University of North Texas 
John Robert "Haj" Ross (1938–2025) was an American linguist and poet renowned for
his contributions to generative semantics and syntactic theory. He earned his PhD
from MIT, where he studied under Noam Chomsky, and later taught at MIT from 1966 to
1985. Ross also held academic positions in Brazil, Singapore, British Columbia, and
at the University of North Texas until 2021.
His 1967 dissertation introduced the concept of syntactic islands, a pivotal development
in syntactic theory. Ross was prolific in coining terms for syntactic phenomena, including
"pied piping," "sluicing," "gapping," and "heavy NP shift." He also popularized the
term "squib" to describe short scholarly articles in linguistics. Ross's work significantly
influenced the study of syntax and semantics.
Education
- PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1967.
- Major: Linguistics/Constraints on Variables in Syntax
- MA, University of Pennsylvania, 1964.
- Major: Linguistics/A Partial Grammar of English Superlatives
- BA, Yale University, 1960.
- Major: Linguistics
Research Interests
Semantax - an interfield that sees syntax and semantics as inseparably interpenetrating; linguistic analysis of poetry
My primary areas of research are in semantax - an interfield that sees syntax and semantics as inseparably interpenetrating - and poetics - the study of verbal art with the help of detailed linguistic analyses of texts. In the former area, for the past forty-nine years, I have been collecting squibs - short notes about phonological, morphological or semantactic phenomena which defy analysis in current theoretical frameworks.
In addition, John Goldsmith, of the University of Chicago, and I are building a web-based archive of videos of senior linguists: Lives in Linguistics - a kind of oral history project. While the archive is small at present, our hope is that it may inspire other linguists around the world to assemble a visual record of all of our linguistic forbears.