Peter Matthews (linguist)
Encyclopedia
Peter Hugoe Matthews is a British linguist. He is a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge
, and was formerly Professor and Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge
(1980-2000).
Matthews is perhaps best known for his writings on linguistic morphology
. He has published two monographs on the subject.
Matthews was an early follower of Noam Chomsky
, but lost enthusiasm for the 'generative enterprise' during the 1960s. He has since become a trenchant critic of Chomsky.
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
, and was formerly Professor and Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
(1980-2000).
Matthews is perhaps best known for his writings on linguistic morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
. He has published two monographs on the subject.
Matthews was an early follower of Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, but lost enthusiasm for the 'generative enterprise' during the 1960s. He has since become a trenchant critic of Chomsky.
Selected publications
- Inflectional Morphology: A theoretical study based on aspects of Latin verb conjugation (1972)
- Morphology: An introduction to the theory of word-structure (1974)
- Generative Grammar and Linguistic Competence (1979)
- Syntax (1981)
- Grammatical Theory in the United States from Bloomfield to Chomsky (1993)
- A Short History of Structural Linguistics (2001)
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (2005)
- Syntactic Relations: A Critical Survey (2007)