25.1315, TraveLING Along with Featured Linguist Lina Choueiri

Tue Mar 18 16:04:40 UTC 2014

LINGUIST List: Vol-25-1315. Tue Mar 18 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.1315, TraveLING Along with Featured Linguist Lina Choueiri

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Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 12:03:41
From: LINGUIST List [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Let's Welcome Our Next Featured Linguist for 2014: Lina Choueiri

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This week we are traveLING to North Africa and the Middle East, and today we
are going to meet our Featured Linguist Lina Choueiri from American University
of Beirut. Let’s take a moment and hear Lina’s story about her path to
linguistics.

How I Became a Linguist by Lina Choueiri

I did not come into linguistics by accident, nor did I know from a young age
that I wanted to be a linguist. As a teenager in the early 80s, growing up in
Lebanon during the civil war, I had in fact never heard of linguistics.

I was preparing myself for a career in medicine, because my family and my
teachers all said I could do it. The thought of becoming a psychiatrist, and
perhaps unlocking some of the mysteries of the mind stayed with me throughout
my high school years. By the time I was ready to go to college, I had stopped
romanticizing about the idea of a career in medicine; I chose instead to study
mathematics, a subject I excelled at in school. I also joined some friends of
mine studying French literature at the Université Saint-Joseph. I wasn’t quite
sure what I would do with a degree in mathematics, but my advisor was
encouraging me to consider a career in academia. The French literature
curriculum included one course in linguistics, which was taught by a Jesuit
priest, Père Aucagne, who had no formal training in linguistics. He had
studied Greek and Latin and had a passion for languages. When I raised my hand
for the first time, to ask a question in his class, Père Aucagne told me that
I was the only literature student he had ever had who seemed to show an
interest in linguistics. He also gave me a book to read and suggested that we
could discuss it together. He added that he found the book difficult, but that
my training in mathematics could be an asset, and that we might work together
to understand it. That book was Syntactic Structures. It was the summer of
that year that I decided to pursue a degree in linguistics.

This was easier said than done: we were in the late 80s, before email and the
Internet, and the civil war in Lebanon was still raging. I needed to find out
how and where to apply. I also needed advice from someone knowledgeable about
the field, but I had chosen a specialization that very few in Lebanon had
heard about. Père Aucagne put me in touch with the chancellor of the
Université Saint-Joseph who knew Joseph Aoun. They thought that I should write
to Joseph and ask him for advice. I sent Joseph a naïve letter inquiring about
linguistics programs in the US and their admissions requirements. Meanwhile,
the hostilities of the civil war had intensified, and I left Lebanon before
receiving his answer.

I arrived in Virginia in May 1990 to stay with family. Soon after, I started
applying to graduate programs in neighboring universities. I joined the
program in general linguistics at the University of Georgetown in spring 1991.
This is where I was first introduced to the different areas of specialization
in linguistics, and by the time I completed my course work there, I knew I
needed to spend even more time reading, studying, and catching up. I also knew
that I wanted to focus my research on Arabic in particular, and Semitic
languages in general. While completing my degree at Georgetown, I started
applying to some PhD programs in the US, including USC, where I hoped to be
able to work with Joseph. I joined USC in fall 1993, and I have been working
on the syntax of Arabic ever since. I am now at the American University of
Beirut. My work on the comparative syntax of Arabic dialects continues to be a
source of excitement and pleasurable new discoveries.

Lina Choueiri

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-1315	
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