R.I.P., John R. "Haj" Ross (1938-2025)
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Posted by MIT Linguistics:
Sad and momentous news has reached us of the passing of alum and former faculty member John R. Ross (PhD 1967) at the age of 87. Known to one and all as "Haj Ross", his dissertation and subsequent papers on syntax and related topics laid the groundwork for many — one might even say "most" — of the core research topics under central investigation today.
His dissertation "Constraints on Variables in Syntax" (published many years later as a book, under the title "Infinite Syntax!") built on earlier observations by Chomsky that took note of surprising limitations on our ability to form questions and similar constructions out of particular phrasal domains. Ross's dissertation showed first that Chomsky's account of these limitations was inadequate. ("Both too strong and too weak" was his famous formulation of the problem.) But more important, Ross put the nature and extent of these limitations front and center for the entire field, discovering and analyzing a vast range of linguistic phenomena that exemplified such constraints, and proposing unified accounts of many of them that still form the baseline for current research that seeks to extend and deepen Ross's original insights. In the years following his dissertation, Ross was the author of countless papers of a similar character, in which he was literally the first discoverer of linguistic limitations and possibilities that every speaker of a language knows, even if they were totally unaware (before Ross) that they knew them. Taken together, these discoveries constitute much of the agenda of modern linguistics, which attempts to discern the hidden logic behind the properties of human language that Ross first charted, understanding them as reflections of deeper properties of our human language faculty. We would not be surprised to learn that Ross's thesis (as it is universally known) is one of the most widely read and widely cited doctoral dissertations in any field — it surely has that status in linguistics.
Every paper by Haj Ross communicated its discoveries in an inimitable fashion, tinged by its author's unique odd sense of humor and unique feel for language itself. As a consequence, the field of syntax to this day is replete with quirky terminology all due to Haj. Domains that are opaque to syntactic processes such as question formation are universally called "islands" — Haj's term. (To appreciate the metaphor, one needs to imagine that boats and the capacity to swim do not exist: you cannot escape a linguistic island.) The ability of question words that move to the front of the sentence ("Which book did Mary talk about?") to lure other words to join them ("About which book did Mary talk?") he called "pied-piping", celebrating the grim legend of the pied-piper of Hamelin. Some of his infamous terminology bordered on the psychedelic: for example, an ellipsis process in questions that deletes the bulk of a sentence while leaving behind the question phrase ("Mary spoke to someone interesting, but I don't know who ___ ") was dubbed "Sluicing" as a pun on "S loosing" (S for "sentence"; "loosing" in the sense of "untying"). So remarkable, so numerous, and so beloved are Haj's terminological coinages that they form part of his lasting legacy, along with his scientific achievements, whose mark on the field will never fade.
Nothing linguistic failed to interest Haj, and his work ranged across many areas of linguistics. He explored the phonological principles that order phrases such as "snap, crackle, pop" and "red, white, and blue" (i.e. why not "pop, crackle, snap" or "blue, white, and red", which is the order in French?) — and studied the linguistic principles underlying poetry in many papers of his later career. Haj was hired as a professor at MIT immediately following his 1967 dissertation, and remained on the faculty until 1985. He subsequently taught at a number of universities internationally, before taking a position at the University of North Texas, where he retired as Distinguished Research Professor in 2021.
Haj last visited us at MIT in December 2011 for our conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Linguistics graduate program, where he was an enthusiastic and active participant, and regaled us in typical fashion with both impromptu discoveries and hilarious anecdotes. A giant of linguistics, we and the entire field (and beyond) will miss him.
Web page: https://linguistics.unt.edu/people/haj-ross.html
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Ross
Dissertation: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/15166
Michael Vnuk said,
May 16, 2025 @ 9:42 pm
My searching on the internet could not answer my question: Why was he known as 'Haj' or 'Háj'? Can anyone shed light on the matter?
Victor Mair said,
May 17, 2025 @ 5:50 am
I looked across the internet and didn't find anything for "Haj" either.
Most such pet names start within a private circle (usually the family or a school class or a sports team or a small military unit, etc.) and then later go public.
I've known many people with names like that which are more or less universally used for them but the larger public never knows how they arose, e.g., Buzzy, Cappy, Turtle, Quags. I revealed the origin of the latter in this post: "How to pronounce the surname 'Mair' and other Doggie talk". Fortunately, "Quags" never became well known outside of the Dartmouth basketball team.
