Joan Bresnan (Stanford University)

Joan Bresnan is currently a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Stanford, having previously taught at MIT and UMass, Amherst, as well as at a number of domestic and international summer institutes and winterschools. She is the Edward Sapir Professor at the 2007 Linguistic Institute. Her current interests include the empirical foundations of syntax, typology, and using corpus and experimental methods with modern statistical models to investigate cognitive architectures for language. She also has longstanding interests in English, Bantu, and Australian Aboriginal languages and varieties. She has recently started the Spoken Syntax Lab at CSLI and a new sequence of courses in "Laboratory syntax" at Stanford.

Joan Bresnan is giving the Sapir Lecture on July 24.

Sapir Professorship (formerly the LSA Professorship)

The Edward Sapir Professorship was established in the Fund for the Future of Linguistics as part of the Society's observance of the Sapir Centennial in 1984. A committee appointed by President Henry Kahane to study the LSA Professorship recommended that the LSA Chair be renamed the Edward Sapir Chair, effective 1 January 1986. The Executive Committee accepted this recommendation and determined that a distinguished scholar was the qualification for the Professorship.