Alan Sanford Prince (born 1946) is a Board of Governors Professor Emeritus of

Linguistics 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 ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

-New Brunswick. Prince, along with Paul Smolensky, developed

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 ...

, which was originally applied to

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 ...

, but has been extended to other areas of

linguistics 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 ...

such as

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 ...

and

semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

Biography

Prince went to high school in

Fairfax, Virginia Fairfax ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia and the county seat of Fairfax County, Virginia, in the United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 24,146. Fairfax is pa ...

, got his BA with "great distinction" from

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

, and received his PhD from MIT in 1975. Before coming to Rutgers, he was a professor of linguistics at

Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...

and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2010 Prince was named the Rutgers Board of Governors Professor of Linguistics. He became an Emeritus Professor at Rutgers in 2015 upon his retirement. The "Short 'schrift for Alan Prince" was assembled for this occasion, and presented to him at the 2015 Rutgers Typology Workshop. Prince is married to Jane Grimshaw, who is a Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Rutgers University.

Awards

In 1998, Prince was named a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
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Key Publications

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References

External links

Homepage at Rutgers
Phonologists from the United States 1946 births Living people People from Fairfax, Virginia Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society {{US-linguist-stub