Janet Breckenridge Pierrehumbert (born 1954) is Professor of Language Modelling in the Oxford e-Research Centre at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

and a senior research fellow of

Trinity College, Oxford Trinity College (full name: The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of Sir Thomas Pope (Knight)) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in E ...

. She developed an intonational model which includes a grammar of intonation patterns and an explicit algorithm for calculating

pitch contour __NOTOC__ In linguistics, speech synthesis, and music, the pitch contour of a sound is a function or curve that tracks the perceived pitch of the sound over time. Pitch contour may include multiple sounds utilizing many pitches, and can relate t ...

s in speech, as well as an account of intonational meaning. It has been widely influential in

speech technology Speech technology relates to the technologies designed to duplicate and respond to the human voice. They have many uses. These include aid to the voice-disabled, the hearing-disabled, and the blind, along with communication with computers without a ...

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

, and theories of language form and meaning. Pierrehumbert is also affiliated with the New Zealand Institute of Language Brain and Behaviour at the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury (UC; ; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was founded in 1873 as Canterbur ...

Education

AB Linguistics,

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

University, 1975. PhD Linguistics,

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 ...

, 1980.

Career

Pierrehumbert did her postdoctoral work in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. She joined AT&T Bell Labs as a member of Technical Staff in linguistics and artificial intelligence research in 1982, where her collaborators included Mary Beckman, Julia Hirschberg, and Mark Liberman. She moved to the

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 ...

department at

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

in 1989. In 2015, she took up her present position in the Oxford e-Research Centre in the Department of Engineering Sciences at Oxford. She has held visiting appointments at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

, the

Royal Institute of Technology KTH Royal Institute of Technology (), abbreviated KTH, is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH conducts research and education in engineering and technology and is Sweden's largest technical university. Since 2018, KTH consist ...

, ENST,

École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

, and

Stockholm University Stockholm University (SU) () is a public university, public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, social ...

. She is one of the founders of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, an interdisciplinary initiative to develop advanced scientific methods for studying language sound structure.

Research

Pierrehumbert's research uses experimental and computational methods to study the structure of language systems. Her current research focuses on the dynamics of the lexicon in individuals and populations. It uses large-scale text mining, computational modelling, and experimental paradigms that resemble computer games.

Honours and awards

Pierrehumbert received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in 1996, and is also a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

, the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

, and the

Cognitive Science Society The Cognitive Science Society is a professional society for the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. It brings together researchers from many fields who hold the common goal of understanding the nature of the human mind. The society prom ...

. She held the

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguistics, linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States ...

Professorship at the 2013 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute hosted by the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

. In 2019 she was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. She is the 2020 recipient of the Medal for Scientific Achievement from the International Speech Communication Association. In 2024, Pierrehumbert was elected a Fellow of

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 ...

Personal life

Pierrehumbert is married to Raymond Pierrehumbert, Halley Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford.

References and publications

External links

Homepage at Oxford

Web site for the Wordovators project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierrehumbert, Janet Living people American women linguists American phoneticians Phonologists from the United States Academics of the University of Oxford Radcliffe College alumni Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Fellows of Trinity College, Oxford 1954 births