Anna Granville Hatcher

Anna Granville Hatcher (1905–1978) was an American linguist. She started her career as a Romance linguist, and later conducted research in medieval literature as well as branching out from Late Latin and Old French to studies on Provençal, Spanish, Italian, English, and German. She was the first woman to hold the position of full professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Early life and career Born in Baltimore, Maryland, her parents were Anna Denson Hatcher and Eldridge Burwell Hatcher. Hatcher earned a BA from Blue Mountain College in 1925 and an MA from the University of Virginia in 1927. In 1934, she earned a PhD in Romance languages at Johns Hopkins University. Tributes and retrospectives of her work include Jan Firbas’s 1962 review “Notes on the function of the sentence in the act of communication: marginalia on two important studies in syntax by Anna Granville Hatcher” and Karen Hermann's “A Retrospective Critique of Anna Granville Hatcher's" Reflexive Verbs": Latin, Old French, Modern French (1942).”

Awards and distinctions Hatcher was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1953. In 1956, she became the first woman to hold the position of full professor at Johns Hopkins University. Hatcher was also the first woman to receive the title of Distinguished Professor (French and Italian and Spanish and Portuguese) from Indiana University.

Selected works

Hatcher. A.G. An introduction to the analysis of English noun compounds. Word, 1960 Hatcher, A.G. Theme and Underlying Question. Two studies of Spanish word-order, Word. New York 1956 Hatcher, A.G. Modern English Word-Formation and Neo-Latin. A Study of the Origins of English (French, Italian, German) copulative compounds, Baltimore 1951 Hatcher, A.G. The use of the progressive form in English: A new approach. Language, 1951 Hatcher, A.G. Reflexive verbs: Latin, Old French, Modern French, Johns Hopkins Press. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1942