30.2022, All: Obituary: Edit Doron (1951-2019)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2022. Mon May 13 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 30.2022, All: Obituary: Edit Doron (1951-2019)
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Date: Mon, 13 May 2019 23:46:21
From: Nora Boneh [nora.boneh at mail.huji.ac.il]
Subject: Obituary: Edit Doron (1951-2019)
The Department of Linguistics and the Language Logic and Cognition Center, at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem mourn the passing of our dear friend and
beloved colleague Professor Edit Doron. Edit passed away at home on March 27,
2019.
Prof. Doron, a pioneering researcher and leader in the field of theoretical
and Semitic linguistics, published numerous works on Syntax, Semantics,
Pragmatics and Morphology, and was a significant force in bridging formal
linguistics and the study of Semitic languages.
Edit was born in Jerusalem on April 9th, 1951. During her childhood, she lived
with her parents, foreign affairs envoys, in Morocco and France, where she
learned Spanish and French, which she continued to speak fluently throughout
her life, laying the ground for her great love for languages and their
variation. After completing her mandatory military service, she studied for
her BA and MA in Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(1970-1976). What set her off on her path to Linguistics was one class in the
course “Logical computation and programming languages,” taught by Prof.
Michael Rabin (laureate of the Turing Prize, the Israel Prize and the Dan
David Prize). During a discussion of formal grammars, Rabin remarked that the
formalism is applicable not only to programming languages but also to natural
language. Edit, who already had a vivid interest in languages, was amazed by
the idea that the grammar that underlies our everyday language, and provides
us with the freedom to express any thought, in her words, is the result of a
well-defined mathematical computation.
Intrigued by the seeming paradox that human language with its inherent
creativity results from a finite set of rigorously formalized rules, she
joined in 1978 the graduate program in Linguistics at the university of
Austin, Texas.
Ever since, and up to her most recent research, one can identify in her work a
unique combination of a deep love and passion for languages and the
application of formal rigor in analyzing them. As a first example, in her PhD
(supervised by Lauri J. Karttunen), Edit Doron developed a set of rules that
generate non-verbal clauses in Modern Hebrew. In this pioneering work, she
explains why a pronoun comes to be the copula in nominal clauses in Hebrew and
other Semitic languages, tying together the verbal clausal structure and the
non-verbal one. The impact of this seminal work is still felt today, 40 years
later.
After her graduation, Edit Doron held a post-doc position at Stanford,
California, at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. During
those years, she focused, among other topics, on the study of possible word
orders in the Hebrew sentence, and the conditions for pro-drop in Hebrew.
Subsequently, in 1987, she joined the Hebrew University (with the prestigious
Alon Fellowship), and became a member of the Linguistics track at the English
department, which later became part of the Department of Linguistics.
Prof. Edit Doron was invited as a guest lecturer to the LSA summer institute
(1994, Ohio State University), and was a visiting professor at UC Santa Cruz
(1998-1999). Prof. Doron headed the nascent Cognitive Science program at the
Hebrew University, and also served as the chair of the English department. She
was twice the president of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics
(IATL), in 1995-1997, and 2008-2010. She was also one of the founding members
of the Language, Logic and Cognition Center (LLCC) at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, and helped found the Joint Hebrew University-Tel Aviv University
PhD Program in Linguistics, and was its first director.
Prof. Doron endeavored to establish solid scientific ties between the
relatively small community of theoretical linguists in Israel, and the larger
international community of linguists. Throughout the years, she initiated many
research groups and events within the linguistic community in Israel including
the semantics research group she led at the Institute of Advanced Studies in
1997-1998. She organized dozens of conferences with both local and
international participants, and was repeatedly invited to give guest lectures
in international venues. Prof. Doron was co-Editor of Brill’s Annual of
Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, Associate Editor of Theoretical
Linguistics and a member of the advisory board of Semantics and Pragmatics.
Prof. Edit Doron’s impact in linguistics is vast and diversified. In
morphology, she is best known for her analysis of the Semitic Binyanim
(template) system, carefully uncovering its complexity and systematicity, and
its relation to fundamental sematic-philosophical concepts such as agency,
reflexivity and causation. Her work on Semitic word structure also contributed
much to the understanding of the root as a theoretical construct in natural
language. Within this context she contributed much to our understanding of the
lexical semantic and syntactic underpinnings of verb valancy and transitivity
alternations, as well as a syntactic study of ergativity. Relatedly, in work
on Hebrew and Neo-Aramaic, she examined how inflectional systems of
determiners developed. She also devoted a considerable part of her research to
the syntactic and semantic study of noun phrases, and in particular to that of
the Hebrew construct state and the morphology of the definite article.
