Melanie Florence (1981) Janet Fodor (née Dean, 1961) Melanie Jane Florence was born on 19 An academic colleague described February 1963 in Ndola, Zambia. She Janet Fodor as ‘A wonderful died of cancer on 18 September 2023 scientist, a terrific organiser of other in Sobell House Hospice, Oxford. people … [and] an extremely faithful, In 1981 Melanie came to Somerville loyal person’. from Aberdeen Grammar School, Janet came from Ilford in Essex with the highest marks in Scotland to Somerville. Originally applying for German, to read Mediaeval to study Physics, she changed and Modern Languages as a Beilby to Psychology, Philosophy and exhibitioner. She settled into College MELANIE FLORENCE Physiology, and was described JANET FODOR life making friends with Rachel and linguists Kate, Helen and Posy. After a distinction in prelims, a as ‘one of the most outstanding undergraduates of her Pope scholarship, and the Sarah Smithson prize, she took a first- generation’ by her Principal, Janet Vaughan. After a year class degree in 1985. as a Fulbright scholar at Stanford, she then went to the Melanie completed an MPhil in European Literature and then, as Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a PhD in Linguistics, a junior research fellow at Wolfson College, embarked on a DPhil where she was surrounded by Noam Chomsky and many other looking at the works of Chrétien de Troyes and their adaptations pioneers in linguistics and cognitive science. After important in German. She published three scholarly articles from the early contributions in the area of semantics, she went on to research – including one in a Somerville publication. She found become an international leader in the field of psycholinguistics beloved friends Janet, Kirstin and Louise in the graduate and language acquisition, clearly meeting the expectations of seminars they attended. Vaughan that she ‘would go far in the world’. Melanie started in academia and did what she did best – At Oxford she was a student of philosophers Elizabeth teaching as a caring and much-loved tutor. She held posts at Anscombe and Philippa Foot, together with psychologists Warwick University, teaching and researching on troubadour Stuart Sutherland and Michael Argyle. Her research with poetry, and at Manchester University. She held lectureships Argyle led to the highly influential ‘equilibrium hypothesis’ at Somerville and various Oxford colleges over many years for nonverbal communication. Remarkably, a paper based teaching mediaeval literature, translation and modern papers on this research (Argyle & Dean 1965), carried out as an for prelims. undergraduate, became the most widely cited work of her Latterly Melanie was welcomed as a lecturer at Trinity College career, with influence continuing to the present. Ironically, where she felt so at home. She taught on the advanced French since it appeared in a different field and under a different translation course for finalists, even during chemotherapy, and in name, few people know that this classic in social psychology her last days proudly learnt that her students had all done well. is authored by the same person as her many later influential Teaching was complemented by posts as a library assistant at St works in linguistics. Hugh’s College and Corpus Christi College, leading to a part-time After working at the University of Connecticut, Janet moved role as senior library assistant in the acquisitions department of to the Graduate Center at the City University of New York the Bodleian Library. (CUNY) in 1986, where she supervised many PhD students Melanie had a long association with her church St Giles, Oxford. who went on to become influential scholars in their own She joined as an undergraduate and over 40 years was sacristan, right. Shortly after arriving at CUNY she founded an annual licensed Eucharistic assistant, and deputy church warden – an conference that aimed to bring together psychologists, invaluable presence keeping things going smoothly. Her friends linguists, and computer scientists with interests in how humans in the ministry Andrew, Paula, Steve, Martin and Sian greatly understand and produce language. Nowadays known as the comforted her. Human Sentence Processing Conference, the conference Melanie also had a career as a published translator after she became the leading annual meeting for generations of won a competition run by Gallic Books to translate modern psycholinguists, creating a scientific community that remains crime/mystery novels by French authors such as Pascal Garnier, closely shaped by Janet’s character and values. Jean Teulé and Frédéric Dard. She also translated German and Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1992, Janet was Austrian works and tackled academic/historical books, latterly President of the Linguistic Society of America in 1997 and working for Helen Rappaport. was named a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America in Melanie was my partner of 37 years. She was a true 2006. In 2014, she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of Somervillian – highly intelligent, courageous, loyal, caring, the British Academy. A volume of papers in her honour, Explicit gentle, kind and so loved and admired by her many friends, and Implicit Prosody in Sentence Processing, was published in colleagues and students. 2015 and two years later she received an honorary doctorate Alison Sylvester (1980, Hertford; 1985, Somerville) from the Paris Diderot University. 43