Bever (born December 9, 1939) is a Regent's Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience at the University of Arizona.
He has been a leading figure in psycholinguistics, focusing on the cognitive and neurological bases of linguistic universals, among other pursuits.
Bever received a B.A.
in linguistics and psychology from Harvard University in 1961, and a Ph.D.
in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967; he studied with Noam Chomsky, George A.
Miller, and Jean Piaget.
He taught at Rockefeller University from 1967–1969, Columbia University from 1970–1986 (where he was involved with Project Nim), and the University of Rochester from 1985–1995, before accepting his current position at the University of Arizona, where he has remained ever since.
Bever is notable for his study of garden path sentences such as The horse raced past the barn fell, as well as his analysis by synthesis model of sentence processing, developed with David Townsend.
In recent decades, Bever has studied the differences in language processing between righthanders with familial handedness and righthanders without left-handed relatives.
He was a co-founder of the journal Cognition.
This work is free and may be used by anyone for any purpose. If you wish to use this content, you do not need to request permission as long as you follow any licensing requirements mentioned on this page.
Wikimedia Foundation has received an e-mail confirming that the copyright holder has approved publication under the terms mentioned on this page. This correspondence has been reviewed by an OTRS member and stored in our permission archive. The correspondence is available to trusted volunteers as ticket #2012010110013334.
If you have questions about the archived correspondence, please use the OTRS noticeboard.