Hamida Demirdache is a French

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 ...

specialising in syntax and semantics, known for her work on

time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

and tense.

Education

Demirdache received her PhD at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1991; her thesis, which dealt with resumptives in

relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence ''I met a man who wasn ...

s, was advised by

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

Career and research

She subsequently held a postdoctoral position at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

, which like her PhD research was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. From 1993 to 1998 Demirdache was employed as a lecturer at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

, and in 1998 she moved to the

University of Nantes Nantes University () is a public university located in the city of Nantes, France. In addition to the several campuses scattered in the city of Nantes, there are two satellite campuses located in Saint-Nazaire and La Roche-sur-Yon. The university ...

, where she has spent the rest of her career. In 2003 she received her habilitation, and in 2008 she was promoted to full professor. While at Nantes she founded the LLING lab in 2004, and this became a

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

lab in 2016. Demirdache conducts research in

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 ...

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 ...

and their interfaces as well as

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 ...

. She is known for her work on Semitic and

Salishan languages The Salishan languages ( ), also known as the Salish languages ( ), are a Language family, family of languages found in the Pacific Northwest in North America, namely the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washingt ...

. A particular interest of hers is how children acquire abstract linguistic properties and

concept A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, ...

s without physical correlates in the external world, such as

logical operators In logic, a logical connective (also called a logical operator, sentential connective, or sentential operator) is a logical constant. Connectives can be used to connect logical formulas. For instance in the syntax of propositional logic, the ...

, quantifiers, and semantic tense. She also develops experimental methods for the investigation of children's verbal and nonverbal capacities in combining logical primitives into complex conceptual representations, in order to establish the role of language in acquiring these concepts.

Honours and awards

Demirdache has been the recipient of numerous honours and awards. She has held a number of international visiting positions, including at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

(2005–6), the

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona The Autonomous University of Barcelona (; Spanish: ; ; UAB) is a public university mostly located in Cerdanyola del Vallès, near the city of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. , the university consists of 57 departments in the experimental, lif ...

(2011), and the

University of Massachusetts at Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. It is the Flagship university, flagship campus of the Univer ...

(2012). In 2003 she was the sole recipient of the Descartes-Huygens Prize. She was elected Member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

in 2023, and appointed senior member of the

Institut Universitaire de France The Institut Universitaire de France (IUF, Academic Institute of France), is a service of the French Ministry of Higher Education that annually distinguishes a small number of university professors for their research excellence, as evidenced by t ...

from 2023 to 2028.

Selected publications

* Demirdache, Hamida. 1991. Resumptive chains in restrictive relatives, appositives, and dislocation structures. PhD thesis, MIT. * Demirdache, Hamida, and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria. 2000. The primitives of temporal relations. In Roger Martin, David Michaels & Juan Uriagereka (eds.), ''Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in honor of

Howard Lasnik Howard Lasnik (born July 3, 1945) is a distinguished university professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Maryland. He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (B.S., 1967), Harvard University (M.A., 1969) and the M ...

'', 157-186. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. * Demirdache, Hamida, and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria. 2004. The syntax of time adverbs. In Jacqueline Guéron & Jacqueline Lecarme (eds.), ''The syntax of time''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. * Demirdache, Hamida, and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria. 2007. The syntax of time arguments. ''Lingua'' 117 (2), 330–366. * Davis, Henry, and Hamida Demirdache. 2000. On lexical verb meanings: Evidence from Salish. In Carol Tenny & James Pustejovsky (eds.), ''Events as Grammatical Objects. The Converging Perspectives of Lexical Semantics and Syntax'', 97–142. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Demirdache, Hamida French women linguists Living people Members of Academia Europaea Linguists of Salishan languages Grammarians from France Syntacticians Semanticists Developmental psycholinguists Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni