Distinguished Faculty Lecture: Professor John J. McCarthy
John J. McCarthy, professor of linguistics,, will present the second 2004-2005 Distinguished Faculty Lecture, "Pahk Your Cah in Hahvahd Yahd: A Biography of the Boston Dialect." The event is free and open to the public. A reception will be held immediately following the lecture. Professor McCarthy will be presented with a Chancellor's Medal at the conclusion of the lecture.
What are the distinctive properties of this Eastern Massachusetts dialect, heard all over campus? Professor McCarthy, himself a speaker, will describe what is known about its history, geography, and demography, and test conclusions with data collected by students in Linguistics 101. He’ll also use the famous r sound to show how speakers have a sophisticated, unconscious knowledge of linguistic structures and rules, and what this and other properties of the Boston accent reveal about how language is represented in the human mind.
John J. McCarthy has taught at the university since 1985. He served as head of the linguistics department from 1993-96. He works in phonological theory, how sounds combine to create language, and allied fields. His current research deals with a range of issues arising in and around optimality theory, a general theory of constraint interaction. McCarthy says his research is often informed by evidence drawn from the Semitic languages. McCarthy earned his bachelor’s degree in linguistics and Near East languages from Harvard College in 1975 and a doctorate in linguistics and philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. He was an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin from 1979-84 and an associate professor from 1984-85. He was also a consultant to AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey from 1984-86, and an instructor at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institutes: Stanford University, 1987; at the University of California Santa Cruz, 1991; and Cornell University, 1997.
