Larry Trask In Memoriam (FWD)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Larry Trask provided a stern reality check for many of us.  And he will be
missed by all who knew him.
Steve Long
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IN MEMORIAM:


Larry Trask


Leading linguist who made the subject accessible to a wide range of readers
and

became an expert on the Basque language

Richard Coates

Thursday April 8, 2004

The Guardian

Larry Trask, who has died of motor neurone disease aged 59, was one of

the world's leading experts on the Basque language. A professor of

linguistics at Sussex University, he wrote the outstanding The History Of
Basque

(1997), a superb vindication of the methods of classical historical
linguistics,

about which he also wrote a fine textbook, Historical Linguistics (1996). And

Larry was not just scholarly. His books are fun: witty, occasionally
partisan, beautifully clear and readable.

An interest in Basque often heralds a descent into obsessiveness; the world
is full of amateurs - and others - determined to prove that Basque is not
historically isolated but is related to some other language, or to all of them.

Larry patiently crushed all such attempts with a secure grasp of all the
literature.  His training in hard science also made him well-placed to flay
ill-informed efforts in the field of Basque studies to find parallels between
genetic trees and linguistic trees. His involvement in this science of the origin
and evolution of language brought him prominence, for instance as the co-editor
with archaeologist Colin Renfrew and linguist April McMahon of the two-volume
Time Depth In Historical Linguistics (2000), but Larry never sought the front
of the stage; he arrived there and stayed there because others

recognised his authority and his gifts as a communicator.

He was born in Cattaraugus County, New York State, and in the 1960s took
degrees in chemistry at Rensselaer College, New York State and Brandeis
University, Massachusetts, before ditching his PhD and becoming a chemistry teacher with
the United States Peace Corps.

He taught at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara but, having left
his job in Turkey in 1970 to the sound of gunfire, found himself in London.
There he met and married, his first wife, Esther Barrutia, a Basque chemist.
Having shown himself already to be a talented practical linguist, he discovered
linguistics and graduated in the subject from what was then Central London
Polytechnic - while still teaching science in a school. He then worked on his
PhD, specialising in Basque, under Professor CE Bazell at London

University's School of Oriental and African Studies.

He taught at Liverpool University from 1979 until his department was
abolished in 1988 and its members were enthusiastically recruited by Sussex. He was
awarded a personal chair by Sussex in 1998. Larry was a dedicated and versatile
teacher as well as a researcher, generous with his time to students and to
anyone else who might benefit from his knowledge, as witness his participation in
the online Ask-a-Linguist service for the general public.

He wrote many books for students and for general readers. These included
Language: The Basics (1995), Key Concepts In Language And Linguistics (1999), and
the cheerfully illustrated Introducing Linguistics (2000). There were also the
comprehensive and rigorous Dictionary Of Comparative And Historical
Linguistics (2000), Dictionary Of Phonetics And Phonology (1996) and Dictionary Of
Grammatical Terms (1993). In 1997 came the Penguin Guide To Punctuation; a still
unpublished guide to netiquette followed, as did the famous Mind The Gaffe
(2001) about common errors in written Standard English.

The only things he could not tolerate were pop music - or so he said - and
incompetent and non-empirical speculation. He counted among the latter not only
most attempts to find cousins for Basque and to prove all human languages
related, but also some key aspects of the linguistic arguments of Noam Chomsky
which still represents the dominant position in linguistic theory, especially
through the idea that some sort of specifiable universal grammar is hard-wired
into the brains of all humans.

Larry gave a withering outline of this stand in a Guardian interview with
Andrew Brown (June 26 2003), in which the reporter set out why Larry deserved to
join that small flock of rare birds, Famous Linguists.

Larry was gregarious, much-befriended, passionately interested in wine,
baseball and board-games, devoted to pub quizzes and University Challenge, and
passionately uninterested in holidays. Anything that Larry was interested in brough
t out not just casual engagement but full-blooded devotion.

For the two years of illness he was sustained by the devotion of his wife Jan
Lock, to whom he was equally devoted. With ironic cruelty, that illness first
robbed him of his speech; then it broke his health in stages while leaving
his mental powers intact. We, his colleagues and friends, are deeply grateful
that he could be with us intellectually to the end.

Characteristically, his own last academic activity was to try to complete an
article for a memorial volume to another scholar. He was still entertaining us
with comments on his reading, emailed from his bed, two days before he died.

His own festschrift, loaded with contributions from all the leading scholars
in his field, including some with whom he profoundly disagreed, will now be a
memorial volume. His other memorials are within the many who loved him. His
wife survives him, as do his sister and two brothers.

· Robert Lawrence (Larry) Trask, linguist, born November 10 1944 ; died

March 27 2004

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Fwd from the Mother Tongue List

Michael Witzel