Lila R. Gleitman

Who is Lila R. Gleitman?

Lila Gleitman is a Professor Emerita of Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an internationally-renowned expert on language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics, focusing on children's learning of their first language. Gleitman received a B.A. in literature from Antioch College in 1952, an M.A. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. She was employed as an assistant professor at Swarthmore College before accepting a position as the William T. Carter Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania from 1972-1973, and then subsequently serving as a professor of linguistics and as the Steven and Marcia Roth Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1973 until her retirement. The impact of Gleitman's research in language acquisition has been recognized by numerous organizations, and she has been elected as a fellow in the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academies of Science. Gleitman's interests include, Language acquisition, morphology and syntactic structure, Psycholinguistics, syntax, construction of the lexicon.