astronomy

Mira Ariel

Mira Ariel 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 Mira Ariel rather than just read about it. In short: Mira Ariel (Hebrew: מירה אריאל) is a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, specializing in pragmatics. A pioneer of the study of information structure, she is best known for creating and developing Accessibility Theory.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Mira Ariel (Hebrew: מירה אריאל) is a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, specializing in pragmatics. A pioneer of the study of information structure, she is best known for creating and developing Accessibility Theory.

Education and career After completing a BA in linguistics and English literature at Tel Aviv University in 1976, Ariel studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with an MA in 1978. Ariel returned to Tel Aviv University in 1979 to pursue her PhD studies. She was advised by Tanya Reinhart and Ellen Prince and was awarded her PhD in 1986 with a dissertation entitled, Givenness marking. She subsequently spent a brief period as an honorary research fellow in sociolinguistics at the University of London. Ariel was hired as a lecturer at Tel Aviv University in 1988 and spent her whole career there, reaching the rank of full professor in 2006.

Honors From 2018 to 2019, she served as President of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. In 2021 she was elected as a member of the Academia Europaea.

Research Ariel’s research deals with issues in pragmatics and at the semantics-pragmatics interface and is mainly concerned with linguistic manifestations of reference to entities in discourse. Her body of work on Accessibility Theory makes the case that the language user’s choice of anaphora is governed by the notion of accessibility in memory. Ariel’s accessibility marking scale proceeds from low to high accessibility in the following order:

Full name + modifier Full name Long definite description Short definite description Last name First name Distal demonstrative + modifier Proximal demonstrative + modifier Distal demonstrative (+ NP) Proximal demonstrative (+ NP) Stressed pronoun + gesture Stressed pronoun Unstressed pronoun Cliticized pronoun Verbal pronoun inflections Zero Ariel's Accessibility Theory has been influential in a wide variety of domains beyond pragmatics, including cognitive linguistics, linguistic typology, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language acquisition, poetics, psycholinguistics, and natural language processing.

Selected publications Ariel, Mira. 1988. Referring and accessibility. Journal of Linguistics 24 (1), 65–87. Ariel, Mira. 1990. Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781315857473 Ariel, Mira. 1991. The function of accessibility in a theory of grammar. Journal of Pragmatics 16 (5), 443–463. Ariel, Mira. 1994. Interpreting anaphoric expressions: A cognitive versus a pragmatic approach. Journal of Linguistics 30 (1), 3–42. Ariel, Mira. 2001. Accessibility theory: an overview. In Ted Sanders, Joost Schilperoord, & Wilbert Spooren (eds.), Text representation: linguistic and psychological aspects, 29-87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ariel, Mira. 2008. Pragmatics and grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511791314 Ariel, Mira. 2010. Defining pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511777912

References

External links Mira Ariel publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mira Ariel

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mira Ariel 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 Mira Ariel 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 Mira Ariel 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 Mira Ariel

In research: Mira Ariel 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 Mira Ariel 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: Mira Ariel is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Academic staff of Tel Aviv University, Linguists from Israel, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mira Ariel 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 Mira Ariel in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mira Ariel 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 Mira Ariel out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mira Ariel in simple terms?

Why does Mira Ariel 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 Mira Ariel?

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 Mira Ariel.