Willem Johannes Maria (Pim) Levelt (born 17 May 1938 in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
) is a Dutch
psycholinguist
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 ...
. He is a researcher of human
language acquisition and
speech production. He developed a comprehensive theory of the
cognitive processes
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
involved in the act of
speaking
Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...
, including the significance of the "
mental lexicon The mental lexicon is defined as a mental dictionary that contains information regarding a word, such as its meaning, pronunciation, and syntactic characteristics.
The mental lexicon is a construct used in linguistics and psycholinguistics to refe ...
". Levelt was the founding director of the
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik''; Dutch: ''Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek'') is a research institute situated on the campus of Radboud University Nijmegen located ...
in
Nijmegen. He also served as president of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences between 2002 and 2005, of which he has been a member since 1978.
Levelt became a member of the
German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...
in 1993. In 2000 he became a foreign associate of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Levelt became a corresponding member (living abroad) of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2002. He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
in 2004. In 2010 Levelt was awarded the ''
Orden Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste'', receiving the orden in person from the
President of Germany
The president of Germany, officially the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: link=no, Bundespräsident der Bundesrepublik Deutschland),The official title within Germany is ', with ' being added in international corres ...
on 30 May 2011.
Publications
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; About Pim Levelt
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References
External links
Willem Levelt's résumé published by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics*
1938 births
Living people
Corresponding Members of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Leiden University alumni
Linguists from the Netherlands
Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Psycholinguists
Radboud University Nijmegen faculty
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
Scientists from Amsterdam
University of Groningen faculty
{{Netherlands-linguist-stub
Members of the American Philosophical Society