The members of the UMass Department of Linguistics are saddened to hear of the passing of Morris Halle. Morris was of course a giant in the field, and he touched countless lives in his 94 years. Our thoughts are especially with his family and with his colleagues at MIT.
Comments are open below. Thoughts of a phonological nature can be left on the Phonolist blog https://websites.umass.edu/phonolist/2018/04/02/morris-halle-rip/, and ones for a broader audience can be added as comments to Mark Liberman’s very nice Language Log post http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=37517.
This is very sad news. Morris Halle had a special connection to the early history of our Department. He was unfailingly generous with his time and advice to us in the early going — advice on whom to hire, of course, but also on the strategy of our development, helping us to win the LSA’s decision to locate its Golden Anniversary Linguistic Institute at UMass in 1974, and so much more.
I hope that the Department can find a way to honor his memory and his simply incalculable achievements for the field of linguistics and for our Department in particular. I will be in touch with you about this.
Thank you for this Don! I look forward to working with you on this. A little coincidence to share: just this last weekend, I was at MIT, and happened to be talking with Michael Kenstowicz about the 1974 Summer Institute. He remembered the recruitment efforts you were making (not for him, but someone else – I’ll tell you who next time we see each other)…