<div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>She will be sorely missed. But her influence will remain pervasive and longstanding in the field.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I wish I could join the memorial at BU tomorrow, but my thoughts will definitely be with you all.</div><div><br></div><div>Ginny Gathercole</div><div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 9:09 AM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:koc@boun.edu.tr">koc@boun.edu.tr</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">I am also very saddened at Melissa's loss. Her work has been one of the most<br>
inspiring sourcesfor many of us in the field. I feel priviledged to have known<br>
her warm and generous person.<br>
<br>
Ayhan Aksu-Koc<br>
Bogazici University<br>
<div class="im"><br>
<br>
Quoting Maryann Romski <<a href="mailto:mromski@gsu.edu">mromski@gsu.edu</a>>:<br>
<br>
> Melissa was also a wonderful teacher and mentor. I had the privilege of<br>
> taking a language acquisition course from her when she was at the University<br>
> of Kansas early in her career. She was generous with her time and taught us<br>
> so much through her semantic examples from Christy and Eva. Her passing is a<br>
> great loss for the field. MaryAnn<br>
> > Sent from MAR'S IPAD<br>
><br>
> On Nov 2, 2011, at 3:21 PM, "Sonal Chitnis"<br>
</div><div class="im">> <<a href="mailto:sonalc123@gmail.com">sonalc123@gmail.com</a><mailto:<a href="mailto:sonalc123@gmail.com">sonalc123@gmail.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> This is a big loss for all of us. We have lost a wonderful scholar, great<br>
> researcher in the field of study of language and cognition.<br>
> I have read few of articles on Spatial semantics, child language<br>
> acquisition and cognition and language inter and intrarelative aspects ,<br>
> innate vs learned aspects of language, etc. Such an amazing pioneer she was!<br>
> Students and researchers will always remember and thank her for her scholarly<br>
> articles, studies and work. Her chapter on Language acquisition and<br>
> conceptual development and other on Spatial semantics is splendid work and<br>
> will definitely inspire many of researchers to work upon it.<br>
> May her soul rest in peace.<br>
> Sonal<br>
><br>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Tom Roeper<br>
><br>
</div><<mailto:<a href="mailto:roeper@linguist.umass.edu">roeper@linguist.umass.edu</a>><a href="mailto:roeper@linguist.umass.edu">roeper@linguist.umass.edu</a><mailto:<a href="mailto:roeper@linguist.umass.edu">roeper@linguist.umass.edu</a>>><br>
<div class="im">> wrote:<br>
> Melissa Bowerman was a splendid human being and a friend of mine for 35<br>
> years. She delighted in the human qualities of children's utterances as<br>
> well as their<br>
> theoretical interest and I think that quality enabled her to explore many<br>
> semantically demanding questions with a sense of the human being behind them.<br>
> We enjoyed<br>
> many conversations at MPI and elsewhere---and her loss came too soon.<br>
> I hope family can cherish and nurture many inspiring memories of her.<br>
><br>
> Tom Roeper<br>
><br>
><br>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 1:12 PM, Philip Dale<br>
</div>> <<mailto:<a href="mailto:dalep@unm.edu">dalep@unm.edu</a>><a href="mailto:dalep@unm.edu">dalep@unm.edu</a><mailto:<a href="mailto:dalep@unm.edu">dalep@unm.edu</a>>> wrote:<br>
> Some years ago, Roger Brown introduced Melissa as “the Jane Austen of<br>
> psycholinguistics,” which seemed then, and now, to be wonderfully apt.<br>
<div class="im">Her<br>
> gift was to show how some wonderfully observed details of language<br>
> acquisition could teach us major lessons about both the phenomena and the<br>
> explanation of language acquisition. More than that, she did it all with<br>
> exquisite clarity, wit, and grace. A great scholar and friend.<br>
><br>
> Philip S. Dale, Professor and Chair<br>
> Speech & Hearing Sciences<br>
> University of New Mexico<br>
><br>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Brian MacWhinney<br>
</div><div class="im">> <<mailto:<a href="mailto:macw@cmu.edu">macw@cmu.edu</a>><a href="mailto:macw@cmu.edu">macw@cmu.edu</a><mailto:<a href="mailto:macw@cmu.edu">macw@cmu.edu</a>>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> Dear friends and colleagues,<br>
><br>
</div>> It’s with great personal sadness that I announce the death of Melissa<br>
<div class="im">> Bowerman, on 31 October 2011, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.<br>
><br>
> For the past forty years Melissa Bowerman has been a central force in the<br>
> field of child language development, contributing influential data and theory<br>
> on the relations between language and cognition in both children and adults.<br>
</div>> She was one of the first to look closely at what children’s errors<br>
<div class="im">could<br>
> reveal about semantic development and published classic studies of her own<br>
</div>> children’s causative verbs and prepositional choices in locative<br>
<div class="im">> constructions. What she discovered from her analyses was that children<br>
> extract systematic but quite abstract patterns in the semantic structure of<br>
> the language being acquired. Moreover, some errors emerge rather late, after<br>
> a period of apparently correct usage. This strongly suggested that children<br>
</div>> don’t come to language with ready-made meanings to attach to<br>
<div class="im">word-forms.<br>
> Rather, they have to discover those patterns first and then put them to use.<br>
><br>
> Bowerman was always interdisciplinary in her work: she drew on findings from<br>
> developmental psychology, cognitive and linguistic anthropology, and<br>
> linguistics. She was a pioneer in the use of experimental and ethnographic<br>
> data, across a range of languages, as she examined how language shapes both<br>
> cognitive and linguistic development in the young child, and how different<br>
> languages subtly influence adult categorization of such spatial relations as<br>
> containment and support.<br>
><br>
> She was an innovator in the methods she used in her research, using<br>
> correspondence analysis and multidimensional scaling to analyze data as she<br>
> explored the conceptual bases of semantic categories. She made especially<br>
> important contributions in her research on spatial cognition and language,<br>
</div>> linguistic argument structure, event representation, and children’s<br>
<div class="im">emerging<br>
> linguistic expressions of causality. On the theoretical side, she always<br>
> sought to disentangle what might be innate from what could be learned in<br>
> first language acquisition, and her insights as well as her findings cast new<br>
> light on typology, language universals, and human cognition. Throughout her<br>
> life, she focussed on how individual languages could have particular effects<br>
> on the course and content of language development, and what the implications<br>
> were for adult mental life.<br>
><br>
> Melissa Bowerman had a perpetually inquiring mind, and was fascinated by all<br>
</div>> kinds of domains –– from birds, plants, knots, and dreams to her<br>
<div class="im">flute music.<br>
> She would always find a new angle on the domain under discussion and pursue<br>
> it with curiosity and interest, so lunchtimes at the Max-Planck- Institute of<br>
> Psycholinguistics where she spent most of her professional life, were a<br>
> constant source of enjoyment for whoever was there. She was modest, generous,<br>
> lucid, and always scholarly in her approach.<br>
><br>
> She is survived by her husband Wijbrandt van Schuur, her three<br>
</div>> daughters––Christy, Eva, and Claartje––and four<br>
<div class="im">grandchildren.<br>
><br>
> Eve V. Clark<br>
> Stanford University<br>
> President, International Association for the Study of Child Language<br>
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