Geoffrey Sampson

Geoffrey Sampson
Born	1944 Broxbourne, Hertfordshire
Nationality	UK
Fields	Linguistics, Computing, Economics
Institutions	University of Sussex
Known for	The 'Language Instinct' Debate

Geoffrey Sampson (born 1944) is Professor of Natural Language Computing in the Department of Informatics, University of Sussex. He produces annotation standards for compiling corpora (databases) of ordinary usage of the English language. These involve specifying whether usage is spoken or written, and other demographic information, like age, gender and occupation. His work has been applied in automatic language-understanding software, and in writing-skills training. He has also analysed Ronald Coase's "theory of the firm" and the economic and political implications of e-business.

Sampson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the British Computer Society and the Higher Education Academy. He is also a Chartered Information Technology Professional. He holds three MA degrees, one each from Cambridge, Yale and Oxford (by incorporation). Sampson attended Bristol Grammar School, matriculating to study Oriental Studies at St John's College, Cambridge. After graduating from St. John's he went on to Yale, conducting research in the Linguistics and Engineering & Applied Science departments. He was awarded a doctorate by Cambridge under the special regulations; his published work was deemed to comprise "a significant contribution to scholarship".

His academic career has included work in Oriental languages, linguistics and computing, with side interests in philosophy, and political and economic thought. He lectured at the London School of Economics, the University of Lancaster and the University of Leeds before moving to Sussex in 1991.

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