Catherine O. Ringen (original) (raw)

Catherine Ringen is an American phonologist and professor emerita of linguistics at the University of Iowa. She is best known for her research on vowel harmony, especially in Finno-Ugric languages, and on laryngeal contrasts in obstruents, in particular in Germanic languages. Ringen earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Indiana University in 1975, with a dissertation entitled "Vowel Harmony: Theoretical Implications." After her PhD she took up a position at the University of Iowa Linguistics Department, where she stayed until her retirement in 2015.