Carlota Smith (May 21, 1934,

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

-May 24, 2007,

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

) was an American linguist. She was professor of linguistics at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

for 38 years. Smith received her M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1967) in linguistics at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, studying under

Zellig Harris Zellig Sabbettai Harris (; October 23, 1909 – May 22, 1992) was an influential American linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science. Originally a Semiticist, he is best known for his work in structural linguistics and di ...

. In 1969, she joined the faculty of the Department of Linguistics at University of Texas at Austin, where she served for the remainder of her life. She was department chair from 1981-1985. She was named the Dallas TACA Centennial Professor in the Humanities in 1991. During her long career, she made important contributions to three areas of linguistic research. Her early work examined English syntax and child

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and s ...

. (Shipley et al. 1969 was an influential paper in this area.) She wrote a number of papers and a widely cited book (Smith 1991) on

grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference t ...

. A final research interest involved the analysis of

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. F ...

units above the level of the sentence, which she categorizes, in Smith (2003) into five ‘discourse modes’ (narrative, report, description, information, and argument). She spent many years doing linguistic research on Navajo and became a member of the Navajo Language Academy.

Selected publications

*Elizabeth F. Shipley, Carlota S. Smith and Lila R. Gleitman. 1969. A Study in the Acquisition of Language: Free Responses to Commands. ''Language'' 45: 322-342. *Carlota S. Smith. 1991. ''The parameter of aspect''. Kluwer. *Carlota S. Smith. 2003. ''Modes of discourse: the local structure of texts''. Cambridge University Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Carlota 1934 births 2007 deaths Academics from New York City University of Pennsylvania alumni University of Texas at Austin faculty American women linguists 20th-century American linguists