Diane Massam is a Canadian linguist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto.
Diane Massam | |
|---|---|
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Doctoral advisor | Noam Chomsky |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Linguistics |
| Sub-discipline | Syntax of Niuean |
| Institutions | University of Toronto |
Education and research
She earned her PhD in linguistics under Noam Chomsky[1][2] in 1985 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[3] She held a position in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto from 1989 until her retirement in 2017, when she became professor emeritus.[4][5]
Massam specializes in the syntax of Niuean, an Austronesian language spoken in the South Pacific country of Niue.[6] She developed an analysis of a type of verb plus noun compounding called noun incorporation which has opened a window to analyze similar phenomena in other languages. Her analysis also proposed a novel way of understanding the relationship between a subject and its predicate.
Honors
She was a keynote speaker at the 21st annual meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA) in 2014.[7]
She has served on the Advisory Board of the Canadian Journal of Linguistics, and on the Editorial Board of the journal Linguistic Inquiry.
Massam was appointed Vice-President of the Canadian Linguistic Association in 2015. Upon completion of her two-year term in this position she served as President of the CLA from 2017 to 2019.[8][9]
Publications
- Massam, D. 2020. Niuean: Predicates and Arguments in an Isolating Language. (Oxford Studies of Endangered Languages). Oxford University Press.[10]
- Massam, D. 2017. Extra be: The syntax of shared shell-noun constructions in English. Language 93.1: 121–152.
- Massam, D. (Ed.) 2012. Count and Mass Across Languages (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 42). Oxford University Press.
- Massam, D., J. Lee and N. Rolle. 2006. "Still a Preposition: The Category of ko," Te Reo: Journal of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand 49:3-38.
- Massam, D., Starks and O. Ikiua. 2006. "On the Edge of Grammar: Discourse Particles in Niuean," Oceanic Linguistics 45.1:191-205.
- Massam D., M. Abdolhosseini and K. Oda. 2002. "Number and Events: Verbal Reduplication in Niuean" Oceanic Linguistics 41.2:475-492.
- Massam D. 2001. "Pseudo Noun Incorporation in Niuean", Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19:1:153-197.
- Massam D. 2000. VSO and VOS: Aspects of Niuean word order," The syntax of verb initial languages.
- Massam D. and W. Sperlich. 2000. "Possession in Niuean"in Steven Fischer, ed. Possessive Markers in Central Pacific Languages: Thematic volume of Language Typology and Universals (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung). pp. 281-292.
- Massam, D. 1999. "Thing-is Constructions: The thing is, is what's the right analysis" English Language and Linguistics 3.2:335-352.
- S. Bejar and D. Massam. 1999. "Multiple Case Checking" Syntax: A Journal of Theoretical, Experimental and Interdisciplinary Research, 2.2:65-79. 1999.
- Massam, D. 1998. "Instrumental aki and the Nature of Niuean Transitivity" Oceanic Linguistics: 37.1:12-28.
- Ghomeshi, J. and D. Massam. 1994, "Lexical/Syntactic Relations Without Projection" Linguistic Analysis 24.3-4:175-217.
- Massam, D. 1985. "Case theory and the projection principle."
- Levin, J. and D. Massam. 1985. "Surface ergativity: Case/theta relations reexamined," Proceedings of NELS.
References
External links
- Massam's faculty homepage Archived 2009-05-29 at the Wayback Machine at U of Toronto
- 50 years of Linguistics at MIT
- "A Conversation with Diane Massam", Sali Tagliamonte, 13 November 2017, Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto