Haj Ross

Haj Ross teaches in the Linguistics Section of the Department of Linguistics and Technical Communication at the University of North Texas. He is interested in poetics "and" semantax [the interfield of syntax/semantics] ­ he does not see the sense in trying to keep "them" separate. Worse ­ studying the structural beauties of language without simultaneously watching how the great writers make use of the structural capabilities of their languages to hint at the ineffable ­ such a limitation leads to joyless linguistic science, where language becomes flat, grey.

Education

• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1967.
• MA, University of Pennsylvania, 1964.
• BA, Yale University, 1960.

Research Interests

Semantax – an interfield that sees syntax and semantics as inseparably interpenetrating; linguistic analysis of poetry

My primary areas of research are in semantax – an interfield that sees syntax and semantics as inseparably interpenetrating – and poetics – the study of verbal art with the help of detailed linguistic analyses of texts. In the former area, for the past forty-nine years, I have been collecting squibs – short notes about phonological, morphological or semantactic phenomena which defy analysis in current theoretical frameworks.

In addition, John Goldsmith, of the University of Chicago, and I are building a web-based archive of videos of senior linguists: Lives in Linguistics – a kind of oral history project. While the archive is small at present, our hope is that it may inspire other linguists around the world to assemble a visual record of all of our linguistic forbears.