astronomy

Hagit Borer

Hagit Borer is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hagit Borer rather than just read about it. In short: Hagit Borer (born 1952) is a professor of linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Her research falls within the area of Generative Grammar.

Key takeaways

Hagit Borer belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hagit Borer to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hagit Borer from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hagit Borer (born 1952) is a professor of linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Her research falls within the area of Generative Grammar. Borer also is an activist for the rights of Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Life and work Hagit Borer was born in Israel. Disillusioned with the Israeli government and with Zionism, she left for the United States in 1977. She became a US citizen in 1992. Borer earned her PhD in linguistics in 1981 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a student of Noam Chomsky. She has held academic positions at University of California, Irvine and University of Massachusetts Amherst prior to her hire at the University of Southern California in 1997. In 2012 she moved to the UK to take a position as a Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Her theoretical approach shifts the computational load from words to syntactic structure, and pursues the consequences of this shift in morphosyntax, in language acquisition, in the syntax-semantics interface, and in syntactic inter-language variation. She initiated the Exoskeletal Model, which implements this idea. She is the author of several books in linguistics, including the three books (Borer 2005a,b, 2013) which outline the workings of the Exoskeletal Model in nominals, in event structure, and in morphology. In 2014, Borer was elected Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. In July 2018 she was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).

Politics Borer has been a member of various organizations and campaigns which advocate peace with justice in the Middle East, and which protest the Israeli occupation and Israeli violations of human rights. She has lectured extensively and has written on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and on Palestinian solidarity activism. Borer was a passenger on the vessel Audacity of Hope, a member of the 2011 Freedom Flotilla II which, sailing from Greece, attempted to break the Israeli Blockade of the Gaza Strip. Fellow passengers included Hedy Epstein and Alice Walker. Before the voyage, the Los Angeles Times carried an op-ed by Borer in which she explained her motivation and wrote that "a society built on conquest and dispossession would have to dehumanize the conquered in order to continue to dispossess and oppress them" and "We wish to say to the Palestinians that, yes, there are people in Israel who know that any viable future for the Middle East must be based on a just peace – not the forced imposition spelled out by Netanyahu to Congress – or else we are all doomed." After the voyage, she stated that the Greek commandos who took the ship and forced it back to a Greek port "arrived with machine guns. It was quite scary. They seemed ready for a fight. The commandos looked threatening, they wore helmets and their faces were covered." In October 2012, Borer travelled with Noam Chomsky and a group of other colleagues to Gaza in order to attend a linguistics conference at the Islamic University of Gaza. Following that trip, they all co-signed a statement entitled Nous accusons... on how the mainstream media allegedly fails to report on Israeli atrocities against civilians in Gaza, also published in French.

Selected publications Borer, H. (2013). Taking Form. Structuring Sense, Volume III. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borer, H. (2005a). In Name Only. Structuring Sense, Volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borer, H. (2005b). The Normal Course of Events. Structuring Sense, Volume II. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borer, H. (1986). The Syntax of Pronominal Clitics, Syntax and Semantics Vol. 19, ed. New York: Academic Press. Borer, H. (1984). Parametric Syntax: Case Studies in Semitic and Romance Languages. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Borer, H. and J. Aoun. (1981). Theoretical Issues in the Grammar of Semitic Languages, eds. MITWPL, Vol. 3. Cambridge: Department of Linguistics, MIT

See also Joseph E. Aoun Generative linguistics Jews for Justice for Palestinians

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hagit Borer

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hagit Borer claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hagit Borer before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hagit Borer ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hagit Borer

In research: Hagit Borer appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hagit Borer in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hagit Borer is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1952 births, Academics of Queen Mary University of London, American anti-Zionists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hagit Borer outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hagit Borer in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hagit Borer means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hagit Borer out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hagit Borer in simple terms?

Hagit Borer (born 1952) is a professor of linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Her research falls within the area of Generative Grammar.

Why does Hagit Borer matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hagit Borer?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hagit Borer.