Mark Liberman said,
May 17, 2025 @ 8:28 am
Haj's nickname was given to him by someone he met in his youth, when he was visiting Germany — I think it was the woman who became his wife. She was impressed by his wide-ranging search for insight, and made a half-teasing analogy to religious pilgrimage. The nickname was originally "Haji", later abbreviated to "Haj". That's what I recall from conversations many years ago, at least.
Victor Manfredi said,
May 17, 2025 @ 11:14 am
hmmm, the official obit (linked above) eloquently omits to mention the cause of haj's sudden banishment from buliding 20, so soon after making the stellar contributions to natural science so lavishly praised by stata center HQ. was his terminal offense "generative semantics" or some other controlled substance?
David Nash said,
May 17, 2025 @ 11:43 am
The 'Haj' origin story I recall involved Hajji Baba of Ispahan (as Nick Ostler has reminded me), and the name was applied in childhood or at least at a younger age than in Mark's version. I suppose it could've been reinforced by what Mark recalls.
Daniel Deutsch said,
May 18, 2025 @ 1:37 am
I remember being impressed by Ross’s analysis of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” sometime around 2011. Does anyone have a link or reference to that?
Ben said,
May 18, 2025 @ 8:20 pm
@Victor Manfredi
I believe his terminal offense was not merely the presence of the controlled substance, but the decision to pass it around from student to student.
I hope someone tells the whole Haj story in writing somewhere, controlled substances and all. His journey from fiery, combative generative semantician to placid poet and artist is a story worth telling, IMO.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 19, 2025 @ 1:46 pm
The pre-MIT Ross turns up in this bit of official institutional history which appears a bit garbled despite or because of its presence on an official university website:
"Linguistics at Yale was originally run as an interdepartmental graduate program, first directed by Edgar Sturtevant from Classics and then by Franklin Edgerton, Prof. of Sanskrit, who was a member of the Dept of Oriental Languages, an original occupant of HGS. Owing to a dispute between Edgerton and Albrecht Goetze (Prof. of Hittite), Oriental Languages was split into Indic & Far Eastern Languages and Near Eastern Languages (early 1950s), and the Linguistics Program remained with Edgerton in Indic and Far Eastern Languages.
"When Edgerton retired in 1952, Bernard Bloch (Prof. of Japanese) took over the program and chairmanship of the department. In 1959 Linguistics emerged as a budgetary, independent department. When Bloch died in the early 1960s, Samuel Martin became chairman, and under coaxing from John R. ('Haj') Ross, then a Yale undergraduate, a linguistics major was formed in Yale College."
Ross received his B.A. in 1960 according to other sources, and that fits with his year of birth. So he would have been an undergrad as of the 1959 "emergence" of an autonomous department but was already in grad school at MIT when Bloch died in 1965. I don't independently know (or recall, if I was ever told) when the "regular" undergraduate major became a thing. (Plus the same page elsewhere says that Bloch stepped down as Chairman in '63 and Martin did not became Chairman until '67, with WIlliam Cornyn in charge in betwen.)
Yale undergrads of the late Fifties were sociologically similar enough to Dartmouth undergrads of the early Sixties for exotic inside-joke nicknames of the sort Victor Mair recalls to have been equally plausible.
Nick Ostler said,
May 20, 2025 @ 4:36 am
My memory of his Bildungsname, for what it is worth, would take its origin back to his infancy when he supposedly had difficulty in pronouncing his own name Robert, so was reduced to introducing himself as [baba], which was then rationalized by some friend of the family with the add-on "Esfahan", the Persian pronunciation of Ispahan.
Coleman Norville said,
May 20, 2025 @ 8:34 am
I had the privilege of studying under Haj for my Undergraduate at UNT (2013-2016). The story he told us for why he was called "Haj" went something like this (if I remember correctly):
Haj's father wanted to call him "Rob" (short for his full name John Robert). However, when Haj was very young, he would refer to himself as "Baby" because that was what he heard his mother call him. So, he would say things like "Baby wants to go outside." Haj's mother encouraged this self-appellation, but his father was exasperated at his answering to this name instead of Rob. Ross Senior told mom, 'If you keep calling him that, I'm gonna call him something ridiculous like Hajji-Baba and see how you like it!' And, according to Haj, the name stuck as a personal moniker. That's the story he told us anyway.
He would never let us call him Dr. Ross except around Halloween, when he would dress up in a labcoat and headband with springy antennae (his 'Doctor' outfit). He was a funny guy and a favorite of ours.
