Jeanette (Koch) Gundel (July 16, 1942 – November 8, 2019) 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 ...

noted for her work on

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 ...

and

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 ...

Academic career

Gundel received her PhD in Linguistics from 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 ...

, in 1974. Her dissertation, "The Role of Topic and Comment in Linguistic Theory", was published in 1977 by the Indiana University Linguistics Club, and in 1988, in the Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series by Garland. After having taught at the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

(1974–1977) and the

University of Hawaii at Manoa A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

(1978–1980), Gundel joined the Department of Linguistics at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

in 1980 and became Full Professor there in 1992. She was Head of the academic program in Linguistics from 1999 to 2016, and served as the Director of the Institute of Linguistics from 2010 to 2016. She served as the Director of Graduate Studies in Linguistics from 1991 to 1997 and from 2001 to 2012.

Research

Gundel's research focused primarily on the interface between

linguistic theory Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the n ...

and

. Her work was widely published and widely cited. Her foundational 1993 ''Language'' paper with Nancy Hedberg and Ron Zacharski, "Cognitive Status and the Form of Referring Expression in Discourse," established the Givenness Hierarchy, a concept that has become crucial not only in linguistics, but also in the domains of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

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 ...

. This paper was included in ''The Language Anthology, Volume III, The Best of Language 1986–2016'', a compilation of the most influential articles published in the history of the journal. In addition to her publications as author, Gundel co-edited major volumes on

reference Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''name'' ...

, including The ''Oxford Handbook of Reference'', published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

in 2019. 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 ...

in her honor was published by

John Benjamins John Benjamins Publishing Company is an independent academic publisher in social sciences and humanities with its head office in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The company was founded in the 1960s by John and Claire Benjamins and is currently managed ...

in 2007.

Selected works

*Fretheim, Thorstein and Jeanette Gundel, eds. 1996. ''Reference and referent accessibility''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Gundel, Jeanette K. 1988. Universals of topic-comment structure. In ''Studies in Syntactic Typology''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 209–242. *Gundel, Jeanette K. and

Barbara Abbott Barbara Kenyon Abbott (born 1943) is an American linguist. She earned her PhD in linguistics in 1976 at the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of George Lakoff. From 1976 to 2006, she was a professor in the department of ...

, eds. 2019. ''The Oxford Handbook of Reference''. Oxford University Press. *Gundel, Jeanette K. and Thorstein Fretheim. 2003. Information structure. In ''Handbook of Pragmatics''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. *Gundel, Jeanette K. and Thorstein Fretheim. 2006. Topic and focus. In ''Handbook of Pragmatics''. Blackwell Publishing Company, pp. 175–196. *Gundel, Jeanette K. and Nancy Hedberg, eds. 2008. ''Reference: Interdisciplinary Perspectives''. Oxford University Press. *Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg and Ron Zacharski. 1993. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. ''Language'' 69, 274–307.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gundel, Jeanette 1942 births 2019 deaths American women linguists University of Minnesota faculty University of Texas at Austin alumni Writers from Kraków Writers from Minneapolis