Nina Hyams (born 1952) is a distinguished research professor emeritus in

linguistics 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 ...

at the

University of California in Los Angeles 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 ...

Education and career

Hyams received her PhD in linguistics in 1983 from

CUNY , mottoeng = The education of free people is the hope of Mankind , budget = $3.6 billion , established = , type = Public university system , chancellor = Fél ...

, with a dissertation entitled, ''The acquisition of parameterized grammars.'' It was published by

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

in 1986, and it remains a widely cited and influential classic. Her primary research area since her dissertation is

grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...

development in first language acquisition. She is particularly noted for her research into the acquisition of

null subjects In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject; such a clause is then said to have a null subject. In the principles and parameters framework, the null su ...

. In 2020 she was inducted as a Fellow in 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'', ...

Selected publications

* *Hyams, Nina; "The Theory of Parameters and Syntactic Development", a chapter within * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hyams, Nina 1952 births Living people Linguists from the United States 20th-century linguists University of California, Los Angeles faculty Women cognitive scientists Developmental psycholinguists Women linguists City University of New York alumni Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America