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Samuel Jay Keyser (born 7 July 1935) is an American theoretical
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
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 , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...
in 1956, a BA in 1958 ( MA 1962) in English from Merton College, Oxford University, another MA, in linguistics, from
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
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 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
. He has authored numerous books and scientific publications, and is Editor-in-chief of the journal ''
Linguistic Inquiry ''Linguistic Inquiry'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in generative linguistics published by the MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Un ...
''. In addition to his contributions in many fields of linguistics, including
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 ...
,
generative metrics Generative metrics is the collective term for three distinct theories of verse structure (focusing on the English iambic pentameter) advanced between 1966 and 1977. Inspired largely by the example of Noam Chomsky's ''Syntactic Structures'' (1957) a ...
, and lexical structure, he is well known to jazz fans throughout the
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
area as an accomplished trombonist and bandleader. Keyser married Margaret Horridge in 1959. Divorced in 1993, he married Nancy Dean Kelly in 2001.


References


External links


Samuel Jay Keyser's personal webpage
* Linguists from the United States Phonologists 1935 births Living people Alumni of Merton College, Oxford Linguistics journal editors {{US-linguist-stub