LINGUIST List 17.1640
Wed May 31 2006
All: Obituary: Marco Haverkort (1961-2006)
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1. Jan-Wouter
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Obituary: Marco Haverkort (1961-2006)
Message 1: Obituary: Marco Haverkort (1961-2006)
Date: 30-May-2006
From: Jan-Wouter Zwart <c.j.w.zwartrug.nl>
Subject: Obituary: Marco Haverkort (1961-2006)
Marco Haverkort, whose research straddled the boundaries of theoreticalsyntax and neurolinguistics, died on May 3, 2006 in the Nijmegen Universityhospital. Marco had been diagnosed with brain cancer about 8 years earlier,but while his condition remained stable he was able to carry on histeaching and research for many years. Although Marco never failed todiscuss his condition bravely and optimistically, it gradually became clearthat this battle could not be won. A cremation service was held on May 9 inNijmegen, attended by family, friends and many colleagues from all over theNetherlands.
I met Marco in 1983, when we were both undergraduate students in Nijmegen.Marco was a brilliant student, who knew the ins and outs of Government andBinding theory and distributed unpublished manuscripts from MIT. HisMA-thesis was an impressive study on parasitic gaps, and he published areview of the philosophical aspects of Chomsky's Knowlegde ofLanguage with Philip Miller (Revue Internationale dePhilosophie 41, 449-457). Before taking up his graduate studies inTilburg, Marco spent time at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics(a place he would continue to visit regularly) and at MIT. Between 1988 and1992 Marco held a graduate position in Tilburg (leading to his 1993dissertation Clitics and Parametrization), but he spent half ofhis time at the Department of Linguistics at the University of California,Santa Cruz, where he became subsequently employed in the year 1992-1993. Hethen moved to Berkeley (1993-1994) and to the Child Language Program of theUniversity of Kansas, Lawrence (1994-1995), and ultimately the BostonUniversity Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures (from1995 on). Here he supervised many PhD-dissertations and acted as facultyadvisor to the BU Conference on Language Development.
Around 1998 it became clear that Marco was interested in returning toEurope, and we were happy to welcome him at the University of Groningen,where Marco was able to pursue his interests in experimental linguisticsand neurolinguistics. With Laurie Stowe and Frans Zwarts he authored theimportant article ''Rethinking the neurological basis of language''(Lingua 115, 997-1042). In 2001 Marco obtained a prestigiousAcademy of Sciences grant which moved him back to Nijmegen, where hiscareer had started.
In his research, Marco moved from theoretical syntax, via first languageacquisition, to neurolinguistics. He was highly critical of his own work,but a fruitful and judicious collaborator. Faculty and students of theinstitutes where Marco worked remember him with fondness. He was aninspiring teacher, a meticulous researcher, and a generous and highlyactive supervisor.
Linguistic Field(s):
Not Applicable
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