Diane Brentari is an American linguist who specializes in sign languages and American Sign Language in particular.

Education and career edit

Brentari received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1990.[1] Her dissertation, entitled Theoretical Foundations of American Sign Language Phonology, was supervised by John Goldsmith.

She is the Mary K. Werkman Professor of Linguistics and co-director of the Center for Gesture, Sign, and Language at the University of Chicago.[2] She held a position at University of California-Davis, and then led the Sign Language program at Purdue University before coming to the University of Chicago in 2011.[3][4]

Brentari's scholarship focuses on the phonology, morphology, and prosody of sign languages.[5]

Honors edit

In 2019, Brentari's article "The Noun-Verb Distinction in Established and Emergent Sign Systems" (co-authored with Natasha Abner, Molly Flaherty, Katelyn Stangl, Marie Coppola, and Susan Goldin-Meadow) received the Best Paper in the Linguistic Society of America's Language Award.[6]

In 2020, Brentari was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the project Observing the Creation of Language.[7]

Brentari was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America in 2022.[8]

Selected publications edit

Books edit

  • Brentari, Diane (1998). A Prosodic Model of Sign Language Phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262024457.
  • Brentari, Diane (2001). Foreign Vocabulary in Sign Languages: A Cross-linguistic Investigation of Word Formation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 9781135670344.*Brentari, Diane (2010). Sign Languages: A Cambridge Language Survey. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139487399.
  • Brentari, Diane; Lee, Jackson (2018). Shaping Phonology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226562599.
  • Brentari, Diane (2019). Sign Language Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107113473.

Chapters and articles edit

References edit

  1. ^ "Alumni | Linguistics". linguistics.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  2. ^ "Faculty | Linguistics". linguistics.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
  3. ^ Bane, Max (30 March 2011). "Welcome, Diane Brentari! – BLING". Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  4. ^ "Demand high for college sign language classes". www.purdue.edu. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  5. ^ "Diane Brentari". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  6. ^ "Best Paper in Language 2019 Award to be Given to Article on Emergent Sign Systems | Linguistic Society of America". www.linguisticsociety.org. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  7. ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Diane K. Brentari". Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  8. ^ "LSA Elects 2022 Class of Fellows | Linguistic Society of America". www.linguisticsociety.org. Retrieved 2022-03-12.