John Joseph McCarthy (born 1953) is an American linguist and the
Provost and
Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...
since July 2017. In July 2018, he assumed office as the Provost.
McCarthy is best-known for his work on
Optimality Theory in
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
: with
Alan Prince, he devised Correspondence Theory and alignment constraints, although he has subsequently renounced the latter.
[McCarthy, John. OT Constraints are Categorical. ''Phonology'' 20 75--138. 2003] He has since written textbooks like ''
Doing Optimality Theory: Applying Theory to Data''. Earlier in his career, McCarthy was responsible, along with Prince, for extending
autosegmental phonology, and later
Optimality Theory, to
morphology, in particular to solve the problem of nonconcatenative morphology in
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...
.
Career
HHe completed his A.B. in linguistics and Near Eastern languages at
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...
and obtained his Ph.D. from
MIT in 1979. He was a professor at the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
and a visiting scientist at
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...
before moving to the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Books
* ''
Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology'', Routledge 2018
*''
Doing Optimality Theory: Applying Theory to Data'', Wiley-Blackwell 2008
* ''
Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader'' (ed.), Wiley-Blackwell 2008
* ''
A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory'', Cambridge University Press 2001
See also
*
Nonconcatenative morphology
References
External links
John McCarthy's homepage
1953 births
Harvard College alumni
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni
Linguists from the United States
American phonologists
University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty
Living people
People from Medford, Massachusetts
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America
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