Jane Dorsey Zimmerman 1899-1976

Jane Dorsey Zimmerman obtained her BS and MA from Columbia University (1922, 1923) after which she became an assistant professor at Smith College. She served in that role from 1924 to 1928. In 1925 she was among the 25 people who were charter member of ASHA. She obtained her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1943 in the field of speech pathology.

At that same time she was working in academia she was director and clinician in New York City’s schools and hospitals. From 1949 to 1968 Dr. Zimmerman was the director the Speech and Hearing Department at St. Barnabas Hospital. She also was a consultant at St. Jude Hospital where she worked with colleagues to publish work on speech problems of Parkinson’s and cleft palate patients.

Dorsey Zimmerman’s main academic specialty was in the field of phonetics. She had a regular column in the journal of American Speech called “Phonetic Department.” It contained her transcriptions of public lectures into what she referred to as “acceptable American English”.

Bernard Bloch, a phonetician and linguist described her efforts as: reflecting not the pronunciation of any one speaker but rather the editor's conception of educated colloquial speech-a conception pleasantly liberal and mostly free of elocutionary theories (Bloch, 1940, p. 172).

References of works by or about Jane Dorsey Zimmerman, arranged chronologically

Stinchfield, S. & Dorsey, J. (1926). A preliminary classification of speech defect terminology.

Avery E., Dorsey, J. & Sickles V. (1928) First principles of speech training Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Zimmerman, J. (1934). [The magic of speech] (Recording)

Zimmerman, J.(1934). Phonetic Transcription. American Speech, 9, no. 1, 59–63, https://doi.org/10.2307/451988 . (transcription of a speech by Franklin Roosevelt)

Zimmerman, J. (1934). Phonetic transcription. American Speech, 9, 3, 214-217. (Transcription of a speech by the secretary of labor)

Zimmerman, J. (1936). Phonetic Transcriptions from "American Speech." Revised edition. Edited by J.D. Zimmerman, Columbia University Press.

Zimmerman, J. D. (1939). (Ed.) Phonetic transcriptions from American Speech. Revised edition. (American Speech Reprints and Monographs, No. 1.) Pp. xii + 84. Columbia University Press.

Bloch, B. (1940). Review of Phonetic transcriptions of American Speech. Language, 16, 2, 172-175. https://www.jstor.org/stable/408957?refreqid=excelsior%3A25f0edcd112b26030b513014f8a0a8be&seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents

Zimmerman, J. (1943). Radio pronunciations; a study of two hundred educated non-professional radio speakers, Dissertation, Columbia University. Published in 1946 by Kings Crown Press.

Zimmerman, J. (1948). Phonetic transcription, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 34:3, 369, DOI: 10.1080/00335634809381418

Zimmerman, J. & Canfield, W. (1968). Language and speech development ; Language, speech, and hearing therapy. R. Stark (Ed.). Cleft Palate: A multidisciplinee approach. Harper and Row.

Cooper, I., Riklan, M.,  Stellar, S., Waltz, J.,  Levita, E. Ribera, V. J Zimmerman (1968). A multidisciplinary investigation of neurosurgical rehabilitation in bilateral Parkinsonism. Journal of the American Geriatric Society, 16, 11, 1117. 10.1111/j.1532-5415.1968.tb02755.x

Samra K, Riklan M, Levita E, Zimmerman J, Waltz J., Bergmann L, Cooper I. (1969). Language and speech correlates of anatomically verified lesions in thalamic surgery for Parkinsonism. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 12, 3, 510-540. doi: 10.1044/jshr.1203.510. PMID: 4897811

Riklan, M., Levita, E., Zimmerman, J., Cooper, I. (1969). Thalamic correlates of language and speech. Journal of Neurological Science, 8, 2, 307-328. doi: 10.1016/0022-510x(69)90115-4.

Greet, W. Cabell (1975). “An Editor Looks Back.” American Speech, vol. 50, no. 3/4, [Duke University Press, American Dialect Society], 1975, pp. 166–76, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3088005?seq=11#metadata_info_tab_contents Below is a paragraph from the Greet piece on Jane Dorsey Zimmerman’s scholarly contributions.