lexical representation.

Education

Grimshaw received her B.A. in anthropology and linguistics from University College London in 1973, and her Ph.D. in linguistics from 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 ...

in 1977.

Career

Grimshaw was on the faculty of Linguistics at

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , pro ...

from 1977 to 1992. There she worked closely with

Ray Jackendoff Ray Jackendoff (born January 23, 1945) is an American linguist. He is professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and, with Daniel Dennett, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has always str ...

, with whom she was a co-principal investigator on several projects. In 1992, she joined the faculty of Linguistics at

Rutgers Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was a ...

. She is a member of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS), and was the acting co-director from 2011 to 2012. She taught at two

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'', ...

Linguistic Summer Institutes:

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

(1991) and

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...

(1999). Sh
served on the Executive Committee
of the

from 1996-1998.

Personal life

Grimshaw is married to linguist

Alan Prince Alan Sanford Prince (born 1946) is a Board of Governors Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Prince, along with Paul Smolensky, developed Optimality Theory, which was originally applied to phonology, but has bee ...

Selected publications

* * * * * * * Selected Papers in Optimality Theory: ** Projection, heads, and optimality (ROA 68) ** The best clitic: Constraint conflict in morphosyntax (ROA 250) ** Optimal clitic positions and the lexicon in romance clitic systems (ROA 374) ** Economy of structure in OT (ROA 434) ** Chains as unfaithful optima (ROA 844.04) ** Location specific constraints in matrix and subordinate clauses (with supplementary materials) (ROA 857, 1201) ** Last resorts and grammaticality (ROA 892.02), in ''Optimality Theory and Minimalism: A Possible Convergence'', Broekhuis, Hans, and Vogel, Ralf, eds. ** Last resorts: A typology of do-support (with supplementary materials) (ROA 1111, 1127) ** Linguistic and cognitive explanation in Optimality Theory, with Bruce Tesar and Alan Prince. in

Awards and honors

* Sloan Post-doctoral Fellowship, Center for Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1979–80) * American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship (1982–83) * Bernstein Faculty Fellowship, Brandeis University (1984–85) * Fellowship,

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 ...

(2000-2001)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grimshaw, Jane Living people Women linguists 1951 births Rutgers University faculty Brandeis University faculty Alumni of University College London University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Humanities and Fine Arts alumni