From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geoffrey Keith "Geoff" Pullum (pronounced /ˈpʊləm/; born March 8, 1945 in Irvine, Scotland) is a British-American linguist specialising in the study of English. As of 2009, he is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.

Pullum is a co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, a comprehensive descriptive grammar of English. He is also a regular contributor to Language Log, a collaborative linguistics weblog.

Biography

Pullum left secondary school early at age 16, and 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.

Pullum left Britain in 1980, taking visiting positions at the University of Washington and Stanford University. In 1987 he became a citizen of the USA. He worked at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1981 to 2007. He is currently employed at the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh.

Pullum is also a frequent contributor to the blog Language Log upon which he can often be found arguing for linguistic descriptivism.

Pullum has an Erdős number of 3.^[1]

Selected publications

• Gazdar, Gerald; Klein, Ewan; Pullum, Geoffrey K.; and Sag, Ivan A. (1985). Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. ISBN 0-631-13206-6
• Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1991). The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-68534-9. (See also Eskimo words for snow)
• Pullum, Geoffrey K. and Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-68535-7
• Huddleston, Rodney D. and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43146-8
• Huddleston, Rodney D. and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2005). A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-61288-8
• Liberman, Mark and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2006). Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from the Language Log, William, James & Company. ISBN 1-59028-055-5

See also

• Linguification
• The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language

References

• Pullum, Geoffrey K. Geoffrey K. Pullum: Biography. Retrieved December 14, 2004.

External links

• Geoffrey K. Pullum's personal home page
• Language Log