Géraldine Legendre (born 1953) is a French-American

cognitive scientist Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

and

linguist 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 ...

known for her work on

French grammar French grammar is the set of rules by which the French language creates statements, questions and commands. In many respects, it is quite similar to that of the other Romance languages. French is a moderately inflected language. Nouns and most ...

, on mathematical models for the development of

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 ...

natural language A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...

s including harmonic grammar and

Optimality Theory Optimality theory (frequently abbreviated OT) is a linguistic model proposing that the observed forms of language arise from the optimal satisfaction of conflicting constraints. OT differs from other approaches to phonological analysis, which ty ...

, and on universal grammar and innate syntactic ability of humans in natural language. She is a professor of cognitive science at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

and the chair of the Johns Hopkins Cognitive Science Department.

Education and career

Legendre studied English literature at the

University of Tours The University of Tours (), formerly François Rabelais University of Tours (), is a public university in Tours, France. Founded in 1969, the university was formerly named after the French writer François Rabelais. It is the largest university ...

, earning a licentiate in 1974. She went to the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

for graduate study, and she completed her M.A. in 1984 and her Ph.D. in 1987. Her dissertation, ''Topics in French Syntax'', was supervised by David M. Perlmutter and Sandra Chung. She became an assistant professor of linguistics at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University o ...

and earned tenure there in 1994. In 1995, she moved to Johns Hopkins University, and in 2000, she was promoted to full professor. She became department chair in 2018.

Books

Legendre is the author of the book ''Topics in French Syntax'' (Routledge, 1994) and the coauthor with Paul Smolensky of the two-volume ''The Harmonic Mind'' (MIT Press, 2006). She is also a co-editor of

edited volume Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written language, written, Image editing, visual, Audio engineer, audible, or Film editing, cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing p ...

s including ''Optimality-Theoretic Syntax'' (MIT Press, 2001) and ''Optimality-Theoretic Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics: From Uni- To Bidirectional Optimization'' (Oxford University Press, 2016).

References

External links

Faculty page from Johns Hopkins University
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Legendre, Geraldine 1953 births Living people French cognitive scientists Women cognitive scientists Linguists from the United States Women linguists University of Tours alumni University of California, San Diego alumni University of Colorado Boulder faculty Johns Hopkins University faculty