37.2701, All: Obituary: Wayne Cowart (1944-2026)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2701. Tue Aug 18 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2701, All: Obituary: Wayne Cowart (1944-2026)

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Date: 17-Aug-2026
From: Dana McDaniel [dana.mcdaniel at maine.edu]
Subject: Obituary: Wayne Cowart (1944-2026)


The linguistics community lost a valued member when Wayne Cowart died
on August 17, 2026 in Seattle, Washington after a brief illness.
Wayne is best known for having advocated for scientific methodology in
syntactic research, starting with his 1997 book, "Experimental syntax:
Applying objective methods to sentence judgments." This book laid the
foundation for the use of rigorous experimental tools to obtain
acceptability judgments. At the time of that work, most syntactic
judgments were gotten informally, through self-reflection and asking
other speakers, an approach that Wayne jokingly referred to as the
‘Hey, Fred method’. Today, it is quite common for syntactic research
to include sentence acceptability experiments as the basis for the
data.
Another one of Wayne’s major contributions to the field was the
founding of an undergraduate linguistics program in a regional
comprehensive university, the University of Southern Maine, at a time
when such programs were quite rare. In this connection, Wayne authored
another important work, which we in the department referred to as ‘the
book’. The story goes like this: In 1992, a year after Wayne had
established the Language Sciences Lab, a ‘floating unit’ consisting of
two untenured assistant professors offering a group-contract major in
linguistics, the university experienced a major budget crisis. The
Dean informed Wayne that the unit would need to be shut down. In
response, Wayne stayed up all night putting together ‘the book’, a
detailed report including graphs, newspaper clippings, and citations
arguing for the value of the study of linguistics for undergraduate
students. The university President was so pleased with the document
that he asked other departments to produce similar demonstrations of
excellence. The Language Sciences Lab was thus saved and several years
later became an official Linguistics Department, the only one in the
State of Maine. Wayne also received a grant from the State to create
within the Linguistics Department an ASL/English interpreter training
program, also the first and only one in Maine. This and further
developments were thanks to Wayne always keeping an eye out for needs
and opportunities for linguistics in the community.  By the time of
his retirement in 2017, the department, housed in the Science College,
was flourishing, with close to 100 students majoring in Linguistics.
Wayne was a ‘big picture’ linguist. He passionately explored questions
concerning the nature of language, its evolution, and its connection
to other aspects of cognition. His knowledge in other fields,
including statistics, engineering, computer science, biology, music,
art, theater, literature, history, and politics, was impressively
extensive. His colleagues and students benefited from years of
enlightening conversations with him on a wide range of topics.
Wayne will also be remembered as an extremely kind, generous, and
honest person. He will be deeply missed.

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Psycholinguistics
                     Syntax




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