Sean Crist's Homepage
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Previous Residences ______________I'm a linguist. I did my doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in May 2001. I usually teach college, but I also am a programmer, and sometimes I develop software and data products related to human language.
My dissertation is available here. However, I haven't yet had a chance to try this PostScript file on other machines yet to see how well it travels (font issues, etc.).
I'm a gay male, and as of this writing, I'm 37 years old (born in 1968). I've been an ethical vegetarian since Nov. 1983. I came out as a gay male in July 1984 just before my 16th birthday. I've been an atheist since May 1996. My boyfriend Dennis and I have been together since 4 July 1994.
I'm a square dance caller in the Modern Mainstream tradition.
Politically I am pretty far to the left. I am what some people call a "champagne socialist". This is usually meant as a term of contempt, but I actually don't mind describing myself this way. I favor things such as a national health care plan, subsidized public transportation, and a strong social welfare state. I also like seeing people dressing up and celebrating a special occasion with champagne.
- 1968-1971 Blacksburg, VA. I was three when we moved from there, so I basically don't remember it.
- 1971-1976 Duluth, MN, home of a very unusual kind of drawbridge. I went to Lester Park Elementary School.
- 1976-1980 Rhinelander, WI, home of the Hodag. Here's some more information about Rhinelander. I went to Crescent Elementary School and Newbold Elementary School.
- 1980-1991 Morgantown, WV. Here and here is information about it.
Here is my high school. I hated it there and got constant harassment for being gay. Whenever classes changed, people in the halls would yell at me and call me a god damned faggot. They wrote QUEER on my locker. I came to school late on purpose every day to avoid getting beaten up, and at the end of the day I waited an hour to make sure everyone was gone outside before I walked home. Despite these precautions, I had some close calls. One day, I arrived at school at the end of first period, and as I was walking thru the area between the buildings, I met some guys coming back from gym practice on the field. They slapped their baseball bats in their palms and said, "Kill the faggot!" The gym teacher was nowhere to be seen, and nobody from the buildings could see me. I looked straight ahead and pretended not to see the guys, but I was so scared that I felt like I was outside my body, watching myself and taking one more step, one more step, waiting for the thud from one of the bats. Fortunately, the guys did nothing but yell as we passed each other. I didn't tell the principals because I didn't know the guys' names, and I doubted that the principals would have taken it seriously. Another time, I was walking home after waiting my usual hour, and across the street were two high school guys walking the other direction. Our eyes met across the street, and altho nothing was said, one of the guys started crossing the street and walking toward me, clearly intending to beat me up. I picked up my pace and went into a gas station and pretended to use a pay phone until the guys were gone.
I cut school all the time and flunked all my classes. Finally, in 1985, I dropped out of high school at what would have been the beginning of my senior year, and life got much, much better. I spent that year unofficially sitting in on linguistics classes at the University. In 1986 I turned 18 and could take my G.E.D., so I took it, enrolled formally at the University, and spent several happy and productive years there getting my B.A. and first M.A. I was president of the gay student organization for several years.
Update, October 2001: Altho I had very mixed feelings about going, I went to my 15-year high school reunion. I felt like I needed to go and confront this part of my personal history face to face. I'm really, really glad I went, because I got to see how some of people who used to torment me have grown up to be mature, tolerant, and accepting. They insisted that I bring my partner Dennis to the 20-year reunion. We took a tour of the school, and even now, just being in that building gave me a heavy feeling of dread; but later in the day, when we had the reunion party, I just plain had a good time.
- 1991-1992 Kumamoto, Japan. Here is Suizenji Park which was about a kilometer from my apartment. Late one night my friends and I went in the park, ignored the "Keep off the grass" signs (that kind of thing is a bigger deal in Japan than America), and climbed the artificial Mt. Fuji in the center of the picture. (My mom and I had intended to climb the real Mt. Fuji when she came to visit, but it was raining so hard that day that we went to Tokyo instead. This little Mt. Fuji had to make up for it.)
- 1992-1994 Newark, DE "A town rich in history, past and present."
- 1994-2000 Philadelphia, PA
- 2000-2006 Lansdowne, PA (a suburb just west of Philadelphia)
- 2006-date Bozen (Bolzano), Italy
Academic Interests ______________
- Phonology
- Historical Linguistics, esp. the early Germanic languages
- Computational Linguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Phonetics
My dissertation is called "Conspiracy in Historical Phonology". It's been frequently observed informally that historical sound changes often seem to conspire (i.e., to work together in some way which would not be predicted if sound changes are unconnected individual processes). What I argue is that these apparent conspiracies are real, and that they can be modelled straightforwardly in Optimality Theory. I have one chapter each on early Greek (loss of *j), early West Germanic (loss of voiced fricatives), and early Slavic (the open syllable conspiracy).Languages ______________
So, Sean, you're a linguist? What languages do you speak?
Arghhh! Linguists hate that question. We're always getting asked this, but it's not the right question to be asking:
A linguist is a kind of scientist who studies the human language faculty.
A polyglot is someone who speaks multiple languages.However, the distinction is lost on most people. I guess all of us linguists are doomed to answering this question at cocktail parties and things for the rest of our lives, not that I ever go to cocktail parties. But in case I ever do go to a cocktail party, here is the stupid list:
English (native speaker), German (fluent), Japanese (3+ years study plus a year residency in Japan), American Sign Language (no expert, but I use it regularly at home with my partner Dennis), French (one year; can read it well enough with a dictionary to pass my reading competency requirement), and one or two semesters each of Russian, Latin, Dutch, Classical Greek, Old English, Middle High German, Gothic, Tocharian A, and Tocharian B. I also sat in on less than a semester each of Old Icelandic and Old Irish.
Memorable moments ______________
Here are a few of the more memorable moments in my life:
- Hitchhiking 200 miles by myself at age 12.
- Sitting in a 747 which was on fire up in the air.
- Sign language interpreting in the operating room for Dennis as he was having his angioplasty done.
- Standing in the middle of a ring of maybe 200 people on the grounds of Kumamoto Castle in Japan leading everybody in the "Hokey Pokey".