Sandra (Sandy) Chung is an 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 ...

and distinguished professor emerita at the Department of Linguistics at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

. Her research focuses on Austronesian languages and syntax.

Education

Chung earned her A.B. and, in 1976, a Ph.D. at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, with a dissertation on the comparative syntax of Polynesian languages.

Career

At the

, she has served as chair of the Linguistics Department (1994–97, 2013–16), chair of the Philosophy Department (2002–04), and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor (2004–11). Chung has made contributions to the study of syntax and

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comp ...

. Much of her data comes from her own work with

Chamorro Chamorro may refer to: * Chamorro people, the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific * Chamorro language, an Austronesian language indigenous to The Marianas * Chamorro Time Zone, the time zone of Guam and the Northern Mar ...

speakers both in the continental U.S. and in Saipan. She has also worked on

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

. On the basis of Māori and Chamorro, she and

William Ladusaw William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

argued in ''Restriction and Saturation'' (MIT Press, 2003) that the number and kind of semantic combinatoric operations must be expanded beyond the typically assumed function application and abstraction. Her other theoretical work has addressed topics in

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting o ...

, predicate-initial word orders,

wh-movement In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between ''what'' and the object position ...

ellipsis The ellipsis (, also known informally as dot dot dot) is a series of dots that indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning. The plural is ellipses. The term origin ...

(especially

sluicing In syntax, sluicing is a type of Ellipsis (linguistics), ellipsis that occurs in both direct and indirect interrogative clauses. The ellipsis is introduced by a ''wh''-expression, whereby in most cases, everything except the ''wh''-expression is e ...

), and on wh-agreement (where she demonstrated that Chamorro shows overt morphological cues to

Wh-movement In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between ''what'' and the object position ...

), among many others.

Honors

In 2007, Chung was selected as a Fellow 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'', ...

. She was invited to give a plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in 2008, where she spoke about combining primary (including documentary) research on understudied languages with theoretical linguistics, arguing that these two often competing interests can and should find a congenial home together. In 2011, Chung served as president of the

. Chung was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012. A Festschrift in her honor, ''Asking the Right Questions: Essays in Honor of Sandra Chung,'' was published in 2017.

Books

* 2020. Chamorro Grammar. eScholarship: Open Access Publications from the University of California. xxii + 728 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.48330/E2159R * 2006. Estreyas Marianas: Chamorro. Tinige': Joaquin Flores Borja, Manuel Flores Borja, yan Sandra Chung. Saipan, CNMI: Estreyas Marianas Publications. 145 pages. * 2003. (co-authored with William A. Ladusaw) Restriction and Saturation. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 42. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. xiv + 173 pages. * 1998. The Design of Agreement: Evidence from Chamorro. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. xii + 423 pages. (paperback edition, 2000) * 1978. Case Marking and Grammatical Relations in Polynesian. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. 401 pages.

References

External links