1575 W 2nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90026, United States
Victoria finished Belmont High School in Los Angeles.
College/University
Gallery of Victoria Fromkin
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States
In 1944, Victoria received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Gallery of Victoria Fromkin
University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
In 1963, Fromkin attained a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. Two years later, in 1965, Fromkin got a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the same university.
University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
In 1963, Fromkin attained a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. Two years later, in 1965, Fromkin got a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the same university.
("Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory" is a ...)
"Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory" is a textbook, written for introductory courses in linguistic theory for undergraduate linguistics majors and first-year graduate students, by twelve major figures in the field, each bringing their expertise to one of the core areas of the field - morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology and language acquisition. In each section, the book is concerned with discussing the underlying principles common to all languages, showing how these are revealed in language acquisition and in the specific grammars of the world's languages.
Victoria Fromkin was an American linguist, educator, phonetician and author. She wrote and conducted research on psycholinguistics, the connection between the human brain and speech patterns. In general, the line of her research mainly dealt with speech errors and slips of the tongue.
Background
Victoria Fromkin was born on May 16, 1923, in Passaic, New Jersey, United States. She was a daughter of Henry Landish, an artist, and Rose Lillian (Ravitz) Landish, who was a member of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia and had come to the United States from Ukraine as a young girl.
Education
In Victoria's early years, her family moved to Los Angeles, where she finished Belmont High School. In 1944, Victoria received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1963, she attained a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. Two years later, in 1965, Fromkin got a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the same university.
In 1965, Victoria began working as a Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Between 1971 and 1975, Fromkin was a member of the team of linguistic researchers, who studied the speech of the "feral child" (a human child, who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and so has had little or no experience of human care, behavior or human language), known as Genie. The linguists stopped examining the case after hostile disputes over Genie's care and the loss of funding from the National Institute of Mental Health. Later, Victoria published several papers about Genie's linguistic development.
In 1974, the producers of the children's television series "Land of the Lost" commissioned Victoria to create a constructed language for a species of primitive cavemen/primates, called the Pakuni. Fromkin developed a 300-word vocabulary and syntax for the series, as well as translated scripts into her created Pakuni language for the series' first two seasons. Some time later, Victoria created another constructed language for the vampires in the action-sci-fi movie "Blade".
Between 1974 and 1977, Victoria acted as chairwoman of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where, in 1979, Fromkin became the first woman in the university system to be appointed Vice Chancellor of Graduate Programs, the post she continued to hold until 1989. In addition, in 1984 and 1987, Fromkin acted as a visiting fellow at Wolfson College, in Oxford. She formally retired in the early 1990's, but continued her research and writing.
During her career, Victoria published several books. "An Introduction to Language" (1974), which she co-wrote with Robert Rodman, was translated into six languages and ran through several editions. Fromkin also edited the anthology "Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory" (2000).
As for Victoria's research, for the most part of her career she contributed to psycholinguistics, but she also carried out research in phonetics and phonology.
Active in numerous scholarly and academic organizations, Fromkin was the organizer of many conferences and participant of many of them. Additionally, she gave a very large number of invited lectures, both in the United States and abroad, and she was frequently called on to serve as a consultant both by funding agencies and universities, seeking advice on, or evaluation of, their programs. To all of these activities, she brought the energy, enthusiasm and charm, that made her, at the time of her death on January 19, 2000, one of the best-known and best-loved figures in her field.
When Victoria studied at Belmont High School, she became president of a chapter of the left-wing American Student Union. She joined the Young Communist League at around the age of fifteen and took part as a high school student in such political actions, as picketing segregated public baths and supporting strikers in Hollywood.
Fromkin's political activism continued at the University of California, Berkeley. There, she became one of the relatively few non-secret members of the Communist Party. In 1945, she was asked by the Communist Party to return to Los Angeles to work with high school and college students in the united-front group American Youth for Democracy. Later, she became secretary of another united-front organization, the Southern California Peace Crusade, the goals of which included improved American relations with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Victoria remained in the Communist Party until the mid 1950's.
As a young woman, Victoria was active in radical politics and she remained a political progressive and an advocate for social justice all her life, in spite of later disillusionment.
Views
Fromkin theorized, that slips of the tongue can occur at many levels, including syntactic, phrasal, lexical or semantic, morphological and phonological. She also believed, that slips of the tongue could occur as many different process procedures.
Membership
Victoria was a member of the American Psychological Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, United States National Academy of Sciences, New York Academy of Sciences, International Phonetic Association and West African Linguistics Society.
Linguistic Society of America
,
United States
1985
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
1996
National Institutes of Health
,
United States
1981
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
1982
Linguistic Society of America
,
United States
1984 - 1985
Linguistic Society of America
,
United States
1985
Council of Graduate Schools
,
United States
1985 - 1987
Association of Graduate Schools
,
United States
1988
Permament International Committee of Linguists
1997
Personality
Always insisting on being addressed as "Vicki" by everyone, from the freshmen and sophomores in her Introduction to Language classes to the Chancellor of her university, Fromkin's reliance on informality in dealing with people of all ages and statuses reflected the lively interest in fellow human beings, that informed her life and her work in the field of linguistics.
Physical Characteristics:
Victoria suffered from colon cancer.
Connections
Fromkin married her first husband, Ted Kalman, in 1941, whom she divorced in 1948. Then, on October 24, 1948, Victoria married Jack Fromkin, her childhood friend. Their marrige produced one child - Mark. In 1966, Mark was killed in an automobile accident at the age of sixteen.