17.385, All: Obituary: Marica de Vincenzi

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-17-385. Sat Feb 04 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.385, All: Obituary: Marica de Vincenzi

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org) 
        Sheila Dooley, U of Arizona  
        Terry Langendoen, U of Arizona  

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at 
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 30-Jan-2006
From: Lyn Frazier < lyn at linguist.umass.edu >
Subject: Obituary: Marica de Vincenzi 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2006 14:02:18
From: Lyn Frazier < lyn at linguist.umass.edu >
Subject: Obituary: Marica de Vincenzi 
 

Marica de Vincenzi: An appreciation

Marica de Vincenzi died on January 20, 2006 in Genova, Italy, of brain
cancer.  She was a former student of mine and a dear friend.  A dedicated
psycholinguist, she obtained her Ph.D. in the Department of Psychology at
the University of Massachusetts, under the supervision of Professor Charles
Clifton, in l989.  Her dissertation, Syntactic Parsing Strategies in
Italian, systematically examined processing of Italian and is best known
for the working out and testing of its central claim, the Minimal Chain
Principle.  The dissertation was published in 1991 in the Kluwer series
Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics.  

After finishing her graduate studies, Marica worked at the Institute of
Psychology of the National Research Council in Rome and later became a
Professor of Psychology at the University of Chieti. Together with her
friend and beloved mentor Remo Job, Professor of Psychology at the
University of Padova, she did important work on cross-language parsing
strategies, examining the resolution of phrase structure ambiguities, and
together with Vincenzo Lombardo she edited a volume on Cross-Linguistic
Perspectives on Language Processing.  Using priming and event-related
potentials, she investigated the role of number features in linguistic
representation and processing.  Her most recent work, conducted jointly
with Luigi Rizzi and colleagues, explored the representation and processing
of tense features.  

In her last days, Marica generously set up a fund to help Italian
psycholinguistics students to study abroad.  She was not only generous, but
a particularly lively and affectionate person, unique in her perspective,
and she had a fierce will to live.  The entire psycholinguistics community
will miss her.  I know I will. 


Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable





-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-17-385