Melissa Bowerman
Dan I. Slobin
slobin at berkeley.edu
Thu Nov 3 20:28:44 UTC 2011
Magdalena has said it perfectly. I would add a personal comment:
Melissa and I were good personal friends and colleagues---ever since
1965. We cherished our memories of being trained by Roger Brown, and we
taught, researched, and published together on crosslinguistic and
cognitive aspects of acquisition.I learned so much from debating and
researching with her. Indeed, her persistent presentations to me of
argument and evidence moved me from a neo-innatist to a neo-Whorfian
position.The Max Planck was our intellectual playground, and baroque
music was where we wandered happily. We confided in each other and
received and gave support through the many years, as we followed each
other's lives. And we delighted in playing music together---her flute
and my piano.She was a precious person, a loyal friend, and an endlessly
ingenious, creative, broad, wise, and beautiful thinker, researcher,
writer, teacher. I can't begin to understand how very much I will miss her.
Dan Slobin, Berkeley
On 11/3/2011 1:09 PM, Magdalena Smoczynska wrote:
> I would like to write something about Melissa whom I have known since
> 1975, but it is very difficult to find the right adjectives to describe
> how special she was.
>
> I have spent the entire day trying to find them and finally gave up.
> Crying was much better a choice.
>
> I think she was *the most beautiful person* I have ever met among the
> child language scholars.
>
> Her work and impact in the field will last, but many of us will
> terribly miss her
> thoughtful way of looking at us, her dilligence while looking at her data
> (which made me think of a 12-year-old girl so enthusiastic about her
> tasks
> but at the same time so genuinely serious), her amused smile which
> sometimes
> inexpectedly turned into a sudden burst of forceful laughter.
> Her openess in sharing her joys and worries with us. Her interest in
> our joys and worries.
> Her grace. And again this incredibly strong low voice laughter.
>
> It does not make sense that such things can simply disappear.
>
> I am sorry I cannot put it in better English.
>
> Magdalena Smoczynska, Krakow
>
>
> On 3 November 2011 17:02, walesgin <walesgin at googlemail.com
> <mailto:walesgin at googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
> Yes, Melissa was truly a rare intellectual and a genuine and
> generous person. I am proud to have been blessed to have had her
> as mentor and friend.
>
> She will be sorely missed. But her influence will remain
> pervasive and longstanding in the field.
>
> I wish I could join the memorial at BU tomorrow, but my thoughts
> will definitely be with you all.
>
> Ginny Gathercole
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 9:09 AM, <koc at boun.edu.tr
> <mailto:koc at boun.edu.tr>> wrote:
>
> I am also very saddened at Melissa's loss. Her work has been
> one of the most
> inspiring sourcesfor many of us in the field. I feel
> priviledged to have known
> her warm and generous person.
>
> Ayhan Aksu-Koc
> Bogazici University
>
>
> Quoting Maryann Romski <mromski at gsu.edu
> <mailto:mromski at gsu.edu>>:
>
> > Melissa was also a wonderful teacher and mentor. I had the
> privilege of
> > taking a language acquisition course from her when she was
> at the University
> > of Kansas early in her career. She was generous with her
> time and taught us
> > so much through her semantic examples from Christy and Eva.
> Her passing is a
> > great loss for the field. MaryAnn
> > > Sent from MAR'S IPAD
> >
> > On Nov 2, 2011, at 3:21 PM, "Sonal Chitnis"
> > <sonalc123 at gmail.com
> <mailto:sonalc123 at gmail.com><mailto:sonalc123 at gmail.com
> <mailto:sonalc123 at gmail.com>>> wrote:
> >
> > This is a big loss for all of us. We have lost a wonderful
> scholar, great
> > researcher in the field of study of language and cognition.
> > I have read few of articles on Spatial semantics, child
> language
> > acquisition and cognition and language inter and
> intrarelative aspects ,
> > innate vs learned aspects of language, etc. Such an amazing
> pioneer she was!
> > Students and researchers will always remember and thank her
> for her scholarly
> > articles, studies and work. Her chapter on Language
> acquisition and
> > conceptual development and other on Spatial semantics is
> splendid work and
> > will definitely inspire many of researchers to work upon it.
> > May her soul rest in peace.
> >
> Sonal
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Tom Roeper
> >
> <<mailto:roeper at linguist.umass.edu
> <mailto:roeper at linguist.umass.edu>>roeper at linguist.umass.edu
> <mailto:roeper at linguist.umass.edu><mailto:roeper at linguist.umass.edu
> <mailto:roeper at linguist.umass.edu>>>
> > wrote:
> > Melissa Bowerman was a splendid human being and a friend of
> mine for 35
> > years. She delighted in the human qualities of children's
> utterances as
> > well as their
> > theoretical interest and I think that quality enabled her to
> explore many
> > semantically demanding questions with a sense of the human
> being behind them.