The topics in syntax which Prof. Doron investigated are many. Her early
research on resumptive pronouns demonstrated that what looks like free
syntactic variation between clauses with and without resumptive pronouns in
fact discloses a subtle but robust semantic constraint, that is not subject to
a speaker’s stylistic choice. The topic of resumptive pronouns stood at the
center of an international workshop celebrating 30 years to Edit’s seminal
paper.
Prof. Doron’s work on pronouns and agreement lead her to investigate the
syntax of broad subjects, showing how the received clausal structure can
accommodate such constructions. Her most recent published research concerned a
typology of infinitival forms in Biblical Hebrew and its development through
the various stages of Hebrew.
Semantic issues featured prominently in her work, and the study of genericity
was very central and branched into two lines of research. She wrote
extensively on the semantics of mass nouns and the indefinite singular and
also on habituality. In her most recent research in semantics, Prof. Doron
attempted to trace the historical development of the quantifier kol ‘all’,
claiming that in Biblical Hebrew, the cognate form was a noun meaning
‘totality’.
At the Semantics-Pragmatics interface, it is important to mention her
much-cited paper on Free Indirect Discourse, where she claims that the content
of a proposition is relativized to a point of view and not only to a given
context. Prof. Doron also tackled the issue of Cataphora.
Prof. Edit Doron researched and published work alone and with numerous
co-authors on numerous languages, among them Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese,
French, Modern Greek, Japanese, Malayalam, Neo-Aramaic, Spanish and Syriac.
Her co-authors were many, drawn from diverse linguistic communities: Artemis
Alexiadou, Dora Alexopoulou, Shraga Assif, Nora Boneh, Keren Dubnov, Caroline
Heycock, Samir Khalaily, Geoffrey Khan, Marie Labelle, Irit Meir, Ana Muller,
Malka Rappaport Hovav, Chris Reintges, Moshe Ron, Aynat Rubinstein, Ur
Shlonsky.
Edit’s great love for Semitic languages in general, and for Hebrew in
particular, led her in recent years to investigate the linguistic and
cognitive aspects of the emergence of Modern Hebrew during the period of its
revival and its development until today. This project was first launched with
a research group hosted at the Mandel Scholion Interdisciplinary Research
Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies, and was significantly promoted
with the ERC grant she won in 2017, “The emergence of Modern Hebrew, a study
case of linguistic dis-continuity”. In the context of these two projects she
brought together researchers from the traditional Hebrew language academic
community and researchers in theoretical linguistics. Her vision was to bring
the unique case of the revival of Hebrew speech to the attention of the
international academic community working on language contact and language
change and to bring the insights of theoretical work on these issues to bear
on the understanding of the case of Hebrew.
Edit Doron had excellent ties with the Academy of the Hebrew Language and
served on two of its committees (for terminology in Logic 2005-2007 and
terminology in Linguistics 2011-2015).
For her outstanding contribution to the field of Linguistics in general and to
the study of the Hebrew language in particular, Prof. Edit Doron was awarded
the prestigious Israel Prize in 2016. This is the highest honor offered by the
State.
Edit Doron educated generations of excellent students, many of whom have by
now well-established international reputations in linguistics. She was
especially known for encouraging young linguists through teaching and research
collaboration, mentoring them through the intricate paths of linguistic
knowledge and life in academia.
Edit was a dedicated triathlete; she trained intensively and regularly,
participated in numerous competitions, with impressive achievements. She is
survived by her son, Yoni, and her sister Naama.
Edit will be sorely missed by her colleagues, students, friends and family.
Her endless curiosity, and tireless quest for knowledge, her wisdom,
generosity, relentless determination, her elegance and charisma will continue
to be an inspiration to us all. People wishing to honor Edit’s memory are
invited to visit the memorial website, where they can express condolences to
her family, colleagues and students, upload a personal story, thoughts and
pictures.
Memorial Website: http://pluto.huji.ac.il/~edit/
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
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