It’s with profound grief that we announce that (PhD) Dr. Anjum Pervez Saleemi, esteemed scholar and professor of theoretical linguistics and cognitive sciences, passed away in Lahore, Pakistan, on April 19th, 2025. Born October 24, 1953 in Gujranwala, Punjab, Pakistan to Chaudhary Taj Muhammad and Begum Saeeda, he is survived by his only remaining son, Usman Saleemi.

Dr. Anjum lived a storied and distinguished academic life, from earning a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Essex, UK under a British Council Fellowship to becoming one of Pakistan’s most esteemed linguists. He career spanned across three continents in some of the world’s greatest institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), LUMS, GCU, UMT, UoL (Lahore, Pakistan), Allama Iqbal Open University (Islamabad, Pakistan) Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), NUS (National University of Singapore), National Taiwan University (NTU) and King Saud University (KSA), chairing various departments, teaching countless university students, and leaving behind a rich academic legacy. In addition to his work across Pakistan, the US, UK, Singapore, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia, he visited many more countries including Canada, Germany, Austria and India for guest lectures and a diverse range of academic collaborations. As it all began with his BA and MA at Punjab University, Lahore, he always maintained a fond attachment to the institution and unofficially helped many candidates pursue post-graduates overseas through his recommendations, network and enthusiastic support.

In particular, he was proud of his time as a Visiting Scientist and researcher at MIT working under Noam Chomsky’s department and considered Mr Chomsky to be a most esteemed colleague, collaborator, mentor and advisor. The influence of Chomsky remains visible across much of Dr Anjum’s academic works, including his book “Universal Grammar and Language Learnability” (Cambridge University Press), which intersected linguistic theory and language learning models in various ways, and remains in print til date.

In addition to that book, and countless academic works published globally in peer-reviewed journals, Dr. Anjum co-authored “In Search of a Language for the Mind-Brain” along with Ocke-Schen Bohn and Albert Gjedde, questioning if language and thought should be investigated scientifically or socially. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Linguistic Society of America, Linguistics Association of Great Britain, International Association for the Study of Child Language, New York Academy of Sciences, and more.

He approached academia with a healthy mix of reverence and irreverence, bending the rules wherever humanity dictated they be bent, and upholding them with firm sincerity where he believed it was the honorable thing to do so.

He was strongly for cross-border, cross-departmental collaboration and self-critical examinations of all academic subjects and norms. He was endlessly fascinated with history, mathematics, literature, and poetry, and exploring their intersections with the more formal aspects of his work. A poet himself, his close friends and family enjoyed his rich work in Urdu, Punjabi and English, thanks to his rare gift of being not only proficient but profound in all three languages. His creative writing remains the privilege of only close circles, but his son and associates are working to compile and publish a collection.

Personally, he had a loving yet complicated family life. Having split with his wife Nighat Saleemi, he continued to be a committed part of the life of his two sons, Shoaib and Usman. He never quite recovered from having to bury his eldest son, Shoaib Saleemi, a loss that left him deeply heartbroken. He was overjoyed to host and attend the marriage of his son Usman Saleemi to Mais Hadidi of Jordan, in Dubai, UAE, in 2024. His last outings were with them, and he enjoyed family gatherings and vacations up until his passing. He was loved and cared for til the very end. His illnesses were many and his medical complications varied, yet he ended up passing from an insidious infection that caught him unawares and ended up overshadowing his more prominent health concerns. He went peacefully under expert medical care, surrounded by loved ones. He was buried in his beloved Lahore on a beautiful spring day.

For condolences, well-wishers can reach out to his son Usman via email at [email protected]

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
Language Acquisition
Linguistic Theories
Phonology
Syntax

Subject Language(s): English (eng)
Hindi (hin)
Panjabi (pan)
Urdu (urd)

Language Family(ies): Hindustani
Indo-Aryan