About AMZ
Arnold M. Zwicky
- Adjunct Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University
- Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Linguistics,
Ohio State University
[Last revised 12/8/17]
Research areas
- Syntactic theory: Construction-based syntax
- Syntactic variation
- The advice literature on grammar, usage, and style
- Morphological theory: Lexeme-based, realizational morphology
- Theory of grammar: Interfaces between phonology, morphology, and syntax
- Language, gender, and sexuality
- The language of comics
Current research program
- I’m investigating the interrelationships of syntax, morphology, and phonology, focusing especially on apparent counterexamples to the Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax and the Principle of Morphology-Free Syntax, as well as phenomena (like clitics) that appear to fall within more than one component of grammar.
- I’m also doing research on the conceptual foundations of morphology, as well as developing a construction-based framework for syntax and a “realizational” framework for morphology.
- More recently (well, since around 1980), I’ve been investigating syntactic variation, paying attention to small details that mostly don’t map easily to large-scale social distinctions like region, sex, class, ethnicity, and so on. As an offshoot of this research, I’ve also become interested in the “advice literature” on English syntax, and more generally, on material about usage and prescriptivism; and I’ve returned to earlier interests in style and in mistakes in language.
- In addition, for some years I’ve done research and writing on language, gender, and sexuality.
Further information and links to .pdf files
- Papers of mine
- Course descriptions
- Course materials
- Abstracts for papers
- Books
- Handouts for conference papers
- Bibliographies
- Things by students I’ve worked with
- Book proposal: the January 2005 proposal for a book “Adventures in the Advice Trade”.
- Recent and future courses
Brief biography
- I received an A.B. in mathematics from Princeton (1962) and a Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT (1965). After teaching four years at Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I came to Ohio State in 1969, was named a Distinguished University Professor in 1989, and retired in 1995. Since 1985 I have been a visiting (then consulting, and now adjunct) professor at Stanford, and from September 1998 on I am based at Stanford.
- I have been active in the Linguistic Society of America (and was its president in 1992) and have taught or worked on research projects at many of the Linguistic Institutes of the LSA, from 1968 through 2007; I held the Sapir Professorship at the 1999 Institute, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
- I am a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1992); of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (elected 1998); and of the Association for Psychological Science (elected 2007). I’ve held one-year fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Stanford Humanities Center, and shorter appointments at Edinburgh, Sussex, and the Beijing Language Institute.
Links to other pages
- I was a contributor to Language Log, where lots of interesting linguists muse about things having to do with language, from 2003 through 2017; am a contributor to the American Dialect Society mailing list; and to Chris Waigl’s eggcorn database. And I post frequently on this WordPress blog, mostly on linguistic topics. In addition, I post on AZBlogX (onLiveJournal), here, which contains images that are visually XXX-rated, plus some other material (especially on gender and sexuality) that strays far from matters of linguistic interest.
- I am the founder of the OUTIL (OUT In Linguistics) mailing list, for lgbt(-friendly) linguists; this now functions as a Facebook group OUT In Linguistics. For an extensive bibliography on gay and lesbian language, see the compilation by Gregory Ward. And for links to just about anything of lgb relevance, check out the QRD (Queer Resources Directory). I am also a long-time participant in the Usenet newsgroup soc.motss (Members Of The Same Sex); the most recent faq file for soc.motss has all sorts of useful information about the newsgroup. (The soc.motss archives also include an anthology of my postings about life with my partner, Jacques Transue, during the last 12 years of his life.) And, if that isn’t enough, for several years I was a board member of NOGLSTP (the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals).
- I have been an enthusiastic singer in the Sacred Harp (Denson Book) shape-note singing tradition since 1989; I sing with groups in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Columbus. All sorts of information about shape-note singing can be found on the FASOLA homepage.
- A collection of my academic “postcard collages” is available here. (Some explanation of these collages can be found here.) Two further collages, in honor of colleagues, are available here.
- And I am the father of Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky and grandfather of Opal Eleanor Armstrong Zwicky.
Addresses & phone numbers
- Department address: Linguistics, Margaret Jacks Hall, 460-127, Stanford Univ., Stanford CA 94305-2150.
- E-mail: zwicky@stanford.edu (academic mail);
arnold.zwicky@gmail.com (personal and commercial mail) - I am now working from home: 722 Ramona St., Palo Alto CA 94301-2547
- Home phone: (650) 323-0753
