Lisa Matthewson
Canadian linguist
Lisa Christine Matthewson is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at University of British Columbia with specialties in pragmatics and semantics. She has also done significant work with semantic fieldwork and in the preservation and oral history of First Nations languages, especially St'át'imcets and Gitksan. Matthewson's appointment at UBC was notable because she was the first female full professor in the department's history.
Biography
Matthewson received her BA and MA from Victoria University of Wellington. She received her PhD in linguistics from the University of British Columbia in 1996. In 1998, her PhD thesis, "Determiner Systems and Quantificational Strategies: Evidence from Salish", was awarded the E. W. Beth Dissertation Prize, given to outstanding PhD theses in the fields of logic, language, and information.
Matthewson's research explores how variation in semantics and pragmatics among languages can provide insight into the proposal of a Universal Grammar. Her paper, On the Methodology of Semantic Fieldwork, is one of her most widely cited papers. Matthewson co-edited the 2015 book Methodologies in Semantic Fieldwork from Oxford University Press.
Matthewson also co-developed the Totem Field Storyboards project, which seeks to gather linguistic information from speakers without direct interviews.
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