> > We enjoyed
> > many conversations at MPI and elsewhere---and her loss came
> too soon.
> > I hope family can cherish and nurture many inspiring
> memories of her.
> >
> > Tom Roeper
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 1:12 PM, Philip Dale
> > <<mailto:dalep at unm.edu <mailto:dalep at unm.edu>>dalep at unm.edu
> <mailto:dalep at unm.edu><mailto:dalep at unm.edu
> <mailto:dalep at unm.edu>>> wrote:
> > Some years ago, Roger Brown introduced Melissa as “the
> Jane Austen of
> > psycholinguistics,” which seemed then, and now, to be
> wonderfully apt.
> Her
> > gift was to show how some wonderfully observed details of
> language
> > acquisition could teach us major lessons about both the
> phenomena and the
> > explanation of language acquisition. More than that, she did
> it all with
> > exquisite clarity, wit, and grace. A great scholar and friend.
> >
> > Philip S. Dale, Professor and Chair
> > Speech & Hearing Sciences
> > University of New Mexico
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Brian MacWhinney
> > <<mailto:macw at cmu.edu <mailto:macw at cmu.edu>>macw at cmu.edu
> <mailto:macw at cmu.edu><mailto:macw at cmu.edu
> <mailto:macw at cmu.edu>>> wrote:
> >
> > Dear friends and colleagues,
> >
> > It’s with great personal sadness that I announce the
> death of Melissa
> > Bowerman, on 31 October 2011, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
> >
> > For the past forty years Melissa Bowerman has been a central
> force in the
> > field of child language development, contributing
> influential data and theory
> > on the relations between language and cognition in both
> children and adults.
> > She was one of the first to look closely at what
> children’s errors
> could
> > reveal about semantic development and published classic
> studies of her own
> > children’s causative verbs and prepositional choices
> in locative
> > constructions. What she discovered from her analyses was
> that children
> > extract systematic but quite abstract patterns in the
> semantic structure of
> > the language being acquired. Moreover, some errors emerge
> rather late, after
> > a period of apparently correct usage. This strongly
> suggested that children
> > don’t come to language with ready-made meanings to
> attach to
> word-forms.
> > Rather, they have to discover those patterns first and then
> put them to use.
> >
> > Bowerman was always interdisciplinary in her work: she drew
> on findings from
> > developmental psychology, cognitive and linguistic
> anthropology, and
> > linguistics. She was a pioneer in the use of experimental
> and ethnographic
> > data, across a range of languages, as she examined how
> language shapes both
> > cognitive and linguistic development in the young child, and
> how different
> > languages subtly influence adult categorization of such
> spatial relations as
> > containment and support.
> >
> > She was an innovator in the methods she used in her
> research, using
> > correspondence analysis and multidimensional scaling to
> analyze data as she
> > explored the conceptual bases of semantic categories. She
> made especially
> > important contributions in her research on spatial cognition
> and language,
> > linguistic argument structure, event representation, and
> children’s
> emerging
> > linguistic expressions of causality. On the theoretical
> side, she always
> > sought to disentangle what might be innate from what could
> be learned in
> > first language acquisition, and her insights as well as her
> findings cast new
> > light on typology, language universals, and human cognition.
> Throughout her
> > life, she focussed on how individual languages could have
> particular effects
> > on the course and content of language development, and what
> the implications
> > were for adult mental life.
> >
> > Melissa Bowerman had a perpetually inquiring mind, and was
> fascinated by all
> > kinds of domains –– from birds, plants, knots,
> and dreams to her
> flute music.
> > She would always find a new angle on the domain under
> discussion and pursue
> > it with curiosity and interest, so lunchtimes at the
> Max-Planck- Institute of
> > Psycholinguistics where she spent most of her professional
> life, were a
> > constant source of enjoyment for whoever was there. She was
> modest, generous,
> > lucid, and always scholarly in her approach.
> >
> > She is survived by her husband Wijbrandt van Schuur, her three
> > daughters––Christy, Eva, and
> Claartje––and four
> grandchildren.
> >
> > Eve V. Clark
> > Stanford University
> > President, International Association for the Study of Child
> Language
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> >
> > --
> > Lorraine McCune, EdD
> > Chair, Department of Educational Psychology
> > Graduate School of Education
> > Rutgers University
> > 10 Seminary Place
> > New Brunswick, NJ 08901
> >
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> > --
> > Tom Roeper
> > Dept of Lingiustics
> > UMass South College
> > Amherst, Mass. 01003 ISA
> > 413 256 0390 <tel:413%20256%200390>
> >
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--
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dan I. Slobin
Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics
University of California, Berkeley
email: slobin at berkeley.edu
fax: 1-510-642-5293
address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708
http://ihd.berkeley.edu/members.htm#slobin
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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