Semantics etc.

There was very sad news yesterday: Tanya Reinhart died suddenly on a visit to Long Island, NY. Here is the announcement from her colleagues at Tel Aviv University:

Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 10:45:52 +0200
Subject: Sad, sad news

Dear friends,

Yesterday we lost Tanya Reinhart. She died in New York, a sudden death.

It’s hardly possible to describe Tanya’s fundamental contribution and significance for the field of linguistics.

Tanya was a wonderful colleague, a challenging and at the same time most supportive advisor and mentor, and a dedicated political and human rights activist.

The linguistics department at Tel Aviv University and the cognitive program owe a great debt to Tanya. She was a crucial part of what we tried to build here for so many years. Her excellence was an inspiration to many of us.

We shall always remember Tanya. She was our friend. The best you could wish for.

As soon as we have the information about her funeral, we will send out an announcement.

Sadly,

Mira, Rachel and Tali

I first met Tanya when I was a beginning graduate student, at the 1991 LSA summer institute in Santa Cruz. We talked about the work on exceptives that I was doing and that was related to work that she had been doing. She was very generous with her time and her comments. I will never forget her contribution to a conference during that institute, especially during the Q&A period after her talk, when she displayed an inimitable incisiveness and combativeness. I liked and admired her very much and thoroughly enjoyed our all too infrequent meetings in the years since — the last one, I believe, at a summer institute in Germany in 2002 where we both taught.

This is a terrible loss for our field and for all of us.

Obituaries:

• Ha’aretz
• “In Memory of Tanya Reinhart” by Noam Chomsky
• LINGUIST List
• Guardian
• New York Times
• “A few words about Tanya” by Danny Fox (spoken before a talk at Leysin, Switzerland, March 20)

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