Myrna Gopnik Explained

Myrna Lee Gopnik (born 1935) is a Canadian linguist. She is a professor emerita of linguistics at McGill University.^[1] She is known for her research on the KE family, an English family with several members affected by specific language impairment.^{[2] [3] [4]}

Gopnik is generally credited with an important early evaluation of the KE family, and with making this family known to the wider scientific community. Subsequent research by Anthony Monaco, Simon Fisher and colleagues at Oxford University identified a mutation in the FOXP2 gene as a cause of the KE family's disorder (see: A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder.^[5]

Gopnik is married to English professor Irwin Gopnik. They have six children together, including Alison (a developmental psychology professor at UC Berkeley), Adam, a novelist and writer for The New Yorker, and Blake Gopnik. ^[6]

Publications

• Linguistic structures in scientific texts, 1968
• Semiotic approaches to theories, 1976
• The inheritance and innateness of grammars, 1997

Notes and References

1. Web site: McGill Staff Directory . 23 June 2011 .
2. Gopnik M . Feature blind grammar and dysphasia . Nature . 344 . 6268 . 715 . 1990 . 2330028 . 10.1038/344715a0 . 1990Natur.344..715G . 4360334 . free .
3. Gopnik M . Genetic basis of grammar defect . Nature . 347 . 6281 . 26 . 1990 . 2395458 . 10.1038/347026a0 . 1990Natur.347...26G . free .
4. 10.1016/0010-0277(91)90058-C . Myrna G Crago MB . Familial aggregation of a developmental language disorder . Cognition . 39 . 1–50 . 1991 . 1934976 . 1 . 35733622 .
5. Lai CS, Fisher SE, Hurst JA, Vargha-Khadem F, Monaco AP. Nature. 2001 vol. 413(6855):pp. 519–23.)
6. Web site: Moorhead . Laurel . Author Gopnik on the wonders of babies' brains . Oakland North . 25 March 2012.