June 21st, 2017
Brian MacWhinney obtained his PhD in psycholinguistics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1974, working under the direction of Susan Ervin-Tripp and Dan Slobin. In his dissertation, titled How Hungarian Children Learn to Speak, MacWhinney focused on children’s acquisition of complex morphological rules for plural formation. This represented the first in a long line of studies that aimed to provide a comprehensive account of grammatical development applicable to typologically diverse languages.
After an initial stint at the University of Denver, Brian has spent his academic career in the Psychology Department of Carnegie Mellon University. Through decades of original and influential work, Brian has become a significant force in psycholinguistics, both theoretically and methodologically. He has served the linguistic community by creating and curating numerous language databases. He has been a valued colleague, and a mentor to the next generation of language researchers.
Read more on Dr. MacWhinney’s honoree page.
