Lila Gleitman | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 10, 1929 New York City, US |
| Died | August 8, 2021 (aged 91) |
| Education | |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | Cognitive science research |
| Spouse | Henry Gleitman |
Lila Ruth Gleitman (December 10, 1929 – August 8, 2021) was an American professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She was an internationally renowned expert on language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics, focusing on children's learning of their first language.[1]
Lila Ruth Lichtenberg was born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn in 1929.[1] She graduated from James Madison High School.[2]
Her first marriage to Eugene Galanter ended in divorce.[2] She was married to fellow psychologist Henry Gleitman until his death on September 2, 2015. He also was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. The Gleitmans had two daughters.[1] Lila Ruth Gleitman died on August 8, 2021, at the age of 91.[3]
Gleitman was awarded a B.A. in literature from Antioch College in 1952, an M.A. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. She studied under Zellig Harris.[4]
She was employed as an assistant professor at Swarthmore College before accepting a position as the William T. Carter Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania from 1972 to 1973. Subsequently, she served as a professor of linguistics and as the Steven and Marcia Roth Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1973 until her retirement.[5]
Gleitman is recognized as a pioneer of cognitive science. Her research led to the development of her renowned theory of syntactic bootstrapping.[2] The theory led Gleitman and Barbara Landau to pursue new explanations of how blind children can effortlessly acquire spoken language related to vision (e.g., the words "look", "see", and words about colors).[6] Gleitman's research interests included language acquisition, morphology and syntactic structure, psycholinguistics, syntax, and construction of the lexicon.[7] Notable former students include Elissa Newport, Barbara Landau, and Susan Goldin-Meadow.
The influence of Gleitman's research in language acquisition has been recognized by numerous organizations. She was elected as a fellow in the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science,[8] the Society of Experimental Psychologists,[9] the American Association for the Advancement of Science,[10] the American Academy of Arts & Sciences,[11] the Linguistic Society of America[12] and the National Academy of Sciences.[5][13] She won the David Rumelhart Prize in 2017.[1] She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1993.[14][15]
Gleitman described her linguistic interests on the member page for the National Academy of Sciences:
The New York Times noted that Gleitman built on work by linguist Noam Chomsky and "designed elegant experiments to show that syntax is hard-wired into the human brain".[2]
See [16] for a full list of publications.
