Fred Householder

Fred Walter Householder, Jr. (February 1, 1913 – January 4, 1994) was an American linguist and professor of classics and linguistics at Indiana University. His best known works include Linguistic Speculations (Cambridge, 1971) and his contributions to Readings in Linguistics II (University of Chicago, 1966).

Life and work

Fred Walter Householder, Jr. was an American linguist at Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana. He received his training in classics from Columbia University, completing a PhD there in 1941. Householder held joint appointments in the departments of classics and linguistics at Indiana University from 1948 to 1983, and chaired the Department of Linguistics from 1974 to 1980.

Householder received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958, teaching at London University 1958-1959. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. He was elected Vice President of the Linguistic Society of America in 1980, and President of the LSA in 1981.

Householder specialized in the study and theory of syntax, in languages from Greek and Latin to Chinese and Azerbaijani. In 1965, the first issue of the Journal of Linguistics published Householder's criticism of the work of Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, challenging their work on phonology, in particular their methodology. Chomsky and Halle responded in the second issue, defending their work on the potential for phonology to unlock universal meanings in sound and speech.

He retired in 1983, and after his death in 1994, Indiana University established the Fred W. Householder Memorial Fund to provide scholarships to students specializing in Kurdish linguistics, one of the focuses of his research.