Oxford don Anna Morpurgo Davies has been presented with an honour for her work on languages.

She is to become an honorary Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

She will be able to use the letters DBE after her name but not the title Dame.

Education Secretary David Blunkett told her: "You have an international reputation for your work in linguistics, which ranges from the mainstream classical Greek and Greek dialects, to recent discoveries in Mycenaean and Hittite." He added that a leading American scholar had declared Prof Davies was a uniquely distinguished humanistic scholar and one who had done more for the science of language and linguistics in Oxford, Great Britain and in Europe and North America, than any other scholar over the past generation.

Prof Davies was born in Italy, but settled in England in the early 1960s when she was appointed to a lectureship at Oxford University in Classical Philology - the science of language.

She was appointed to the chair of comparative philology, at Oxford in 1971 and elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy in 1985.

She has also served a three-year term on the Council of the British Academy.

Mr Blunkett said: "Through your innovation, organisation and wholehearted participation, your department has become a world leader."