Eloise Jelinek (February 2, 1924 in

Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

– December 21, 2007 in

Tucson Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...

) was an American linguist specializing in the study of

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 ...

. Her 1981 doctoral dissertation at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

was titled "On Defining Categories: AUX and PREDICATE in Colloquial

Egyptian Arabic Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian, or simply as Masri, is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic variety in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. The esti ...

". She was a member of the faculty of the University of Arizona from 1981 to 1992. She became particularly known for her Pronominal Argument Hypothesis of syntax based on data from the

Navajo language Navajo or Navaho ( ; Navajo: or ) is a Southern Athabaskan languages, Southern Athabaskan language of the Na-Dene languages, Na-Dené family, through which it is related to languages spoken across the western areas of North America. Navajo i ...

, which holds that in some languages the pronominal affixes on the verb should be considered the syntactic arguments of the verbs, rather than the noun phrases that occur free in the clause, which should only be considered adjuncts. Through her work on many

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead langua ...

s she demonstrated that less-studied languages often challenged the theories of

generative linguistics Generative grammar is a research tradition in linguistics that aims to explain the cognition, cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans' subconscious grammatical knowledge. Generative linguists, or generat ...

, and she worked to develop ways of integrating this data into the generative paradigm. Among the languages that she worked on are the Straits Salish languages Samish and Lummi, as well as Navajo,

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

, and Yaqui.Obituary in Arizona Daily Star
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Publications

*2001. "Unergative and Unaccusative Verbs in Yaqui". Uto-Aztecan Papers in Honor of Wick Miller. Eugene Casad, ed. University of California Press. With Fernando Escalante. *2000. "Predicate Raising in Lummi, Straits Salish". The Syntax of Verb Initial Languages, Andrew Carnie and Eithne Guilfoyle, eds., Oxford. *2000. "Navajo as a Discourse Configurational Language". In Athabaskan Syntax: Perspectives on a Language Family. Theodore Fernald and Paul Platero, eds., Oxford. With Mary Willie. *2000. "Datives and Argument Hierarchies". In Papers in Honor of Ken Hale. Andrew Carnie, Eloise Jelinek and Mary Willie, eds., MITWPL Endangered and Less well-known Languages Fund Series #1, Cambridge MA. *1999. "Accent in Yaqui". INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS. With Richard Demers and Fernando Escalante. *1998. "Voice and Transitivity as Functional Projections in Yaqui". The Projection of Arguments. Butt, Miriam and Wilhelm Geuder, eds., CSLI, Stanford. *1997. "Prepositions in Northern Straits Salish and the noun/verb question." Salish Languages and Linguistics. Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa and M. Dale Kinkade, eds., Mouton. *1997. "Reduplication as a Quantifier in Salish". INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS, 63.3. With Richard Demers. *1996. "Definiteness and Second Position Clitics in Straits Salish." Approaching Second: Second Position Clitics and Related Phenomena. Aaron Halpern and Arnold Zwicky, eds., CSLI, Stanford. *1996. "Psych Verbs in Navajo." Athabaskan Language Studies. Essays in Honor of Robert W. Young. Edited by Eloise Jelinek, Sally Midgette, Keren Rice and Leslie Saxon. University of New Mexico Press. With Mary Willie. *1995. "Quantification in Straits Salish." Quantification in Natural Languages, Emmon Bach, Eloise Jelinek, Angelika Kratzer and Barbara Partee, eds., Kluwer. *1995. "Distributing Arguments." NATURAL LANGUAGE SEMANTICS 3.2. With Molly Diesing. *1994. "Predicates and Pronominal Arguments in Straits Salish". LANGUAGE 70.4, pp. 697–736 With Richard Demers. *1993. "Ergative Splits and Argument Type". Invited paper. Papers on Case and Agreement. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics #18, Bobaljik, J. and C. Phillips, eds. pp. 15 – 42. *1990. "Grammatical Relations and Coindexing in Inverse Systems." Grammatical Relations. A Cross-Theoretical Perspective. Dziwirek, K. et al., eds., CSLI, Stanford. *1989. "Possessive Sentences in Yaqui". Festschrift for Mary Haas. W. Bright, ed., University of California Press. With Fernando Escalante. *1989. "The bi-Construction and Pronominal Arguments in Apachean". Athabaskan Linguistics, Rice, Karen and E. Cook, eds. Mouton. With Merton Sandoval. *1989. "The Case Split and Argument Type in Choctaw." Configurationality: The Typology of Asymmetries. Maracz, Lazlo K. and Pieter Muysken (eds.), Foris, Dordrecht. *1987. "Headless Relatives and Pronominal Arguments: A Typological Perspective." Native American Languages and Grammatical Typology. Papers from a Chicago Linguistics Society Parasession. Kroeber, Paul D. and Robert E. Moore, eds. Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington. *1987. "Auxiliaries and Ergative Splits: A Typological Parameter." Historical Development of Auxiliaries, Harris, Martin and Paolo Ramat, eds., Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 35. Mouton de Gruyter. *1984. "Empty Categories, Case, and Configurationality." NATURAL LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC THEORY, 2.1.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jelinek, Eloise 2007 deaths 1924 births Academics from Dallas American women linguists 20th-century American linguists University of Arizona alumni University of Arizona faculty