35.3243, All: James W. Harris, Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Linguistics at MIT

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-35-3243. Sat Nov 16 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.3243, All: James W. Harris, Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Linguistics at MIT

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Date: 14-Nov-2024
From: RAFAEL NUÑEZ-CEDEÑO [rnunez at uic.edu]
Subject: James W. Harris, Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Linguistics at MIT


Excerpts from the heartfelt tribute to Jim, shared by his daughter,
Lynn Corinne Harris.

On November 10, 2024, James "Jim" Wesley Harris passed away peacefully
at the age of 92. Jim was a longtime resident of Lexington, MA, and
before that Boston, Cambridge, and Mexico City. Retired from the
faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he remains
internationally recognized as a highly influential figure in the area
of Romance linguistics, and “el decano” (“dean”) of Spanish phonology.
He was also known for his expert musicianship, sweet demeanor and
sharp wit, and devotion to his late wife of more than 50 years,
Florence Warshawsky Harris (1937-2020). He leaves his daughter, Lynn
Corinne Harris, his son-in-law, Rabbi David Adelson, and his
grandchildren, Bee Adelson and Sam Harris, all of Brooklyn.
Jim was born in 1932 in East Point, Georgia, to a Baptist family. His
father, Charles Wesley Harris, worked for the railroad and had a quiet
sense of humor. His mother, Lucy Margaret Crawford Harris, was a
Sunday school teacher and skilled seamstress, with deep family roots
in Cassville. Jim's maternal aunts, Bessie and Corinne, were also
influential in his upbringing. His mother's family, the Redwines,
originally from Prussia, traces its U.S. ancestry back to the early
1700s, with six direct connections to the Revolutionary War.

After graduating from high school in Georgia, Jim  attended the
University of Georgia, the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios
Superiores de Monterrey, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México. Mexico became his second home, Spanish his second first
language.
During the Korean War, he performed his military service as the
clarinet and saxophone instructor at the U.S. Naval School of Music in
Washington, D.C. After discharge, he directed the band at the
Charlotte Hall School in Maryland, where he also taught Spanish,
French, and Latin.
He received an MA in linguistics from the Louisiana State University
and a Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT. Having achieved national
recognition as an English-Spanish bilingual teacher and
teacher-trainer he was engaged as a writer at the Modern Language
Materials Development Center in New York. Later, he co-authored, with
Guillermo Segreda, a series of popular college-level Spanish
textbooks.

He was an MIT faculty member for decades, serving as head of the
department then called Foreign Languages and Literatures, eventually
retiring as Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Linguistics.

In his early days at MIT, when French, German, and Russian dominated
as elite “languages of science and world literature,” he championed,
over some opposition, the introduction of Spanish language and
literature courses. He later oversaw inclusion of Japanese and Chinese
courses as well. He promoted undergraduate courses in linguistics,
leading to a full undergraduate degree program in linguistics—thus
broadening the focus of the prestigious Ph.D. program.

His research in linguistics centered on theoretical phonology and
morphology. His books, presentations at professional meetings, and
articles in peer-reviewed journals were among the most discussed—in
both positive and negative assessments, as he says—by prominent
scholars in the field. The ability to teach complex technical material
comfortably in Spanish plus the status of an MIT professorship
resulted in invitations to teach at universities across Spain and
Latin America. He was also highly valued as a member of the editorial
boards of several professional journals.  From the 2016 festschrift
The Syllable and Stress: Studies in Honor of James W. Harris, the
editor Rafael Núñez Cedeño says: “Jim Harris has guided the work of a
generation and more of linguistic scholarship.”

Jim leaves a profound and lasting legacy, both to linguistics and to
all the people who loved him.

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology
                     Phonology

Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)

Language Family(ies): Romance



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