Pauline Jacobson

Pauline Jacobson is a Professor of Linguistics at Brown University, where she has served since 1975. Her research focuses on formal semantics, particularly the syntax-semantics interface, advocating for direct compositionality and variable-free semantics. She has held visiting positions at Ohio State, Harvard, and other institutions, and has contributed to summer institutes in linguistics worldwide.

She earned her BA in Anthropology (1968) and PhD in Linguistics (1977) from UC Berkeley. Her work emphasizes eliminating intermediate levels like 'Logical Form' and explores phenomena such as negation, ellipsis, and binding within a variable-free framework.

Prof. Jacobson has served as editor-in-chief of Linguistics and Philosophy, chaired panels for NSF and Fulbright, and participates in editorial boards. Her research trends reflect a sustained engagement with syntactic and semantic compositionality, challenging traditional assumptions about linguistic structure.

Her advising and grants include teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses on syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. She is affiliated with Brown’s Department of Linguistics and has contributed to interdisciplinary initiatives in formal linguistics and cognitive science.