Irit Meir: Thematic Structure and Verb Agreement in Israeli Sign Language, submitted to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998 Irit Meir (; August 18, 1957 – February 23, 2018) was an Israeli linguist, who specialized in the linguistics of sign languages. She was an associate professor in the Department of Hebrew Language and the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the

University of Haifa The University of Haifa (, ) is a public research university located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1963 as a branch of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Haifa received full academic accreditation as an inde ...

, and the associate director of the Sign Language Research Lab.

Early life

Irit Meir was born Irit Eisenstadt on August 18, 1957 in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. Her parents were Professor

Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt (‎; 10 September 1923 – 2 September 2010) was an Israeli sociologist and writer. In 1959 he was appointed to a teaching post in the sociology department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From 1990 until his ...

, an Israeli sociologist, and Shulamit. During her school years, Irit was involved with the Israeli

Scout Movement Scouting or the Scout Movement is a youth movement which became popularly established in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the Scout method of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities, including ...

, where she was a leader. She participated in several Israeli youth delegations to the USA and Europe, and was involved in social and voluntary activities during her school years. She also played the

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

for years. Meir finished high school at the top of her class, serving as valedictorian at its graduation ceremony. In 1975 she spent a pre-induction year of

social work Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social wo ...

in the southern town of

Mitzpe Ramon Mitzpe Ramon (, Ramon Lookout; ) is a local council in the Negev desert of southern Israel. It is situated on the northern ridge at an elevation of 860 meters (2,800 feet) overlooking the world's largest erosion cirque, known as the M ...

. Her army service was with the IDF Intelligence Corps, in which she furthered her studies of the

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

language.

Career in linguistics

Irit Meir obtained her PhD in 1998 from the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

. Her thesis was entitled, "Thematic structure and verb agreement in Israeli Sign Language." The syntax and semantics of verb agreement was one central strand of her research on sign languages. Another was

iconicity In functional- cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness (which is typically assumed i ...

. Meir wrote a book on

Israeli Sign Language Israeli Sign Language (Hebrew: שפת הסימנים הישראלית), also known as Shassi or ISL, is the most commonly used sign language by the Deaf community of Israel. Some other sign languages are also used in Israel, among them Al-Sayyi ...

aimed at the general public with

Wendy Sandler Wendy Sandler (; born 1949, Cleveland, Ohio) is an American-Israeli linguist who is known for her research on the phonology of Sign Languages. Career and research Sandler earned her PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in ...

(Meir & Sandler 2007). In collaboration with

Mark Aronoff Mark Aronoff (), a native of Montreal, Quebec, is a morphologist and distinguished professor at Stony Brook University. The editor of ''Language'' from 1995 to 2001 and president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2005, he has been ele ...

Carol Padden Carol A. Padden (born 1955 in Washington, D.C.) is an American academic, author, and lecturer. She is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego, where she has been teaching since 1983. Background ...

and

, Meir made fundamental contributions to the investigation of the emergence of language with her research on

Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) (Arabic: لغة الإشارة لعشيرة السيد) is a village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel. As d ...

. Their research is featured in the popular science book, ''Talking Hands'', by

Margalit Fox Margalit Fox (born April 25, 1961) is an American writer. After earning a master's degree in linguistics, she began her career in publishing in the 1980s. In 1994, she joined ''The New York Times'' as a copy editor for its ''Book Review'' and la ...

. Meir was also a scholar of

Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew (, or ), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the Standard language, standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only surviving Canaanite language, as well as one of the List of languages by first w ...

, serving on a committee for linguistic terminology in the national

Academy of the Hebrew Language The Academy of the Hebrew Language (, ''ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ivrit'') was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on the Hebrew language in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of Givat Ram cam ...

. She authored articles on the linguistics of Modern Hebrew and, with Moshe Bar-Asher, co-edited ''Nit'e Ilan: Studies in Hebrew and Related Fields''.

Selected publications

* Meir, Irit. 2002. A cross-modality perspective on verb agreement. ''Natural Language and Linguistic Theory'' 20, 413–450. * Meir, Irit. 2010. Iconicity and metaphor: constraints on metaphorical extension of iconic forms. ''Language'' 96, 865–896. * Meir, Irit & Wendy Sandler. 2007. ''A Language in Space: the Story of Israeli Sign Language''. Psychology Press. * Sandler, Wendy, Aronoff, Mark, Padden, Carol & Meir, Irit. (2014). Language emergence. In J. Sindell, P. Kockelman & N. Enfield (Eds.), ''The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology'' (pp. 250–284). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Sandler, Wendy, Meir, Irit, Padden, Carol & Aronoff, Mark. 2005
The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new language.
''PNAS'' 102, 2661–2665. * Sandler, Wendy, Aronoff, Mark, Meir, Irit, Padden, Carol. (2011). The Gradual Emergence of Phonological Form in a New Language. ''Natural Language and Linguistic Theory'' 29, 503–543.

References

External links

Signlab Haifa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meir, Irit Linguists from Israel Women linguists Linguists of sign languages Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Academic staff of the University of Haifa 1957 births 2018 deaths