I was born in New York City on November 22, 1951, and grew up outside of New York, in the suburban village of Scarsdale. I graduated in 1969 from Scarsdale High School, valedictorian in a graduating class of over 400.
I started as an undergraduate at Yale University in the fall of 1969, thinking I might major in mathematics (that was before I took Math 27, on topology in the fall semester and linear algebra in the spring, a course which taught me that I was not cut out to be a math major) or Classics, as I had enjoyed Latin in my last two years in high school, and continued Latin my freshman year and began the study of Ancient Greek.
Near the end of my freshman year (a tumultuous time to be sure, with protests against the Vietnam War, and especially against the escalation of the war into Cambodia, and the eventual closing of Yale before the end of the spring semester), I realized that from an academic standpoint what I liked most about Latin and Greek was the languages themselves, not the literature per se. That led me to guess — and it was just a guess as I did not know anything about the discipline — to decide to take a course in linguistics in the first semester of my sophomore year (Fall 1970). The course was a general introduction to linguistics, Linguistics 20a, taught by Sydney Lamb.
More to come …