Sound reasoning
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles linking the work of MIT’s emeritus faculty members with the current state of research in their given fields.In 1978, a PhD candidate in linguistics named Donca Steriade arrived at MIT not long after leaving communist Romania. Steriade recalls that, excited about her studies and fearful of failure, she thought, “If I don’t know what they expect me to know, they’re going to send me back to Romania.”Steriade took a class with Morris Halle and received a jolt. Halle, now 86 and an Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, is one of the 20th century’s most influential academic linguists. He helped create modern phonology, the study of the production of sound in language. “Morris was very stern with all of us,” says Steriade. “His first reaction, when he was not completely satisfied with our work, was to ask us if we...