Elizabeth Bates died (13/12/2003)

Only 56. Pancreatic cancer.
An important theorist of children's acquisition of language, and thus of language-mind-brain problems generally.
I'm pretty sure I heard her speak once (on the subject of the purported "language gene"), but can't quite place the event.
Links lead to the "East Pole-West Pole Divide" in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, which perhaps lasted as long as it takes to say it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Pole-West_Pole_divide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bates
Crystal mentions in particular the idea of "proto-words", not in the historical sense, but vocalizations that come between babbling (sound-practice) and the first real words, which seem to have a stable form and, perhaps, meaning, except that nobody knows what it is. I recall spending an evening in the company of a young fellow in his second year of life, who seemed to speak whole sentences in this way. His parents could not tell me what he meant, but I put the tape recorder on anyway. "Just wait until he learns to talk," I thought, "then we can play the tape and ask him 'What did you mean by this, or that?'"
It didn't happen.