Sandra Annear Thompson (born July 6, 1941) 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

discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis (discourse, writing, conversation, communicative sy ...

, typology, and interactional linguistics. She is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

(UCSB). She has published numerous books, her research has appeared in many linguistics journals, and she serves on the editorial board of several prominent linguistics journals.

Education

Thompson received her BA in linguistics from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

in 1963. She earned her MA in linguistics in 1965 and her

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1969, both from Ohio State.

Career

From 1968–1986, Thompson taught at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

(UCLA). Since 1986, she has held a position at UCSB. Thompson is known for her large body of research on

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

grammar, much of which she has conducted in collaboration with UCSB colleague Charles Li. Their 1981 book ''Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar'' is widely cited and often compared to

Yuen Ren Chao Yuen Ren Chao (Chinese: 趙元任; 3 November 189225 February 1982), also known as Zhao Yuanren, was a Chinese-American linguist, educator, scholar, poet, and composer, who contributed to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar. Chao ...

's ''A Grammar of Spoken Chinese'' (1968). That work, along with her earlier work in Chinese resultative verb compounds, was a major contribution to the study of Chinese morphosyntax, and stood apart from contemporary research in that it devoted attention to the internal structure of Chinese compound words, whereas other research focused on the syntactic nature of compound words. Packard, Jerome (1997). "Introduction." ''New Approaches to Chinese Word Formation: Morphology, Phonology and the Lexicon in Modern and Ancient Chinese''. In ''Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs'' 105, ed. Werner Winter. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 17–18. She has also conducted research on discourse and grammar, collaborating with linguists such as Paul Hopper on topics including transitivity and

emergent grammar Interactional linguistics (IL) is an interdisciplinary approach to grammar and interaction in the field of linguistics, that applies the methods of Conversation Analysis to the study of linguistic structures, including syntax, phonetics, morpho ...

. With Christian Matthiessen and Bill Mann she developed rhetorical structure theory. Her interest in discourse led her to be involved in collecting data for the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English. Thompson and Charles Li also carried out extensive documentation of the

Wappo The Wappo (endonym: ''Micewal'') are an Indigenous people of northern California. Their traditional homelands are in Napa Valley, the south shore of Clear Lake, Alexander Valley, and Russian River valley. They are distantly related to the Yu ...

language, and, with Joseph Sung-yul Park, published a reference grammar of the language in 2006.

Honors and awards

Thompson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988. She was President of the International Pragmatics Association from 1991-1994. She was named a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America in 2007. In 2017, she was given the International Pragmatics Association's

John J. Gumperz John Joseph Gumperz (January 9, 1922 – March 29, 2013) was an American linguist and academic. Gumperz was, for most of his career, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, California, Berkeley. H ...

Life-Time Achievement Award at the 15th International

Pragmatics In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...

Conference in Belfast. A volume of essays in her honor was published in 2002. The book ''Building Responsive Action'' written together with Barbara Fox and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen received the best book award from the International Society for Conversation Analysis in 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Sandra Linguists from the United States Living people University of California, Santa Barbara faculty 1941 births Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences alumni American women linguists Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America