Noted theoretical linguist and recipient of the Infosys Prize in the Humanities, Prof Ayesha Kidwai would deliver the prestigious Panjab University (PU) Colloquium on February 2.

Prof Ayesha Kidwai would speak on the topic of “What we don’t know that we know when we laugh at a Joke: Human knowledge of linguistics”. The Colloquium would be organized on 3 PM at the SS Bhatnagar University Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology (UICET) Auditorium, PU. PU Vice Chancellor Prof Arun Kumar Grover would preside over the public lecture.

The entry to the lecture is open for all students, teaching and Non-teaching staff members and general public.

Prof. Ayesha Kidwai is Professor of Linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her work has earned recognition from leading international experts, as it relates the general theoretical framework of the principles of Universal Grammar to some of the particular syntactic features of Indian languages like Hindi-Urdu, Santali, Meiteilon, Bangla and Malayalam, analyzing these within the structures of human cognitive systems and their general properties. Central to these achievements is Prof. Kidwai's work on a wide range of adjunction phenomena.

On the intensively studied and debated syntactic phenomenon of ‘scrambling’, her work proposes a novel theory of binding in extensive analytical investigation of Hindi and Urdu. Prof. Kidwai has helped raise the respectability and significance of the field of theoretical linguistics by providing leadership and mentorship to young linguists in India. She has consistently stressed on the political and cultural importance of the study of India's linguistic diversity.