Jacob "Jack" Hoeksema (born 30 October 1956 in
Groningen
Groningen ( , ; ; or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen (province), Groningen province in the Netherlands. Dubbed the "capital of the north", Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of ...
) is a
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 ...
and professor in the Department of Dutch Language and Culture with a specialities in
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 ...
,
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
*Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
*Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...
, and
historical linguistics
Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical li ...
. His first degree was in Dutch literature and linguistics at the University of Groningen in 1981, and his PhD was completed at the same university in 1984 (with the dissertation ''Categorial Morphology'').
Hoeksema has been instrumental in the study of
negative polarity
In grammar and linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical item that is associated with affirmation or negation. An affirmation is a positive polarity item, abbreviated PPI or AFF. A negation is a negative polarity item, abbreviated NPI or NEG.
T ...
, and his work is part of the Dutch school of
generalized quantifier
In formal semantics, a generalized quantifier (GQ) is an expression that denotes a set of sets. This is the standard semantics assigned to quantified noun phrases. For example, the generalized quantifier ''every boy'' denotes the set of sets o ...
theory. He is especially known for applying results from the study of
monotonicity
In mathematics, a monotonic function (or monotone function) is a function between ordered sets that preserves or reverses the given order. This concept first arose in calculus, and was later generalized to the more abstract setting of orde ...
to polarity phenomena, and in criticizing too narrow construals of what counts as a polarity licensor. He has also worked extensively on the historical development of various aspects of grammar, mostly from corpora of Dutch and English, including documenting the changes in polarity items and in quantifiers.
See also
*
Alice ter Meulen
Alice Geraldine Baltina ter Meulen (born 4 March 1952) is a Dutch linguist, logician, and philosopher of language whose research topics include genericity in linguistics, intensional logic, generalized quantifiers, discourse representation the ...
, Dutch linguist, logician, and philosopher of language
*
negative polarity
In grammar and linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical item that is associated with affirmation or negation. An affirmation is a positive polarity item, abbreviated PPI or AFF. A negation is a negative polarity item, abbreviated NPI or NEG.
T ...
References
External links
Jack Hoeksema's webpage
1956 births
Living people
Linguists from the Netherlands
Morphologists
Semanticists
University of Groningen alumni
Academic staff of the University of Groningen
People from Groningen (city)
{{Netherlands-linguist-stub