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

* * * * * ; About Pim Levelt *

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