Barbara Hall Partee (born June 23, 1940) is a

Distinguished University Professor Professors in the United States commonly occupy any of several positions of teaching and research within a college or university. In the U.S., the word "professor" informally refers collectively to the academic ranks of assistant professor, asso ...

Emerita of

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. Ling ...

and

Philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...

at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...

(UMass).

Biography

Born in

Englewood, New Jersey Englewood is a city in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, which at the 2020 United States census had a population of 29,308. Englewood was incorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from po ...

, Partee grew up in the

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...

area. She is the younger sister of professional baseball player Dick Hall. She attended

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as ...

, where she majored in mathematics with minors in Russian and philosophy. She did her graduate work at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

under

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

. Her 1965 PhD dissertation from MIT was entitled ''Subject and Object in Modern English''. Partee began her professorial career at the

University of California, 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 Californ ...

in 1965 as an assistant professor of linguistics. She taught there until 1972, when she transferred to the

, soon becoming a full professor. During her time at UMass Amherst, she has taught numerous students who would become notable linguists including

Gennaro Chierchia Gennaro Chierchia (; born 10 September 1953) is an Italian linguist and Haas Foundation Professor of Linguistics and Professor of Philosophy . His work and study focus on areas including semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and lang ...

and Irene Heim. She retired from UMass in September 2004. Through her interactions with the philosopher and logician

Richard Montague Richard Merritt Montague (September 20, 1930 – March 7, 1971) was an American mathematician and philosopher who made contributions to mathematical logic and the philosophy of language. He is known for proposing Montague grammar to formaliz ...

UCLA 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 ...

in the 1970s she played an important role in bringing together the research traditions of

generative linguistics Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistic ...

, formal logic, and

analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United ...

, pursuing an agenda pioneered by David Lewis in his 1970 article "General Semantics". She helped popularize

Montague grammar __notoc__ Montague grammar is an approach to natural language semantics, named after American logician Richard Montague. The Montague grammar is based on mathematical logic, especially higher-order predicate logic and lambda calculus, and makes ...

among linguists in the United States, especially at a time when there was a lot of uncertainty about the relation between syntax and semantics. She is one of the founders of contemporary formal semantics in the United States, the author of a number of influential works. In her later years she has become increasingly interested in a new kind of intellectual synthesis, forging connections to the tradition of lexical semantic research as it has long been practiced in Russia.

Awards and distinctions

Partee has received various honors, including the

presidency A presidency is an administration or the executive, the collective administrative and governmental entity that exists around an office of president of a state or nation. Although often the executive branch of government, and often personified by ...

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'' ...

(1986), honorary doctorates from

(1989),

Charles University in Prague ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , under ...

(1992),

Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen Business School (Danish'': Handelshøjskolen i København'') often abbreviated and referred to as CBS (also in Danish), is a public university situated in Copenhagen, Denmark and is considered one of the most prestigious business scho ...

(2005) and

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

(2014), and election to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

(1984) and the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the N ...

(1989). In 1992, she received the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis (''research award of the

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...

''; together with Hans Kamp). She has been a foreign member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

since 2002. In 2006, she was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. On January 8, 2018 she received an honorary doctorate from the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

for her pioneering work in formal semantics. In July 2018 she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 2020 she received the

Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) The Franklin Institute Awards (or Benjamin Franklin Medal) is an American science and engineering award presented by the Franklin Institute, a science museum in Philadelphia. The Franklin Institute awards comprises the Benjamin Franklin Meda ...

. She was a founding co- editor of the ''

Annual Review of Linguistics The ''Annual Review of Linguistics'' is an annual peer-reviewed review journal published by Annual Reviews. It was established in 2015 and covers developments in the broad field of linguistics The founding co-editors were Barbara Partee and Mark ...

'' in 2015.

Bibliography

* . * Stockwell, Robert P & Schachter, Paul & Partee, Barbara Hall. 1973. ''The major syntactic structures of English.'' New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. [Original unabridged 1968 version
Integration of transformational theories on English syntax.
Bedford, MA: ESD.]

References

External links

Barbara Partee's website

Barbara H. Partee: ''Reflections of a formal semanticist as of Feb 2005.''
(an extended version of the introductory essay in Barbara H. Partee: ''Compositionality in Formal Semantics: Selected Papers of Barbara Partee.'' Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 2004.)
Barbara Partee recalls her days at the MITRE Corporation, 1963-1965
{{DEFAULTSORT:Partee, Barbara 1940 births Living people People from Englewood, New Jersey Swarthmore College alumni MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Linguists from the United States Women linguists Semanticists University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy Recipients of the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics Linguistic Society of America presidents Annual Reviews (publisher) editors

Biography

Awards and distinctions

See also

Bibliography

References

External links