Laura J. Downing (born 1954, Mitchel AFB,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

) is an American

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 ...

, specializing in the

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

Education and career

Downing earned her B.S. in linguistics from

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

in 1977, and her PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1990. Her dissertation, ''The tonal phonology of Jita'', was published by Lincom Europa in 1996. After receiving her PhD, she held several positions in North America before moving to Europe in 2001. She was a senior researcher at the ZAS (Center for General Linguistics) in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

from 2001 to 2012, and was professor of African Languages at the

University of Gothenburg The University of Gothenburg () is a List of universities in Sweden, university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current List of universities in Sweden#Public universities, S ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, from 2012 until her retirement in 2021.

Research

Downing's research centers on the formal analysis of the prosody of

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

, including prosodic morphology, lexical and grammatical

tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...

systems,

information structure In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is Formal semantics (natural language), formally packaged within a Sentence (linguistics), sentence.Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. ''Informati ...

and phrasal prosody. Her research has contributed to a better understanding of the prosodic and morphological constraints on

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...

, especially in

Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...

languages (Downing 2006). Her work with Lisa Cheng on the phonology-syntax interface, in particular in Zulu, shows the close interaction between the prosodic phrasings of a language and the

syntactic structure 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 ...

within the

Minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

framework (Cheng & Downing 2009, 2016).

Fieldwork Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct f ...

over many years in

Malawi Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south, and southwest. Malawi spans over and ...

in collaboration with Al Mtenje led to them co-authoring ''The Phonology of

Chichewa Chewa ( ; also known as Nyanja ) is a Bantu language spoken in Malawi and a recognised minority in Zambia and Mozambique. The noun class prefix ''chi-'' is used for languages, so the language is often called or Chinyanja. In Malawi, the name wa ...

'' (Downing & Mtenje 2017). Downing was also involved in international collaborative projects funded by leading funding agencies. She co-directed, with

Annie Rialland Annie Rialland (born March 17, 1948, in Jans, near Nantes, France) is a French linguist who is Director of Research emerita of the CNRS Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology (Paris). Her main domains of expertise are phonetics, phonology, pros ...

, a French-German ANR-DFG project, BANTUPSYN, devoted to the Phonology-syntax Interface in Bantu languages (2009–2012). This project led to a co-edited volume on ''Intonation in African tone languages'' (Downing & Rialland, eds., 2017). With Maarten Mous (

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

) and Morgan Nilsson (U of Gothenburg), she led a VR project investigating Somali prosody from 2016 to 2019.

Honors and distinctions

* Honorary Member of the LSA (elected 2019) * Vice-president then President of the Association of Contemporary African Linguistics (ACAL), 2017–2024; Member of the ACAL executive committee, 2014–2017. * Member of the

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(elected 2012); Member of AcademiaNet (elected 2017) * Member of the

Editorial Board The editorial board is a group of editors, writers, and other people who are charged with implementing a publication's approach to editorials and other opinion pieces. The editorials published normally represent the views or goals of the publicat ...

Phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

for 20+ years * A

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

in Downing's honor was published in the

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

journal, ''

Stellenbosch Stellenbosch (; )A Universal Pronouncing Gazetteer.
Thomas Baldwin ...

Papers in Linguistics''.

Publications

Books Laura J. Downing. 1996. ''The tonal phonology of Jita''. LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 05. Munich: LINCOM EUROPA. evised version, dissertation 245 pp. Laura J. Downing. 2006. ''Canonical Forms in Prosodic Morphology.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. 284 pp. Laura J. Downing and Al Mtenje. 2017. ''The Phonology of

''. Phonology of the World's Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laura J. Downing and Annie Rialland, eds. 2017. ''Intonation in African Tone Languages''. Phonology & Phonetics 24. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Selected other publications Lisa L.-S. Cheng and Laura J. Downing. 2009. Where's the topic in Zulu? In Helen de Hoop & Geertje van Bergen (eds.), ''Topics Cross-linguistically''. Special issue, ''The Linguistic Review'' 26, 2/3: 207–238. Laura J. Downing and Larry M. Hyman. 2016. Information Structure in Bantu Languages. In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), ''Handbook of

Information Structure In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is Formal semantics (natural language), formally packaged within a Sentence (linguistics), sentence.Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. ''Informati ...

''. Oxford University Press, 790–813. Lisa L.-S. Cheng and Laura J. Downing. 2016. Phasal syntax = cyclic phonology? ''Syntax'' 19 (2), 159–191.

References

{{Authority control American women linguists 1954 births Phonologists from the United States American Africanists University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences alumni Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences alumni Academic staff of the University of Gothenburg Living people 20th-century American linguists 21st-century American linguists Linguists of Bantu languages