Ilse Lehiste ( ; 31 January 1922 – 25 December 2010) was an Estonian-born 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 ...

, author of many studies in

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

Early life

Ilse Lehiste finished high school in

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

. In 1942 she began her studies at the Faculty of Philosophy at the

University of Tartu The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

. In 1944 she fled to Germany with her parents, where she continued her studies – while living in refugee camps – at the University of

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

Academic life and work

She obtained a doctoral degree in philology in 1948 at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

with a thesis on Old Norse. In 1949 she immigrated to the United States. She taught at Kansas Wesleyan University and the

Detroit Institute of Technology The Detroit Institute of Technology was a private four-year technical college in Detroit, Michigan that closed operations in 1981. History First called the Association Institute, the private school was founded in 1891 as a YMCA evening school ...

, before beginning studies at the University of Michigan. She defended her second doctoral thesis – 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 ...

– in 1959 at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. Her dissertation, "An acoustic-phonetic study of internal open juncture," was published as a special issue of ''Phonetica'' (DOI:10.1159/000258062). After working in the U of Michigan Communication Sciences Laboratory as Research Associate from 1959-1963, she joined the faculty of the Slavic department of the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

in 1963. She was a founding member and first chair of the Linguistics Department at OSU, established in 1965. She remained at OSU as professor emerita after her retirement in 1987. Her main fields of research were

acoustic phonetics Acoustic phonetics is a subfield of phonetics, which deals with acoustic aspects of speech sounds. Acoustic phonetics investigates time domain features such as the mean squared amplitude of a waveform, its duration, its fundamental frequency, o ...

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 ...

, prosody,

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...

and

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...

. She was also interested in Estonian runic songs and, in collaboration with Jaan Ross, published several works on this topic (e.g., Ross & Lehiste 2001). During the Soviet occupation of Estonia, she helped to mediate research papers between Estonia and the free world. It was also thanks to her that the 11th

International Congress of Phonetic Sciences The International Phonetic Association (IPA; French: ', ''API'') is an organization that promotes the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. The IPA's major contribution to phonetics is the Interna ...

(ICPhS) in 1987 was arranged in

. Her papers are archived at 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 ...

Honors and functions

Honorary doctor at

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the an ...

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion University of Tartu The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

and

. Foreign member of the

Finnish Academy of Science and Letters The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (Finnish ''Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia''; Latin ''Academia Scientiarum Fennica'') is a Finnish learned society. It was founded in 1908 and is thus the second oldest academy in Finland. The oldest is the Fi ...

and of the

Estonian Academy of Sciences Founded in 1938, the Estonian Academy of Sciences ( et, Eesti Teaduste Akadeemia) is Estonia's national academy of science in Tallinn. As with other national academies, it is an independent group of well-known scientists whose stated aim is to ...

. President of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) (1974-1976)

President of the Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for linguistics founded in December 1924. At the first meeting, the LSA membership elected Hermann Collitz as their first president. Since then, there have been presidencies, with dif ...

(1980); elected

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. Medal for Scientific Achievement,

International Speech Communication Association The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) is a non-profit organization and one of the two main professional associations for speech communication science and technology, the other association being the IEEE Signal Processing Society ...

, 2002.

Bibliography

Ilse Lehiste wrote or co-authored around 20 books and 200 research papers and criticism. A few key publications are listed below: Ilse Lehiste. ''Segmental and Syllabic Quantity in Estonian''. American Studies in Uralic Linguistics, vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University. (1960) Ilse Lehiste. ''Suprasegmentals''. (1970) Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press Ilse Lehiste. ''Readings in Acoustic Phonetics''. (1977) Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press Ilse Lehiste & Pavle Ivić. ''Word and Sentence Prosody in Serbocroatian''. (1986) Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press Ilse Lehiste. ''Lectures on Language Contact''. (1988) Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press Jaan Ross & Ilse Lehiste. ''The Temporal Structure of Estonian Runic Songs''. (2001) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lehiste, Ilse 1922 births 2010 deaths Linguists from Estonia Linguists from the United States Phoneticians Phonologists Estonian emigrants to the United States Estonian World War II refugees University of Michigan alumni University of Michigan faculty People from Tallinn Linguistic Society of America presidents Women linguists Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 3rd Class Ohio State University faculty Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America