Grant Goodall Elected a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America

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• Triveni Sheshadri- [email protected]

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Grant Goodall, professor of Linguistics in the School of Social Sciences, has been elected a fellow of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). The fellowship, the highest academic honor in linguistics, is in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field as a teacher and researcher.

"I love what I do and I feel enormously privileged to count research, teaching, and supervising student researchers as part of my job," Goodall said. "Receiving this recognition from the Linguistic Society of America is like icing on the cake."

"This honor is as much for my department here at UC San Diego as it is for me. I have been able to grow and thrive as a researcher, thanks to the stimulating, interdisciplinary environment that the Department of Linguisticsand UC San Diego are both known for."

Goodall is one of three current UC San Diego faculty members to be named a fellow of LSA, considered to be the preeminent organization in the field of linguistics dedicated to supporting the scientific study of language. Other LSA fellows are David Perlmutter, emeritus professor, and Carol Padden, dean of the School of Social Sciences, who earned her doctorate from the Department of Linguistics.

Eric Baković,professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics, said of Goodall's election:"In the four decades since he received his Ph.D. at UC San Diego, Grant has had a stellar record of scholarly contributions to the field, service to the LSA, outreach and communication with the language teaching and constructed language communities. He has been a successful teacher and a devoted mentor to students, advising MA, PhD and undergraduate students. Many have had illustrious careers, whether in academia or in the private sector."

Goodall earned hisB.A. from UCLA and his Ph.D. from UC San Diego. Hebegan his teaching career at the University of Texas at El Paso and became a faculty member of the UC San Diego Department of Linguistics in 2003. A member of the LSA since his graduate student days, he has presented 19 papers in its annual meetings. He developed the first LSA survey of ethnic diversity in linguistics which was administered by universities across the country.

In his research, Goodall explores the differences and similarities in sentence structure in various languages.

"My research begins with the question 'How is human language structured?', especially regarding how words combine to form sentences," Goodall said. "I explore how languages differ in their sentence structure, and, even more intriguingly, how they are alike. In recent years, I have been using experimental methods that allow us to probe the structural properties of language with a level of depth and precision that was not previously possible."

In the Experimental Syntax Lab, which he directs, Goodall and his students perform experiments with speakers of a variety of languages, seeking out explanations for what could be driving the commonalities and differences that they discover. In addition to his core research on the syntax of human language, though, Goodall has also studied two areas where insights from linguistics have broader implications. One is classroom language learning. As director of the Linguistics Language Program, he oversees much of language instruction at UC San Diego, and he is also the lead author of the introductory Spanish textbook, "Conéctate" that is used widely in the U.S to guide students through their acquisition of this language. Another area is constructed languages, in which he is an acknowledged authority. He regularly teaches the popular course "Linguistics of Invented Languages."