Monik Charette (born 29 May 1957) is a French-Canadian
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
phonologist who taught at SOAS 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 ...
, in the United Kingdom. She specializes in
phonology
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
,
morphophonology
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (m ...
,
stress systems,
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...
,
syllabic structure and word-structure, focusing on
Altaic languages
The Altaic () languages are a group of languages comprising the Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic and Tungusic languages, Tungusic language families, with some linguists including the Koreanic languages, Koreanic and Japon ...
,
Turkish, and
French.
Education and career
Charette earned her
BA from
Université du Québec à Montréal
The (UQAM; ), is a French language, French-language public university, public research university based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest constituent element of the system.
UQAM was founded on April 9, 1969, by the government o ...
(UQAM), and her
MA and
PhD
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
from
McGill University
McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...
, graduating in 1988. By 1989 she was working as a Training Fellow in Linguistics at the University of London
School of Oriental and African Studies
The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...
; by 1990 she was a
lecturer
Lecturer is an academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. They may also conduct re ...
in linguistics there, and later became a
senior lecturer, teaching courses on phonology at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She was also associate dean for postgraduate matters at the Faculty of Languages and Cultures.
Charette retired and moved back to Canada in 2019.
Research
Charette is one of the founders and first proponents of
Government Phonology, the phonological adaptation of
Government and Binding Theory Government and binding (GB, GBT) is a theory of syntax and a phrase structure grammar in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s. This theory is a radical revision of his earlier theories and was ...
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 ...
, with work done on vowel-zero alternation in French, on government-licensing, on
headedness in element theory, on empty and pseudo-empty categories, on Turkish word-structure, among many others. Government Phonology she contributed the concepts of government-licensing and licensing constraints; in 1989 she was the first to propose a phonological version of the
Minimality Condition.
With Aslı Göksel, Charette conducted research on licensing constraints (LC's); later research on LC's refers to their work as the "Charette-Göksel Hypothesis". Together with
Jonathan Kaye, she led the research at
SOAS, London, aimed at reducing the number of elements in Element Theory, concluding in the emergence of the so-called Revised Theory of Elements.
Charette's most cited work is her monograph from 1991, ''Conditions on Phonological Government'', published by
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
, which is the first extended study written within the framework of phonological government. In her analysis of French, she contributed to the general understanding of the relation between skeletal positions and higher prosodic structure in the form of her "pointless onsets" in
h-aspiré words. She participated in the preparations of the
festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
for Jonathan Kaye, ''Living on the Edge'', eventually edited by Stefan Ploch alone and published in 2003.
In 2001, Charette spoke at the Ninth Manchester Phonology Meeting in the session ''Phonology and syntax - the same or different?'', where she presented the Government Phonology perspective. In 2009, she co-edited, with
Peter K. Austin, Oliver Bond, David Nathan and Peter Sells, the volume ''Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 2'', London: SOAS. Her contributions to the understanding of the
syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
in phonological theory, of Turkish vowel harmony and of
schwa in French are acknowledged in handbooks and companions to phonology.
Major publications
* 1989 "The Minimality Condition in Phonology". ''Journal of Linguistics'' 25.1: 159-187.
* 1990 "Licence to govern". ''Phonology'' 7: 233-253.
* 1991 ''Conditions on Phonological Government''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
"Review of Conditions on Phonological Government"
by Mike Maxwell, in ''Notes on Linguistics''. Issues 56-63. Summer Institute of Linguistics; 1992. p. 62–64.
* 1992 "Mongolian and Polish meet Government Licensing". ''SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics'' 2: 275-291.
* 1994 "Vowel Harmony and Switching in Turkic languages". ''SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics'' 4: 31-52. Also in Kardela, Henryk, Bogdan Szymanek (eds.), ''A Festschrift for Edmund Gussmann'', 29-56. Lublin 1996: University Press of the Catholic University of Lublin.
* 1996 "Licensing constraints and vowel harmony in Turkic languages". ''SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics'' 6: 1-25. Also in Cyran, Eugeniusz (ed.), ''Structure and Interpretation. Studies in Phonology'', 65-88. Lublin 1998: Folium.
* 1998 "Empty and pseudo-empty categories". ''SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics'' 8: 167-176.
* 2000 "When p-licensing fails: the final high vowels of Turkish". ''SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics'': 3-18.
* 2003 "Empty and pseudo-empty categories". In ''Living on the Edge. 28 papers in honour of Jonathan Kaye'', Stefan Ploch (ed.), 465-479. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
* 2004 "Defining the structure of Turkish words". ''SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics'' 13: 49-79.
* 2006 "The end of the (Turkish) word". ''SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics'' 14: 23-40.
* 2008 "The vital role of the trochaic foot in explaining Turkish word endings". ''Lingua'' 118.1: 46-65.
* 2018 "The internal TR clusters of Acadian French: a hint from schwa". In: Lindsey, Geoff and Nevins, Andrew, (eds.), ''Sonic Signatures''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
References
External links
Google Scholar report
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Charette, Monik
Linguists from Canada
Women linguists
1949 births
Living people
Université du Québec à Montréal alumni
McGill University alumni
Academics of the University of London
Academics of SOAS University of London
Phonologists from Canada