Geoffrey K. Pullum | |
---|---|
Born |
Geoffrey Keith Pullum March 8, 1945 Irvine, Scotland |
Citizenship | British; United States (since 1987) |
Alma mater |
University of York (B.A.) University of London (PhD) |
Occupation | Linguist |
Employer | University of Edinburgh |
Known for |
Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band; The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; Language Log |
Title | Professor of General Linguistics |
Spouse(s) | Joan E. Rainford (1967–93) Barbara C. Scholz (1994–2011) Patricia C. Shannon (2014–2016 ) |
Awards |
Leonard Bloomfield Book Award (2004; shared with Rodney Huddleston) Linguistics, Language, and the Public Award (2009; shared with Mark Liberman) |
Website | http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/index.html |
Geoffrey Keith "Geoff" Pullum (/ˈpʊləm/; born March 8, 1945) is a British-American linguist specialising in the study of English. Since 2007 he has been Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
Pullum is a co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), a comprehensive descriptive grammar of English. He is also a contributor to Language Log and Lingua Franca at The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Geoffrey K. Pullum was born in Irvine, North Ayrshire, Scotland, on March 8, 1945, and moved to West Wickham, England while very young. He left secondary school at age 16 and toured Germany as a pianist in the rock and roll band Sonny Stewart and the Dynamos. A year and a half later, he returned to England and co-founded a soul band, Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band, with Pete Gage.
After the band broke up, Pullum enrolled in the University of York in 1968, graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts with first class honours. In 1976 he completed a PhD in Linguistics at University College London.