Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
Professor John Hawkins
On research leave during 2011/12 Position:Professor of English and Applied Linguistics
Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
Postal Address:
9 West Road
CAMBRIDGE CB3 9DP
Fax: (+44) (0)1223 335062
He has held permanent positions at the University of Essex (1973-77), the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen (1982-85), and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (1977-2004). Visiting appointments include UCLA, Berkeley, the Free University of Berlin, the University of Potsdam, the University of Copenhagen, and the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
He has written Definiteness and Indefiniteness (1978, Humanities Press & Croom Helm), Word Order Universals (1983, Academic Press), A Comparative Typology of English and German (1986, Routledge & University of Texas Press), A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency (1994, Cambridge University Press), and Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars (2004, Oxford University Press). He edited Explaining Language Universals (1988, Basil Blackwell) and The Evolution of Human Languages (with Murray Gell-Mann, 1992, Addison-Wesley).
His current research interests include: English grammar from a psycholinguistic perspective; general principles of efficiency and complexity in language and their predictions for performance, grammar, acquisition and change; typology and universals; and pragmatics.
