Joan Lea Bybee (previously: Hooper; born 11 February 1945 in
,
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
) is 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 ...
and
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
emerita at the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
. Much of her work concerns
grammaticalization,
stochastics
Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselve ...
,
modality
Modality may refer to:
Humanities
* Modality (theology), the organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations
* Modality (music), in music, the subject concerning certain diatonic scales
* Modaliti ...
,
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
, and
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
. Bybee is best known for proposing the theory of
usage-based phonology and for her contributions to
cognitive and
historical linguistics.
Contributions to linguistic theory
Bybee's earliest work in linguistics was framed within a
Generative
Generative may refer to:
* Generative actor, a person who instigates social change
* Generative art, art that has been created using an autonomous system that is frequently, but not necessarily, implemented using a computer
* Generative music, mus ...
perspective, the dominant
theoretical approach
A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be ...
to phonology at the time. As her career developed, Bybee's contributions moved progressively from formalist theories towards a
functional and cognitive perspective, incorporating insights from morphology,
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 comp ...
,
syntax,
child 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 historical linguistics.
Generative work (1970s)
Natural Generative Phonology
In the early and mid-70's, Bybee proposed that the connection between the abstract
phonological representation of a word and the actual forms experienced by language users was a more direct one than previously postulated. Her theory of ''Natural Generative Phonology,'' elaborated upon and expanded the work of
Theo Vennemann
Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (; born 27 May 1937 in Oberhausen-Sterkrade) is a German historical linguist known for his controversial theories of a "Vasconic" and an "Atlantic" stratum in European languages, published since the 1990s.
He was ...
, proposing less abstract mental representations of sound structure while arguing for greater proximity between phonetic and phonological forms.
Although belonging to a formalist tradition, Bybee's early work already contained elements that challenged the
performance/competence model that underlay all Generative assumptions. Natural Generative Phonology proposed that the mental representation of language results from speakers’ exposure to actual language in use. The proposal that the structure of language derives from actual communication rather than from abstract rules wired in the brain represented a major departure from the mainstream linguistics, an idea Bybee pursued in all her subsequent work.
Morphology
In 1985, Bybee published her influential volume ''Morphology: A study of the Relation between Meaning and Form'', in which she uncovered semantic regularities across 50
genetically
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar working i ...
and
geographically diverse languages. These meaning similarities manifest themselves in recurring cross-linguistic patterns in
morphological systems with respect to
tense, aspect and mood. This work runs counter to
Chomskyan generative theory, which describes
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
as an independent module of the brain that works in an abstract manner completely detached from semantic considerations.
Cognitive linguistics
Alongside linguists
Dan Slobin
Dan Isaac Slobin (born May 7, 1939) is a Professor Emeritus of psychology and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Slobin has made major contributions to the study of children's language acquisition, and his work has demonst ...
and Carol Moder, Bybee's work helped popularize the concept of mental schemas (or schemata) to explain grammatical structure, especially in terms of connections between morphological forms within a
paradigm. Bybee defines ''schemas'' as "an emergent generalization over words having similar patterns of semantic and phonological connections". For instance, the English
irregular verbs ''snuck, struck, strung, spun'' and ''hung'' are connected through a schema that builds on similarities between these verbs and across the lexicon: the meaning of past tense, the
vowel ">Œ the final
nasal and/or (sequence of)
velar
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...
consonants, as well as the initial
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
consonant /s/ or /h/.
Connections between individual forms and schemas exist in a network (see below) whose links can be strengthened, weakened and at times also severed or created. According to Bybee, the force that binds the links in a network is actual ''language usage''.
The Network Model
Informed by studies
child language development, morphological change and
psycholinguistic
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 ...
experimentation, Bybee proposed in the late 1980s and early 1990s a model to account for the cognitive representation of
morphologically complex words: the ''Network Model''. Words entered in the lexicon have varying degrees of lexical strength, due primarily to their token frequency. Words with high lexical strength are easy to access, serve as the bases of morphological relations and exhibit an autonomy that makes them resistant to change and prone to semantic independence.
Grammaticalization
Diachronic studies figure prominently in Bybee's body of work. Specifically, her work has explored the ways in which grammar emerges through language use via ''grammaticalization.''
Grammaticalization describes the concept that individual words or
constructions may come to express abstract grammatical meaning (e.g. future tense) as users increasingly pair frequent words with a given meaning.
Honors
Bybee served as president 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 2004. She was named a
Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America
Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is an honor accorded by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) to distinguished members of the society. LSA Fellows are "members of the Society who have made distinguished contributions to the dis ...
in 2006.
Key publications
*Hooper, Joan B. 1976. ''An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology.'' New York: Academic Press.
*Bybee, Joan L. 1985. ''Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form.'' Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (Korean translation by Seongha Rhee and Hyun Jung Koo. Seoul: Hankook Publishing Company, 2000.)
*Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins and William Pagliuca. 1994. ''The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
*Bybee, Joan. 2001. ''Phonology and Language Use.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Bybee, Joan. 2005. "Language change and universals" in ''Linguistic Universals'', edited by Ricardo Mairal and Juana Gil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Bybee, Joan. 2006. ''Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*Bybee, Joan. 2010. ''Language, Usage and Cognition.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Bybee, Joan. 2015. ''Language Change''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Joan Lea Bybee: ''"Irrealis" as a Grammatical Category.'' Anthropological linguistics 40 NO. 2 (1998), pp. 257–271
References
External links
Homepage Biographical information. omnilexica.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bybee, Joan
Linguists from the United States
Living people
Women linguists
Morphologists
University of New Mexico faculty
University of Texas at Austin alumni
San Diego State University alumni
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society
1945 births
Linguistic Society of America presidents
Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America