15.286, All: Obituary: Zeno Vendler

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-15-286. Mon Jan 26 2004. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 15.286, All: Obituary: Zeno Vendler

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1)
Date:  Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:51:52 -0500
From:  Susan Fischer <fischer at mail.isc.rit.edu>
Subject:  Obituary: Zeno Vendler

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:51:52 -0500
From:  Susan Fischer <fischer at mail.isc.rit.edu>
Subject:  Obituary: Zeno Vendler


Zeno Vendler died of kidney failure on January 13, 2004, while on an
extended stay with family in Hungary.  He was 82, and had retired
earlier from UCSD.  He also taught at Cornell, Brooklyn College, and
the University of Calgary, where he was a founding member of the
philosophy department.

Zeno Vendler loved language. He was raised in a German speaking family
in Hungary, and thus started out bilingual in German and Hungarian. He
became fluent in Latin and Dutch during his stay in a Jesuit seminary
in Maastricht, Holland. He fell in love with English, though he
learned it relatively late. Ordinary language philosophy was thus
tailor-made for Vendler's passion and reflection. Vendler was also
initiated into modern linguistics through his association with Zellig
Harris. After completing his dissertation at Harvard, in 1959, through
fortuitous circumstances he got a position in Harris's project on
grammatical transformations. Vendler adored Harris as a true genius.
The result from this tutorial into linguistics was a monograph,
Adjectives and Nominalizations.

Vendler is well-known among linguists, most notably through two early
works: "Each and every, any and all," and "verbs and times."  The
first is an analysis of subtle differences among four English words
that correspond to universal quantifiers in logic. The second concerns
the often subtle effects of verb expressions on aspectual
interpretation of sentences; the two terms Vendler introduced in the
discussion of this topic area; "achievement" and "accomplishment,"
have since become basic technical vocabulary in modern linguistics.
Both of these works have been extremely influential and have served as
sources for the later development of sophisticated and highly
technical treatments of their respective topic areas. It may also be
noted that Vendler's work on the order of prenominal modifiers
provides a precursor to theories of parsing.

Zeno loved language not only for what one has as competence, but also
for what one performs with it for the enjoyment of life with friends.
He was a delightful and delighted conversationalist. Zeno's passion
for language was matched only by his love for geography. He loved to
quiz his interlocutors about such things as the relative populations
of various countries. He was a great traveller; his last major trip,
when he was nearly eighty, was a cruise to Antarctica, the last
continent for him to conquer. He was a dedicated and accomplished
travel photographer who took pride in his ability to hold the camera
still for a long enough time to take pictures in dark places with
neither flash nor tripod.

For Vendler's contributions to philosophy, we refer the reader to an
obituary posted at the website of the Department of Philosophy,
University of Calgary: http://www.phil.ucalgary.ca/people/vendler.html


SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Verbs and Times", Philosophical Review 56 (1957): 143=9660.
Linguistics in Philosophy (Ithaca, 1967).
Adjectives and nominalizations (The Hague, 1968).
Res cogitans: an essay in rational psychology (Ithaca, 1972).
The matter of minds. Oxford : Clarendon Press (New York, 1984).




Susan Fischer and S.-Y. Kuroda

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