Neil Smith

Neil Smith was educated at Trinity College Cambridge and UCL (University College London), where (in 1964) he received his PhD in Linguistics for research which included a year’s fieldwork among the Nupe in Nigeria. He did further research at MIT and UCLA while holding a Harkness Fellowship, and from 1972 was at UCL as Reader and then Professor of Linguistics until his retirement in 2006. He was President of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 1980 to 1986, and President of the Association of Heads and Professors of Linguistics from 1993 to 1994. His main books are: An Outline Grammar of Nupe (1967, Luzac); The Acquisition of Phonology (1973, CUP); Modern Linguistics: The Results of Chomsky’s Revolution [with Deirdre Wilson, 1979, Penguin]; The Twitter Machine: Reflections on Language (1989, Blackwell); The Mind of a Savant [with Ianthi Tsimpli, 1995, Blackwell], Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals (1999, CUP; second edition 2004), Language, Bananas and Bonobos (2002, Blackwell); Language Frogs and Savants (2005, CUP); The Signs of a Savant [with Ianthi Tsimpli, Gary Morgan and Bencie Woll 2010, CUP]; Acquiring Phonology (2011, CUP). He was elected FBA in 1999, and an Honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America in 2000. He is married to Saras (née Keskar), who is a medical doctor, and has two sons and two grandsons. He is currently working (with Nicholas Allott) on a third edition of his Chomsky book and (with Annabel Cormack) on a book on Combinatory Categorial Grammar.