Heidi Britton Harley (born September 26, 1969) is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

. Her areas of specialization are formal syntactic theory,

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

, and lexical semantics.

Career

Harley was born in

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

, but was raised in St. John's, Newfoundland. She earned her

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

in Linguistics and English at

Memorial University of Newfoundland Memorial University of Newfoundland, or MUN (), is a Public university, public research university in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's, with satellite campuses in Corner Brook ...

in 1991. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics and Philosophy in 1995 from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, under the supervision of Alec Marantz. Harley is one of the main researchers working in the theory of

Distributed morphology In generative linguistics, Distributed Morphology is a theoretical framework introduced in 1993 by Morris Halle and Alec Marantz.Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. 'Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection.' In The View from Buildin ...

. She has published over thirty articles on morphological theory, syntax, and semantics, including articles in the journals ''

Language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

'', ''

Linguistic Inquiry ''Linguistic Inquiry'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in generative linguistics published by the MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambri ...

'', '' Lingua'', ''Morphology Yearbook'', and ''

Studia Linguistica ''Studia Linguistica: A Journal of General Linguistics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of general linguistics established in 1947 and currently published by Wiley-Blackwell. Its current editors-in-chief are Christer Platzack (Lund Univers ...

.'' She is the editor of three volumes of collected papers, the editor of two special issues of journals, and the author of a textbook on morphological theory (Harley 2005).

Honors

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'', ...

(LSA) has named Harley as one of the 2019 LSA Fellows, a group whose membership is determined by their "distinguished contributions to the discipline". She was elected Vice-President/President-Elect of the LSA for 2024 and is serving as President of the society for 2025. She taught at the 2015 Linguistic Summer Institute organized by the LSA. She has been an invited teacher at other major summer schools in linguistics throughout the world, including Ireland and Brazil.

Specializations

Syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

Distributed Morphology In generative linguistics, Distributed Morphology is a theoretical framework introduced in 1993 by Morris Halle and Alec Marantz.Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. 'Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection.' In The View from Buildin ...

*Argument Structure *

Lexical semantics Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistics, linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings.Pustejovsky, J. (2005) Lexical Semantics: Overview' in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, V ...

Selected publications

* Heidi Harley. 1995. Subjects, Events and Licensing. PhD Dissertation, MIT. * Heidi Harley and Rolf Noyer. 1999. Distributed morphology. ''Glot International,'' Volume 4, Issue 4, April 1999. *

Andrew Carnie Andrew Carnie (born April 19, 1969) is a Canadian professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona. He is the author or coauthor of nine books and has papers published on formal syntactic theory and on linguistic aspects of Scottish Gael ...

, Heidi Harley, and MaryAnn Willie, eds. 2003. ''Formal Approaches to Function: In Honor of Eloise Jelinek,'' John Benjamins Publishers. ISBN 9781588113481 *

, Sheila Dooley, and Heidi Harley. 2005. ''Verb First: On the Syntax of Verb-Initial Languages,'' John Benjamins. ISBN 9781588116109 * Heidi Harley. 2005. ''English Words.'' Blackwell Publishers.Review by Tatiana Ivankova, World Englishes, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 393–394, 2007. ISBN 978-0631230328 * Daniel Siddiqi and Heidi Harley, eds. 2016. ''Morphological Metatheory.'' Amsterdam: Benjamins.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Harley, Heidi B. 1969 births Living people Morphologists Syntacticians Linguists from the United States MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni University of Arizona faculty American women linguists Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Society of America presidents