Judith Lillian Aissen (born 4 June 1948) is an American professor emerita in linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
[1] Aissen began to study Mayan languages in 1972 as a graduate student at Harvard University,[2] conducting field research in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.
[2] Her 1974 Harvard dissertation on The Syntax of Causative Constructions[3] was published by Garland in 1979.
Since 1995, she has been making trips to Chiapas to teach workshops in syntax to linguistics students who are native Mayan language speakers.
[5][6] In 2011, Aissen's colleagues at University of California, Santa Cruz organized a festschrift in her honor, entitled Representing Language: Essays in Honor of Judith Aissen.