Prof. Robert P. Stockwell Department of Linguistics UCLA 3125 Campbell Hall Los Angeles CA 90095-1543 stockwel@humnet.ucla.edu

Research Interests

• History of the English Language. Donka Minkova and I have written a new text on the subject, organized on a principle inspired by Barbara Strang's text of 20 years ago, namely starting from specific phenomena of the present day and doing a sort of geological probe into the origins of the phenomena. Rather like etymology, but etymology of construction types, of sound types, of variation types, etc.
• Early English Metrics, esp. Beowulf.
• OE and later English diphthong formation processes, in particular "vocalization".

Selected Publications

1973. "Problems in the interpretation of the Great English Vowel Shift." Studies in Linguistics: Papers in Honor of George L. Trager, ed. by M. Estellie Smith. The Hague: Mouton, 344-62. Also in essays on the Sound Pattern of English, ed. D. L Goyvaerts and G. K. Pullum. The Hague: Mouton, 344-62.

1977. "Motivations for exbraciation in Old English". Mechanisms of Syntactic Change, ed. by Charles Li, 291-314. Austin: Univ. of Tx Press.

1988. With Donka Minkova. "The English Vowel Shift: Problems of coherence and explanation". Luick Revisited, ed. by Dieter Kastovsky, Gero Bauer, and Jacek Fisiak. Tugingen: Gunter Narr, 355-394.

1994. With Donka Minkova. "Syllable weight, prosody, and meter in Old English." Diachronica 11.1.

For some more recent publications, see Curriculum Vitae.

Teaching

After retiring in 1994, I now teach periodically on a recall basis.

Biographical Information

Curriculum Vitae also available.

• Degrees
  • BA. (English and Greek) 1946, University of Virginia
  • MA. (English) 1949, University of Virginia
  • Ph.D. (English Philology) 1952, University of Virginia
• Prior Appointments
  • 1952-56 School of Languages, Foreign Service Institute, Department of State
  • 1956-66 Professor of English, UCLA (Assistant Professor 1956, Associate Professor 1958, Full Professor 1962)
  • 1966-1994: Professor of Linguistics, UCLA; 1963-66 Chair, Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics, UCLA; 1966-73 Founding Chair, Department of Linguistics, UCLA; 1980-84 Chair, Department of Linguistics, UCLA
  • Visiting professorships (summers): 1955, 1956 Georgetown University;1960 University of the Philippines; 1961 University of Texas; 1965 University of Michigan; 1979 University of Salzburg.
  • Associate Director, Linguistic Institute at University of Salzburg 1979
  • Director, Linguistic Institute at UCLA 1983
• Honors and Awards
  • 1963-64 Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies
  • 1968 Distinguished Teaching Award, UCLA Alumni Association
  • 1968 Distinguished Teaching Award, UCLA Graduate Student Association
  • Festschrift (in honor of 60th birthday) On Language: Rhetorica,Phonologica, Syntactica, a Festschrift for Robert P. Stockwell from his Friends and Colleagues. Edited by C.K. Duncan-Rose and Theo Vennemann. London: Routledge 1988.
• Editorial and University Service
  • Associate Editor, Language 1973-82
  • Associate Editor, Hispanic Linguistics 1983-89
  • Associate Editor, Folia Linguistica Historica, 1976--
  • Associate Editor, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 1984--
  • Committee on Committees 1975-78 (Chair 1976-77)
  • Committee on Educational Policy 1979-81 (Chair 1980-81)
  • Coordinating Council of Academic Programs and Policies 1981-82 (Chair)
  • Executive Board, Academic Senate 1981-82
  • Planning Committee 1981-84
  • Chair, Task Force on Language Teaching at UCLA 1991-92
  • Member, Dean's Advisory Panel (Humanities) 1990-92
  • Committee on Research, 1992-995
  • Committee on Planning and Budget, 1995--
  • Member, Task Force on Faculty Teaching Workload, 1993

Curriculum Vitae

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• PDF format

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Last Updated:  Jan. 9, 2003