Rebecca Posner

Rebecca Posner (née Reynolds; 17 August 1929 – 19 July 2018) was a British philologist, linguist and academic, who specialized in Romance languages. Having taught at Girton College, Cambridge, the University of Ghana, and the University of York, she was Professor of the Romance Languages at the University of Oxford from 1978 to 1996.

Early life and education Posner was born on 17 August 1929 in Shotton Colliery, County Durham, England. Her father was a miner.

In 1949, Posner won an open exhibition to study modern languages at Somerville College, Oxford. Her thesis was titled "Consonantal dissimilation in the Romance languages".

Academic career Having completed her doctorate, Posner spent time at the Institut de Phonétique in Paris and was a post-doctoral fellow at Yale University in the United States. In 1960, she was elected a Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, then an all-girls college of the University of Cambridge. In 1963, she moved to Ghana, where she had been appointed Professor of French and Head of Modern Languages at the University of Ghana. During this time, she spent a sabbatical year in the United States as a visiting professor of romance philology at Columbia University, New York (1971–1972).