Mira Ariel (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: מירה אריאל) is a 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 ...

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

, specializing in

pragmatics In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...

. A pioneer of the study of

information structure In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is Formal semantics (natural language), formally packaged within a Sentence (linguistics), sentence.Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. ''Informati ...

, she is best known for creating and developing Accessibility Theory.

Education and career

After completing a BA in linguistics and English literature at Tel Aviv University in 1976, Ariel studied at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, where she graduated with an MA in 1978. Ariel returned to Tel Aviv University in 1979 to pursue her PhD studies. She was advised by

Tanya Reinhart Tanya Reinhart (; 1943 – 17 March 2007) was an Israeli linguist and political activist. A frequent writer on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, she contributed columns to the Israeli centrist newspaper '' Yedioth Ahronoth'' and longer articles ...

and Ellen Prince and was awarded her PhD in 1986 with a dissertation entitled, ''Givenness marking''. She subsequently spent a brief period as honorary research fellow in

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...

at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

. Ariel was hired as Lecturer at Tel Aviv University in 1988 and spent her whole career there, reaching the rank of full professor in 2006.

Honors

From 2018 to 2019, she served as President of the

Societas Linguistica Europaea The Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) is a Europe-focused professional society for linguists. It was founded in 1966 to advance linguistics, the scientific study of human language. The SLE has over 1,000 individual members and welcomes linguists o ...

. In 2021 she was elected as a 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 ...

Research

Ariel’s research deals with issues in pragmatics and at the semantics-pragmatics interface and is mainly concerned with linguistic manifestations of

reference A reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''nam ...

to entities in discourse. Her body of work on Accessibility Theory makes the case that the language user’s choice of

anaphora Anaphora may refer to: * Anaphora (rhetoric), a form of repetition * Anaphora (linguistics), a reference (e.g. pronoun use) relying on textual context * Anaphora (liturgy), part of Christianity's Eucharistic liturgy See also * Anaphoric macro * A ...

is governed by the notion of accessibility in

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...

. Ariel’s accessibility marking scale proceeds from low to high accessibility in the following order:Ariel, Mira. 2001. Accessibility theory: an overview. In Ted Sanders, Joost Schilperoord, & Wilbert Spooren (eds.), ''Text representation: linguistic and psychological aspects'', 29–87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. # Full name + modifier # Full name # Long definite description # Short definite description # Last name # First name # Distal demonstrative + modifier # Proximal demonstrative + modifier # Distal demonstrative (+ NP) # Proximal demonstrative (+ NP) # Stressed pronoun + gesture # Stressed pronoun # Unstressed pronoun # Cliticized pronoun # Verbal pronoun inflections # Zero Ariel's Accessibility Theory has been influential in a wide variety of domains beyond pragmatics, including

cognitive linguistics Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are cons ...

,Croft, William, & Alan Cruse. 2004. ''Cognitive linguistics''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p51.

linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

,Croft, William. ''Typology and universals''. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p179.

discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis (discourse, writing, conversation, communicative sy ...

,Schiffrin, Deborah. 1996. Narrative as Self-Portrait: Sociolinguistic Constructions of Identity. ''Language in Society'' 25 (2), 167–203, p192.

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 ...

,Sorace, Antonella. 2011. Pinning down the concept of "interface" in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 1 (1), 1–33, p14.

poetics Poetics is the study or theory of poetry, specifically the study or theory of device, structure, form, type, and effect with regards to poetry, though usage of the term can also refer to literature broadly. Poetics is distinguished from hermeneu ...

,Emmott, Catherine. 2003. Reading for pleasure: a cognitive poetic analysis of ‘twists in the tale’ and other plot reversals in narrative texts. In Joanna Gavins & Gerard Steen (eds.), ''Cognitive poetics in practice'', 145–160. London: Routledge, p158.

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 ...

,Warren, Tessa, & Edward Gibson. 2002. The influence of referential processing on sentence complexity. ''Cognition'' 85 (1), 79–112. and

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

.Webster, Kellie, and Joel Nothman. 2016. Using mention accessibility to improve coreference resolution. ''Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics'' 432–437, p432.

Selected publications

* Ariel, Mira. 1988. Referring and accessibility. ''Journal of Linguistics'' 24 (1), 65–87. * Ariel, Mira. 1990. ''Accessing noun-phrase antecedents''. London: Routledge. * Ariel, Mira. 1991. The function of accessibility in a theory of grammar. ''Journal of Pragmatics'' 16 (5), 443–463. * Ariel, Mira. 1994. Interpreting anaphoric expressions: A cognitive versus a pragmatic approach. ''Journal of Linguistics'' 30 (1), 3–42. * Ariel, Mira. 2001. Accessibility theory: an overview. In Ted Sanders, Joost Schilperoord, & Wilbert Spooren (eds.), ''Text representation: linguistic and psychological aspects'', 29-87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Ariel, Mira. 2008. ''Pragmatics and grammar''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Ariel, Mira. 2010. ''Defining pragmatics''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ariel, Mira Living people Tel Aviv University alumni Academic staff of Tel Aviv University Women linguists Pragmaticists Year of birth missing (living people) Members of Academia Europaea Linguists from Israel