Preface

Abstract

This volume gathers ten papers in honor of Lucia Lobato (1942Lobato ( -2005. The contributions are authored by linguists that Lucia admired and respected. It is a great honor to assemble these empirical and theoretical contributions to linguistics in memory of Professor Lobato, and thereby further advance our understanding of human language for both the students of Brazil and the greater linguistic community.The name Maria Lucia Pinheiro Lobato is well known in Brazil as the author of the groundbreaking textbook Sintaxe Gerativa do Português: da Teoria Padrão à Teoria da Regência e Ligação, published in 1986. The book's publication was a landmark accomplishment in offering the most intensive Generative model of Brazilian Portuguese to date, taking into account the evolution of Generative syntax since its early days. In addition to its theoretical contribution to the understanding of Portuguese and of human language in general, Lobato's book also had a tremendous pedagogical impact on new approaches to the teaching and dissemination of Generative Grammar within Brazil. Even today, it is one of the major texts for many linguistic programs throughout the country. Lobato's Sintaxe Gerativa is still considered a classic, and continues to be an inspiration for new generations of linguists.The publication of this volume honors and recognizes Lucia Lobato for a very productive career in which she made extensive contributions to research in linguistics, in addition to Sintaxe Gerativa, and for her devotion and active role in the development and consolidation of the scientific endeavors of Generative Grammar. Lucia was one of the pioneers of the development of Generative Grammar studies in Brazil.Lucia began her undergraduate studies at University of Espírito Santo, graduating in 1965 with a bachelor's degree in French-Portuguese Letters and Literature. In 1967, she studied at the University of Nancy concentrating in Linguistics; soon thereafter, she was invited to enter the L' Auxiliarité en Langue Portugaise. Lucia's dissertation thoroughly analyzes the aspectual and temporal, and mood properties of Portuguese, themes she revisited many times during her career.During her time in France, Lucia began to learn about Noam Chomsky's new theory of the innate language abilities embedded in the human brain. Even though Chomsky's views were heavily criticized, Lucia considered them to be an important contribution to explain linguistic knowledge. Not long thereafter, she became a virtuoso student of this new scientific branch of linguistics.Upon her return to Brazil at the beginning of the seventies, Lucia was appointed as an associate professor of the University of Rio de Janeiro. Her appointment was contemporaneous of that of Anthony Naro, who was a post-doc at Museu Nacional. Naro has completed his PhD at MIT in 1968, and was informally teaching Generative Grammar to Miriam Lemle and Yonne Leite. Lucia Lobato joined the group, and soon thereafter Lobato, Lemle and Naro embraced a new project: training a generation of Generativ...