Arnold Melchior Zwicky (born September 6, 1940) is an adjunct professor of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and

Distinguished University Professor Professors in the United States commonly occupy any of several positions of teaching and research within a college or university. In the U.S., the word "professor" is often used to refer to anyone who teaches at a college of university level at ...

Emeritus of linguistics at the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

. The

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

’s Arnold Zwicky Award, given for the first time in 2021, is intended to recognize the contributions of

LGBTQ+ LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The group i ...

scholars in linguistics and is named for Zwicky, the first LGBTQ+ President of the LSA.

Early life and education

Zwicky was born on September 6, 1940, in Allentown,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. He received a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics at Princeton University (1962). He was a student of

Morris Halle Morris Halle, Pinkowitz (; July 23, 1923 – April 2, 2018), was a Latvian-born American linguist who was an Institute Professor, and later professor emeritus, of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The father of "modern ...

at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

) and received a Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in 1965.

Career

Zwicky has made notable contributions to fields of

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

( half-rhymes),

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

(

realizational morphology Realizational morphology or "word-and-paradigm" (WP) was a theory first created by linguist Charles F. Hockett. WP morphology focuses on the whole of a word rather than morphemes or internal structure. This theory also denies that morphemes are si ...

, rules of referral),

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

(

clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...

construction grammar Construction grammar (often abbreviated CxG) is a family of theories within the field of cognitive linguistics which posit that constructions, or learned pairings of linguistic patterns with meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human ...

), interfaces (the Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax),

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...

and American

dialectology Dialectology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logy, -logia'') is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. Though in the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now c ...

. He coined the term "

recency illusion The recency illusion is the belief or impression, on the part of someone who has only recently become aware of a long-established phenomenon, that the phenomenon itself must be of recent origin. The term was coined by Arnold Zwicky, a linguist at ...

", the belief that a word, meaning, grammatical construction or phrase is of recent origin when it is in fact of long-established usage. For example, the figurative use of the intensifier "literally" is often perceived to have recent origin, but in fact it dates back several centuries. The phenomenon is thought to be caused by

selective attention Attentional control, commonly referred to as concentration, refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attentional c ...

. At the

's 1999 Summer Institute (held at

UIUC The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

) he was the Edward Sapir professor, the most prestigious chair of this organization, of which he is a past president. He is one of the editors of ''Handbook of Morphology'', among other published works. He is also well known as a frequent contributor to the linguistics blog

Language Log ''Language Log'' is a collaborative language blog maintained by Mark Liberman, a phonetician at the University of Pennsylvania. Most of the posts focus on language use in the media and in popular culture. Text available through Google Search fr ...

, as well as his own personal blog that largely focuses on linguistics issues. Zwicky was elected as a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1992. He is a former board member of the

National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals Out to Innovate, previously known as the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals (NOGLSTP), is a professional society for professionals in science, technology, mathematics, and engineering. Each year, Out to I ...

, who chose him as 2008 GLBT Scientist of the Year.

Selected publications

;As sole author/editor * * * * * * * * ;As co-author/co-editor * * * * * * * * *

References

External links

Arnold Zwicky's blogArnold Zwicky on Stanford ProfilesDonated papers
at The State Historical Society of Missouri, Research Center- Columbia. {{DEFAULTSORT:Zwicky, Arnold Stanford University Department of Linguistics faculty Ohio State University faculty Living people American LGBTQ scientists Phonologists from the United States Morphologists Syntacticians American sociolinguists Dialectologists Linguistic Society of America presidents 1940 births 21st-century American LGBTQ people Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America

Early life and education

Career

Selected publications

See also

References

External links