Sabine Iatridou named David W. Skinner Professor of Linguistics

A leading scholar; ambassador for linguistics; organizer; and sought-after teacher
 


Sabine Iatridou, David W. Skinner Professor of Linguistics; photo by Jon Sachs, MIT SHASS Communications

"Iatridou impresses her colleagues with her keen insight and intuition about the most intricate linguistic patterns and her masterful grasp of crosslinguistic generalizations and exceptions."




Sabine Iatridou (Σαβίνα Ιατρίδου) has been named the new David W. Skinner Professor of Linguistics. This professorship was created through a bequest from Mr. Skinner who was an alumnus of the Class of 1923.


Influential scholarship

Iatridou is one of the foremost scholars working on the interface of morphosyntax and semantics with a relentlessly cross-linguistic perspective. She has published numerous highly influential articles in the top peer-reviewed journals and in seminal collections of articles. Her early promise (signaled by the NSF's National Young Investigator Award) has evolved into an internationally recognized profile.

She is sought after as an editorial board member, reviewer, workshop and conference organizer, teacher at linguistic institutes and summer schools. She is an ambassador of serious linguistics in her outreach to young scholars in many parts of the world.

Her most cited and influential works include her work on cross-linguistic patterns of counterfactual marking, her work with Tony Kroch on CP-recursion, her paper on conditional /then/, her paper on /pro/ with David Embick, her paper on pseudoclefts crosslinguistically with Spyridoula Varlokosta, her highly influential paper on the perfect (with Elena Anagnostopoulou and Roumi Izvorski), her paper on the scope of negative DPs (with Ivy Sichel), her work on polarity items (with Hedde Zeijlstra), and her papers on modality with her MIT colleague Kai von Fintel.

Education, leadership, and honors

Iatridou received a DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery) from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in 1982. She received a PhD in linguistics from MIT in 1992 and went on to teach at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1994 to 1999, she held a National Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. In 1997, she joined MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy with tenure and has been here ever since.

In 2005, she served as the Director of the biannual summer institute of the Linguistics Society of America, which was held that year jointly at MIT and Harvard. Since 2007, she has been the Graduate Program Director in linguistics. In 2016, she was named a Fellow of the Linguistics Society of America. Also in 2016, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Crete. She is the cofounder and codirector of the annual Crete Summer School of Linguistics. In 2020, she was named a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation.


Crosslinguistic Investigation

Iatridou impresses her colleagues with her keen insight and intuition about the most intricate linguistic patterns and her masterful grasp of crosslinguistic generalizations and exceptions. Her work has been an essential part of the development towards crosslinguistic investigation in semantics (which had lagged behind phonology and syntax in that regard).

 


Suggested links

Sabine Iatridou / MIT webpage


Sabine Iatridou / Wikipedia

MIT Linguistics

Story: Iatridou receives 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship

Story: Iatridou and von Fintel named Linguistics Society of America Fellows

Story: Iatridou awarded support from the SHASS Research Fund

 


Story by MIT Linguistics
Published 23 August 2021