Roger Lass

Last updated
Roger Lass
Born (1937-01-01) January 1, 1937 (age 87)
Education Yale University (PhD, 1965)
Spouse
Jaime Ann Krell Lass
(m. 1957;died 2005)
[1]
Scientific career
Fields linguistics
Institutions
Doctoral students
Other notable students Philip Carr

Roger Lass (born January 1, 1937) [2] is a historical linguist, currently Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, University of Cape Town. He was previously an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Edinburgh. [3]

Contents

Career

He earned his PhD from Yale University in 1965 in Medieval English Language and Literature, and subsequently worked at Indiana University (1964–1971), the University of Edinburgh (1972–1982), and the University of Cape Town (1983–2002). [3]

He has done extensive work in the history of English, the motivation of sound change, and the history of linguistics. He was made an honorary professor at Edinburgh in 2014. [4]

He was the editor of the third volume of The Cambridge History of the English Language .

A festschrift in honor of Lass was published in 1997 edited by Jacek Fisiak. A volume of the journal Language Sciences , entitled Collecting views on language change (Volume 24, Issues 3–4, May–July 2002, edited by Raymond Hickey) was dedicated to Lass on his sixty fifth birthday. Other essays in his honor were published in the book Motives for Language Change (CUP 2003). [5]

Books

Related Research Articles

Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:

  1. to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
  2. to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families
  3. to develop general theories about how and why language changes
  4. to describe the history of speech communities
  5. to study the history of words, i.e. etymology
  6. to explore the impact of cultural and social factors on language evolution.
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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open back rounded vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by ⟨ɒ⟩ in IPA

The open back rounded vowel, or low back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɒ⟩. It is called Latin turned alpha being a rotated version of Latin alpha. It seems a "turned script a", being a rotated version of "script (cursive) a", which is the variant of a that lacks the extra stroke on top of a "printed a". Latin turned alpha aɒ⟩ has its linear stroke on the left, whereas Latin alpha aɑ⟩ has its linear stroke on the right.

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References

  1. "The Artist – Jaime Ann Krell Lass".
  2. "Lass distinguished with second festschrift". University of Cape Town. 2002-08-26.
  3. 1 2 "Roger Lass : Linguistics and English Language". www.lel.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-08-12.
  4. "Honorary Professor: Roger Lass". The University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 2018-08-12.
  5. Hickey, Raymond (1 May 2002). "Foreword". Language Sciences. 24 (3): 187–188. doi:10.1016/S0388-0001(01)00046-8. ISSN   0388-0001.