The linguistics quilt

The third in a set of four; the university quilt, from yesterday, is its predecessor. As before, a 12-panel composition (roughly 6 x 3 ft) made of old t-shirts of mine, assembled into a quilt by Janet Salsman, with the collaboration of Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky and Kim Darnell (and photos by Kim).  This time, t-shirts for linguistics programs or linguistics events. Some of the shirts have small or subtle images on them, impossible to appreciate in a display like this one:


(#1) The pansy background is an especially nice touch, in a gift to me

So I’ll look at the 12 panels individually, close up, by row (R) and column (C).

(I’d hoped to supply information about courses taught and talks given, but the computer files are in formats I can no longer read (or, in most cases, even find), and almost all the paper was destroyed when I had to contract roomfuls of files to a drawer or two; most of the evidence of my earlier academic life is gone).


(#2) R1C1: Cowell at Eight – Cafe – Zwicky ✯ approved (from the LSA’s Linguistic Institute at UC Santa Cruz: see R4C3 below)

Aside from my teaching, I was a regular at the Institute’s cafe (called “Cowell at Eight”, for “Cowell College at College Eight” for UCSC-specific reasons not worth going into here) — so much a regular that I got a credit in their advertising.

And I also started the OUTiL) OUT in Linguistics group at this Institute.


(#3) R1C2: Ohio State Linguistics

As modest as you can get, but in scarlet.


(#4) R1C3: WCCFL[West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics] 9 1990 Stanford

Another modest design. With the Stanford tree incorporated into the logo.


(#5) R2C1: Just because I’m a LINGUIST … doesn’t mean I’m fluent in ANY language!

1983 U of I [University of Illinois] LSO [Linguistics Student Organization] t-shirt.


(#6) R2C2: The Linguist List: Eastern Michigan University & Wayne State University

An earlier incarnation of the Linguist List.


(#7) R2C3: Verbatim: The Language Quarterly

See the website here.


(#8) R3C1: 1987 Linguistic Institute Stanford University

Geoff Pullum and I taught course together at this summer institute of the LSA.

The Linguistic Institute returned to Stanford 20 years later, and I taught a course in it on “Choosing a Variant: Unfree Variation” (Course description here ).


(#9) R3C2: NWAV New Ways of Analyzing Variation: Stanford, California October 10-12, 2002 [elephant in the room]

Some sort of masterpiece of delicacy, cramming quite a lot of material into a very small space. I gave a plenary paper, “Seeds of variation and change”; the handout for this NWAV talk is available here. (This turned out to be my final appearance at NWAV.)


(#10) R3C3: Stanford University Department of Linguistics: analyzing pidgins since 1974


(#11) R4C1: Ohio State LX Parsing

Framed as an athletic team jersey.


(#12) R4C2: Interfaces: LSA Linguistic Institute Columbus, Ohio summer 1993


(#13) R4C3: 1991 Linguistic Institute University of California, Santa Cruz

One Response to “The linguistics quilt”

  1. Robert Coren Says:

    #5 is an interesting context for the common but grammatically-challenging construction “Just because…, doesn’t mean…”.

Leave a Reply


%d bloggers like this: