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We were very saddened to learn that Michael Rochemont died on Tuesday, July 3rd. After graduating from McGill University in 1973, Mike joined the UMass department where he earned a PhD in 1978, writing a dissertation on Stylistic Rules under the supervision of Edwin Williams (Emmon Bach and Barbara Partee were also committee members). After brief stints at the University of California at Irvine and UCLA, Mike joined the faculty at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver where he taught until his death. He was a pioneer in investigating syntactic processes that are connected to signaling dimensions of information structure, especially focus. His work on various rightward movement rules in English syntax was hugely influential. He was the author of several books, two with his frequent collaborator Peter Culicover. He was a dear friend to many in the wider UMass community, and his death is a tragic loss to those of us who were fortunate to have known him.
I am very saddened by this news. Mike came to us a year after I had passed on the department headship to Jay Keyser and moved to the humanities dean’s office. Mike was a gentle and funny man — and a fine example of the excellent graduate education provided by our department. We were lucky to have had him among us at a crucial time in our department’s development.