Requiescat in pace
Jason Merchant said,
May 21, 2025 @ 3:33 pm
A giant of linguistics (and of onomastic fecundity!) has left us. As for his nickname Haj, there is a letter from Haj to Sam Martin in the Yale Linguistics Seminar Library files somewhere, answering Sam's question about Haj's nickname–the letter pretty much repeats the story Coleman Norville lays out. I read the letter sometime between 1987-1991 back when the department was still on the 3rd floor of HGS–it'd be worth scanning if it's still there and anyone can find it!
J.W. Brewer said,
May 21, 2025 @ 4:30 pm
@Jason Merchant: The Ling Sem library stopped being on the 3d floor of HGS (now maybe no longer called HGS?) no later than the relocation of the entire Linguistics Dep't to 370 Temple St. (now called "Dow Hall" but I don't know when that name was first applied to the building), which is said to have occurred in 2002. One would hope that the holdings of the old library (especially but not only unique items like what you describe) were preserved somewhere, but I don't have any details on that.
Alexander Nizhnikov said,
May 27, 2025 @ 10:29 am
Haj's offense was generative semantics, having a mind of his own, and refusing to silence his voice. Neither of which would Chomsky tolerate from anyone. This is why Haj was forced from MIT. Chomsky hounded Haj and every grad student who wanted Haj as their advisor. No graduate students were assigned to Haj. Haj lived in my house with his new wife shortly after the "weed" incident. From what I remember, Chomsky sent his goons to the party to report on the possible use of "stimulants," and some people smocked "weed." Given that weed was everywhere at MIT at that time, this was clearly a hit job by Nim.
Alexander Nizhnikov said,
May 27, 2025 @ 10:31 am
Does anyone know if any memorial is planned for Haj?
Cristina Magro said,
May 30, 2025 @ 6:13 pm
I had the honour and pleasure of studying with Háj at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and of becoming his friend during his time in Brazil. He amused us with his many stories, including Hajji Baba's origin of his nickname, as Coleman Norville tells us above. In Brazil, he adopted the acute accent mark over the 'a'. Regarding Háj's "major offence", yes, the heavy hand of Chomsky over the students who proposed new ways to linguistics became clear in many ways. A more elaborate picture of the period can be found at The Linguistics Wars, a book by Randy Allen Harris.
Sid said,
June 14, 2025 @ 5:43 am
from redditor alangao: Yes, I know. He told me himself. It is a nickname from childhood. Kids often reduplicate a syllable of a word when they are first learning to speak. He was called "John Robert," and so to say "Robert" he would call himself "Baba" (syllable 2 of Robert). I will leave out some details that may be private to his family, but essentially someone started jokingly calling him "hajji baba" and one family member thought it was very cute and started shortening it to Haj and it stuck. Haj was his childhood nickname from when he was literally learning to talk.
Marshall N Armintor said,
June 16, 2025 @ 1:37 pm
I just found this page from Haj's wikipedia entry. I was his next-door neighbor of the past 23 years, and also have been with the UNT Department of English (where Linguistics used to be housed) for most of that time.
The story of his nickname dating from early childhood is the accurate one; I'm not sure, even, of the precise origin (his father or storybooks they had around), but it was with him from the earliest parts of his life. When writing by hand, he would write it with the accent over the "a," but I'm not sure he did that consistently.
To respond to Alexander Nizhnikov, his family will be doing a private memorial service next month, and to my knowledge, nothing else is planned as of yet.
Also, about Chomsky and Haj's departure from MIT: I never really talked to him in depth about this for obvious reasons (or wanted to), but he did point me to the Randy Allen Harris book. I can say he was in email contact, I know, with Chomsky as late as 8 or 9 years ago. They kept up a sporadic correspondence that was, I understand, mostly about politics and foreign policy. Whatever else may have happened, I never, ever heard him say anything negative about Chomsky or about MIT.
Quoting from one of the posts above:
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Well, I hope that happens too. There's plenty of insight about all that available in his many of his own writings. As for the second point, I was on a dissertation committee in the late 2000s for one of Haj's poetics students, and that's when I got to see the "fiery, combative" side of his scholarship. I'm not a linguist (which was why I was on the committee, as the project had one foot in linguistics and the other one literary theory, more properly speaking), and as far I can understand these matters, he was still very much committed to rigor and analysis in the way he'd always done it, even when applied to literature as such. He wouldn't let his students get away with fudging things in that regard!