James D. McCawley

James D. McCawley (March 30, 1938, in Glasgow – April 10, 1999, in Chicago) was an American linguist.

He worked at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago from 1964 until his sudden and unexpected death. His interests encompassed syntax, semantics and phonology. He is perhaps best known within linguistics for his work in generative semantics. Outside academia he is noted for The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters, his guidebook to deciphering Chinese restaurant menus.

Under the pseudonym "Quang Phúc Ðông" (alleged to be a linguist at the fictitious South Hanoi Institute of Technology), McCawley wrote a paper on "English sentences without overt grammatical subject," which the journal Language credits with being the first satirical linguistics paper.

Books

• The Phonological Component of a Grammar of Japanese. The Hague: Mouton, 1968. (Revised version of PhD thesis, The accentual system of standard Japanese.)
• Grammar and Meaning: Papers on Syntactic and Semantic Topics. Tokyo: Taishukan, 1973. Reprint. New York: Academic Press, 1976. ISBN 0-12-482450-1
• Notes from the Linguistic Underground. (Syntax and Semantics, vol. 7.) New York: Academic Press, 1976. ISBN 0-12-613507-X
• Adverbs, Vowels, and Other Objects of Wonder. University of Chicago Press, 1979. ISBN 0-226-55615-8
• Everything that Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know About Logic (but were Ashamed to Ask). University of Chicago Press, 1981. ISBN 0-226-55618-2 Blackwell, 1982. ISBN 0-631-12614-7 (hardback), ISBN 0-631-12644-9 (paperback) / 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, 1993. ISBN 0-226-55611-5
• Thirty Million Theories of Grammar. University of Chicago Press, 1982. ISBN 0-226-55619-0
• The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters. University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN 0-226-55591-7 Reprint. University of Chicago Press, 2004. ISBN 0-226-55592-5
• The Syntactic Phenomena of English. University of Chicago Press, 1988. 2 vols. Vol. 1 ISBN 0-226-55624-7, Vol. 2 ISBN 0-226-55626-3
• A Linguistic Flea Circus. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1991. / 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN 0-226-55627-1 (hardback) ISBN 0-226-55629-8 (paperback)

Related books

• Brentari, Diane, Gary N. Larson, and Lynn A. McCleod, eds. The Joy of Grammar: A Festschrift in Honor of James D. McCawley. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1992. ISBN 1-55619-454-4 (hardback) and ISBN 1-55619-455-2 (paperback)
• Trillin, Calvin, "Divining the Mysteries of the East," in Third Helpings, 1983; New Haven and New York: Ticknor & Fields ISBN 0-89919-173-8. Reprinted in The Tummy Trilogy, 1994; New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-27950-0.
• Zwicky, Arnold M., Peter Salus, Robert I. Binnick, and Anthony Vanek (eds.) Studies out in Left Field: Defamatory essays presented to James D. McCawley on his 33rd or 34th birthday. Edmonton, Alb.: Linguistic Research. 1971. Reprint. John Benjamins, 1992. ISBN 1-55619-460-9 and ISBN 90-272-2111-1

External links

• Lawler, John, 2003, "James D. McCawley," Language 79:614-25. Contains much biographical information.
• McCawley's own page at the University of Chicago (last revised in 2006 and as stored at archive.org)
• Memorial page at the University of Chicago
• "English sentences without overt grammatical subject"

Satirical linguistics

Papers by and about McCawley, which originally appeared in Lingua Pranca in 1978:

• Dates in the Month of May that Are of Interest to Linguists, James D. McCawley
• Linguistic Influences In Recent Research On Music, James D. McCawley
• Current Issues in Gastronomy, Elan Dresher and Norbert Hornstein