<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Dear colleagues,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Here is a copy of the obituary to be published at John's last place of employment as Professor of Linguistics at Macalester College (St. Paul, USA). The following text will be abridged within a larger obituary including other aspects of his life in a Macalester publication and then appear in full in a newsletter through the Macalester linguistics department.<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">--<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><div><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The breadth and depth of John's lifelong work in linguistics is staggering. In one of his earliest major publications, <i>Conditionals are Topics </i>(1978) John showed a striking parallel between an area of thought in linguistics and one in philosophy, which he argued represented a larger pattern found in human language. In </span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The iconicity of grammar: Isomorphism and motivation </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(1980)</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">, John's exposition of the role of</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> iconicity in grammar (how the structure of language reflects conceptual ordering) would</span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> upend basic assumptions about language held up until that time. These and other key insights were moreover directly traceable to his fieldwork on the Hua language spoken in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. His (1980) description of that language was also ground-breaking: </span></span></span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">based on 17 months of fieldwork in the 1970s, it was the first comprehensive reference grammar of a language of New Guinea.</span></span></span></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></span></span></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">John did his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, where he received his BA in Slavic Languages in 1969. He would then receive his MA and PhD (1971) in Linguistics from Harvard University. </span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In the 1970s, John took up a lectureship at the Australian National University in Canberra, in stints from 1971-1975, and then went on to teach at the University of Manitoba. </span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">John taught linguistics at Macalester College from 1982 to 2017, </span></span></span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">where </span></span></span></span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">he imparted to his students his view of language </span></span></span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">structure as shaped by human creativity within the limits of cultural convention. In 1989, John received a Guggenheim Fe</span></span></span></span></span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;background-color:transparent;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">llowship for his study of sarcasm. Among other contributions, John's passion would culminate in his (1998) book <i>Talk is Cheap.</i></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;background-color:transparent;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"></span></span></p><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Like many great scholars, John was not devoted to any particular approach or theory, and his work reflects a deeply protean ethos. He</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;background-color:transparent;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> always advised his students that theories come and go, but that the most important way for a linguist to grow was to go learn a language entirely different from one's own, to "go there, and find the linguist" – </span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;background-color:transparent;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">indeed, several would go on to conduct original fieldwork, for instance in Amazonia and Melanesia. </span></span></span></span></span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;background-color:transparent;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">With a particular fondness for Rhaeto-Romance, Hua, and Khmer (Cambodian) languages, h</span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">is </span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">work remains influential in his demonstrations of how grammatical organization comes to non-arbitrarily parallel communicative purpose. </span></span></span></p></span></span><p></p><span></span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">John's <span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">personality was also one of delightful eccentricity, and </span></span></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Macalester colleagues and students will recall his beloved pet pigs that lived in his house. </span><span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Those who knew John as a linguist remember him as a polyglot, an out-of-the-box thinker and cheerful iconoclast. He will be remembered as a wonderful teacher and impressive scholar, one whose intimidating intellect was matched by unusual absence of ego.</span></span></span></p></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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