Michael K. Brame (January 27, 1944 — August 16, 2010) was an American linguist and professor at the
University of Washington, and founding editor of the peer-reviewed research journal, ''Linguistic Analysis''. He was known for his theory of
recursive categorical syntax. He also co-authored with his wife, Galina Popova, several books on the
identity of the writer who used the pseudonym "
William Shakespeare".
Early life and education
Michael Brame was born on January 27, 1944 in
San Antonio, Texas.
Brame started his study of linguistics at the
University of Texas at Austin, receiving his BA in 1966. That summer he studied
Egyptian Arabic at the
American University of Cairo
The American University in Cairo (AUC; ar, الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة, Al-Jāmi‘a al-’Amrīkiyya bi-l-Qāhira) is a private research university in Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning progra ...
. That fall, Brame began a PhD program at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying under
Morris Halle and
Noam Chomsky, who was his adviser. He received his PhD in 1970 or 1971. His dissertation was titled ''Arabic Phonology: Implications for Phonological Theory and Historical Semitic''.
Brame was a Fulbright scholar (Netherlands, 1973-1974).
Michael Brame
at ''Fulbright Scholar Directory''.
Recursive categorical syntax
Brame developed an algebraic theory 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) ...
, recursive categorical syntax, also sometimes called algebraic syntax, as an alternative to transformational-generative grammar
In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combin ...
. It is a type of dependency grammar
Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the ''constituency relation'' of phrase structure) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesni ...
, and is related to link grammars.
Brame formulated an algebra, (technically a non-associative groupoid with inverses) of lexical items (words and phrases), or lexes for short. A lex is a string representation of a word or idiomatic phrase together with a notation specifying what other word classes can bond with the string and in which order.
''Shakespeare's Fingerprints''
In 2002, Brame co-authored with his wife Galina Popova a book titled ''Shakespeare's Fingerprints''. Over the next two years, they would publish three more books on the topic.
Personal life
Brame was married to Galina Popova.
Bibliography
Dissertation
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Books
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;On Shakespeare
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Selected articles
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;Recursive categorical syntax
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See also
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References
Citations
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Further reading
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brame, Michael
1944 births
2010 deaths
20th-century linguists
Dependency grammar
Grammar frameworks
Linguists from the United States
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
People from San Antonio
Shakespeare authorship theorists
University of Texas at Austin alumni
University of Washington faculty