Keren Rice

Keren Rice OC (born 1949) is a Canadian linguist. She specializes in research on Slavey, an indigenous language spoken in Canada's Northwest Territories, and has long been involved in maintaining and revitalizing the language.

Rice earned her PhD in 1976. She is a professor of linguistics and serves as the Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives at the University of Toronto. Well known for her work in both theoretical and Native American linguistics, Rice is working on a comparative grammar of Athapaskan languages that will detail the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics as well as the lexicon of these languages. In addition, as a Canadian Research Chair, she researches markedness, contrast and complexity in phonology. On this topic she is working on a book to evaluate the diagnostics that have been proposed to determine markedness (giving special attention to frequency, implication and neutralization) and to examine phonological patterning.

Rice served as president of the Canadian Linguistic Association from 1998 to 2002 and served as the president of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in 2012.

• Rice was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005.
• Rice was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2014.
• From 2002 to 2008 she served on the board of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), a granting agency of thefederal government of Canada.
• In 2011 she received the Killam Prize, given annually to five of Canada's finest academics for their career achievements in fields of scientific and scholastic research.
• In 2013 she won the National Achievement Award from the Canadian Linguistic Association for outstanding contributions to the field of linguistics.
• In 2013 she was appointed by the Governor General of Canada as an Officer in the Order of Canada, which is one of Canada's highest civilian honors.
• In 2015 Rice received the Pierre Chauveau medal of the Royal Society of Canada, awarded for her continued contributions as a scholar, including her extensive work in language documentation, activism, and theoretical linguistics.

1977. Hare Noun Dictionary. Ottawa: Northern Social Research Division, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.

1989. E. Cook and K. Rice, (eds.) Athapaskan Linguistics: Current Perspectives on a Language Family. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

1989. A Grammar of Slave. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

1992. "On deriving sonority: a structural account of sonority relationships." Phonology 9: 61—99.

1993. "A reexamination of the feature [sonorant]: the status of 'sonorant obstruents'." Language 69: 308–344.

1996. "Default variability: The coronal-velar relationship." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.

2000. Morpheme Order and Semantic Scope: Word Formation in the Athapaskan Verb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2006. "Ethical issues in linguistic fieldwork: An overview." Journal of Academic Ethics.