Samuel Jay Keyser
{{short description|American linguist}}
{{BLP sources|date=June 2007}}
Samuel Jay Keyser (born 7 July 1935){{cite book|editor1-last=Levens|editor1-first=R.G.C.|title=Merton College Register 1900-1964|date=1964|publisher=Basil Blackwell|location=Oxford|page=480}} is an American theoretical linguist who is an authority on the history and structure of the English language and on linguistic approaches to literary criticism.
Biography
Keyser received a BA degree in English from George Washington University in 1956, a BA in 1958 (MA 1962) in English from Merton College, Oxford University, another MA, in linguistics, from Yale University in 1960, and a PhD in linguistics from Yale in 1962. He is Peter de Florez Emeritus Professor, an emeritus member of the Linguistics and Philosophy faculty, and former Associate Provost at MIT. He has authored numerous books and scientific publications, and is Editor-in-chief of the journal Linguistic Inquiry.{{cite web|title=Linguistic Inquiry - Editorial Information|url=http://www.mitpressjournals.org/page/editorial/ling|website=MIT Press Journals|publisher=The MIT Press|accessdate=29 January 2016}}
In addition to his contributions in many fields of linguistics, including phonology, generative metrics, and lexical structure, he is well known to jazz fans throughout the Boston area as an accomplished trombonist and bandleader.
Keyser married Margaret Horridge in 1959. Divorced in 1993, he married Nancy Dean Kelly in 2001.
Keyser's daughter was the victim of a sexual assault on the Gloucester, Ma. waterfront in 1978, when she was 18 years old and had just graduated from high school. Keyser has yet to assess linguistically his response to learning his daughter's assailants's name:Keyser stated at the time: "That man does not exist. That is how I have dealt with him."
That man existed then, and continues to exist yet in Essex, Ma.
Keyser then accused his assaulted daughter of having dirtied the family nest.
Keyser’s home at [https://www.redfin.com/MA/Gloucester/12-Hovey-St-01930/home/11286335 12 Hovey Street in Gloucester] was no nest.
Selected bibliography
- (With George Clements) C.V. Phonology: A Generative Theory of the Syllable (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs) (MIT Press, 1983)
- (With Ken Hale) Prolegomenon to a Theory of Argument Structure (MIT Press, 2002)
- (With Wayne O'Neill) Rule Generalization and Optionality in Language Change (De Gruyter Mouton, 2015)
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{Archival records
| title = Samuel Jay Keyser papers
| location = Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Distinctive Collections, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
| inventory_number = MC-0528
| description_URL = https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/1020
| dates =
| access_conditions = This collection is open.
}}
- [http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/keyser/index.html Samuel Jay Keyser's personal webpage]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Keyser, Samuel Jay}}
Category:Linguists from the United States
Category:Phonologists from the United States
Category:Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
Category:Linguistics journal editors
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