Donca Steriade
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Donca Steriade (born 1951 in Bucharest) is a Romanian-American professor 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 ...
at
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
, specializing in phonological theory.


Education

She began her academic career studying classics in
Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
, after earning her B.A. (''licență'') in Philology from the
University of Bucharest The University of Bucharest (UB) () is a public university, public research university in Bucharest, Romania. It was founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princely Academy of Bucharest, P ...
in 1974. She left Romania after her father emigrated to
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
. (She is the daughter of neuroscientist Mircea Steriade.) She earned her M.A. from
Université Laval (; English: ''Laval University)'' is a public research university in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The university traces its roots to the Séminaire de Québec, founded by François de Montmorency-Laval in 1663, making it the oldest institutio ...
in 1976, She studied for her PhD at the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy under
Morris Halle Morris Halle, Pinkowitz (; July 23, 1923 – April 2, 2018), was a Latvian-born American linguist who was an Institute Professor, and later professor emeritus, of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The father of "modern ...
. Her 1982 dissertation is titled, "Greek prosodies and the nature of syllabification". After earning her PhD, she took up a position at
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
before returning to MIT to become Professor of Linguistics.


Honors

Steriade was named ''Professor Honoris Causa'' by the Faculty of Letters at the University of Bucharest in 2017. She was inducted as a LSA (Linguistics Society of America) Fellow in 2015. She was invited to give the Edward Sapir lecture at th
2009 LSA Linguistic Institute
and she was an instructor at the 2007 LSA Linguistic Institute.


Research

Steriade's research focuses on
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 ...
and
morphophonology Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (m ...
, and she is considered a leading contributor to theories of
underspecification In theoretical linguistics, underspecification is a phenomenon in which certain features are omitted in underlying representations. Restricted underspecification theory holds that features should only be underspecified if their values are predicta ...
(Steriade 1995) and neutralization (Steriade 2007). She has also researched the basic units of rhythm in language. She has worked on a range of
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
and has published and co-published broadly, including journal articles and book chapters. She is a co-editor of the widely cited volume, ''Phonetically Based Phonology'' (Hayes et al. 2004), and co-author of the popular textbook, ''Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory'' (Hayes et al. 1999).


Key publications

* Hayes, Bruce, Robert Kirchner and Donca Steriade. 2004. ''Phonetically Based Phonology''. Cambridge University Press. *Hayes, Bruce et al. 1999. ''Linguistics: an Introduction to Linguistics Theory''. Wiley-Blackwell. *Steriade, Donca (2007) Contrast. In ''The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology'', ed. P. de Lacy. Cambridge University Press, pp. 139–158. *Steriade, Donca (2002) The Syllable. In ''The International Encyclopedia of Linguistics'', ed. W. Frawley. Oxford University Press. *Steriade, Donca (2001) Directional asymmetries in place assimilation: A perceptual account. In ''The Role of Speech Perception in Phonology'', eds. E. Hume and K. Johnson, pp 219–250. New York: Academic Press. * Steriade, Donca (2000) Paradigm uniformity and the phonetics-phonology boundary. In ''Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and the Lexicon'', eds. M. B. Broe and J. B. Pierrehumbert, 313–334. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Steriade, Donca (1995) Underspecification and markedness. In J. Goldsmith (ed.) ''The Handbook of Phonological Theory''. Oxford: Blackwell, pp 114–174. * Steriade, Donca (1988) Reduplication and syllable transfer in Sanskrit and elsewhere. ''Phonology'' 5, 73-155. * Steriade, Donca (1987) Locality conditions and feature geometry. ''Proceedings of NELS 17,'' 595–618.


References


External links

* http://linguistics.mit.edu/user/steriade/ * http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/steriade/steriade.htm * https://mit.academia.edu/DoncaSteriade {{DEFAULTSORT:Steriade, Donca 1951 births Living people Linguists from Romania MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty University of California, Los Angeles faculty Université Laval alumni University of Bucharest alumni Romanian emigrants to Canada Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Women linguists Phonologists MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni