Randolph Quirk, Baron Quirk

Charles Randolph Quirk, Baron Quirk , CBE , FBA (born July 12, 1920 in Lambfell , Isle of Man ; † December 20, 2017 ) was a British linguist , politician and life peer .

Life

Quirk was born to Thomas and Amy Randolph Quirk; the family worked in agriculture. He attended Cronk y Voddy School and Douglas High School as well as King William's College on the Isle of Man and then studied English with Albert Hugh Smith at University College London (UCL) . He began his studies in 1939; however, it was interrupted in 1940 by the Second World War. From 1945 to 1947 he continued his studies, which he completed with a BA . From 1947 to 1954 he was a lecturer in English at UCL, during which time he earned an MA in phonology and a PhD on syntax . From 1951 to 1952 he was a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow at Yale University and the University of Michigan . In 1954 he became a lecturer (reader) at the University of Durham and in 1958 a professor. From 1957 to 1960 Quirk was director (governor) of the Guisborough Grammar School in Cleveland .

Quirk returned to University College London in 1960 and followed Smith as Quain Professor in 1968 ; he held this position until 1981. There he taught Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and history of the English language. Both disciplines belonged to ten areas in the final exam of the Bachelor curriculum. At that time, Old English and Middle English were compulsory subjects along with the history of the English language. He worked closely with AC Gimson and JD O'Connor from the Department of Phonetics (Phonetics Department) together, where he occasionally decreased as examiner oral examinations in phonetics.

Act

Project Survey of English Usage

During the early 1960s, Quirk and some of his colleagues, including Valerie Adams , Derek Davy, and David Crystal , ran the Survey of English Usage project . This compilation of data from the English language compressed a million words that were actually used in everyday life, while earlier grammars made undue use of the canon of English literature.

He received financial support from a Danish publisher and Oxford University Press .

The project was the basis for A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language , a grammatical reference work used worldwide. It was the first grammar that describes the English language in its actual use and is not based on rules that teachers and scholars have designed based on grammatical models from the Latin and Greek languages. These models have long been considered the "correct" models for living English. Rather than prescribing what is correct grammatical usage, Quirk and colleagues presented a more descriptive than normative grammar that also shows that different groups of English speakers have different linguistic usage. They argue that what is actually said is correct.

The project took up much of its time in the 1960s and 1970s. He also worked for the British Council . From 1985 to 1989 he was President of the British Academy . This included lecture tours to Russia , Korea , China and Japan as well as India , Ghana and Nigeria . Quirk took a leave of absence from 1975 to 1976 and spent that period in Iraq and New Zealand .

Project Summer School of English

Quirk enjoyed participating in the London University Summer School of English , whose faculty was considered one of the most important of English teachers worldwide. When the school moved from Queen Elizabeth College to New Cross , interest fell sharply. Quirk's tenure as director lasted from 1959 to 1983, followed by phonetician JD O'Connor.

Membership in the House of Lords

Quirk was named a Life Peer as Baron Quirk, of Bloomsbury in the London Borough of Camden on July 12, 1994 . He gave his inaugural address on October 10, 1994. He was a Crossbencher in the House of Lords .

On the House of Lords website, he indicated education, public communication, health, media, speech pathology and radio as his political interests . In the 1990s he spoke on the subjects of disability, British industry, education, refugees in the Kosovo war and the economic and political development in the Balkans . He spoke up in the 2000s on teacher training, single parents, the death of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and the situation in Iraq .

From 1997 to 2002 he was a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology . Quirk has been present on meeting days regularly since 2001. He attended an average of 130 meeting days during the session each year.

Other offices

Quirk was Chair of the Committee of Inquiry in Speech Therapy Services from 1969 to 1972 and a member of the Senate of London University from 1970 to 1985 . From 1975 to 1980 he was Director (Governor) of the British Institute of Recorded Sound . He was a member of the BBC Archives Committee from 1975 to 1981 . He was chairman (chairman) of the Hornby Educational Trust from 1979 to 1993. In the English Speaking Union (ESU), he worked from 1980 to 1985 was appointed Director (governor) . Quirk was 1981-1985 Vice-Chancellor (Vice-Chancellor) of the University of London .

From 1986 to 1990 he was Vice-President of the Foundation for Science and Technology . At the American School in London he was director (governor) from 1987 to 1989 . During his tenure, he worked on improving the national curriculum.

He was President of the Institute of Linguists from 1983 to 1986. He was Chairman (Chair) of the Anglo-Spanish Foundation from 1983 to 1985. From 1983 to 1991 he was a member of the Board of the British Council . From 1984 to 1996 he was chairman (chairman) of the British Library Advisory Committee . Quirk was a member of the Council of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1985 to 2004.

At Richmond, The American International University in London , he was director (Academic Governor) from 1985 to 2006 . He was a member of the Trustee of the City Technology Colleges from 1986 to 1998. From 1987 to 1995 he was Royal Commissioner at the 1851 Exhibition . He was president of the College of Speech and Language Therapists from 1987 to 1991.

In 1989 Quirk was President of the North of England Educational Conference .

Quirk was a consultant (Consultant) of Pearson Education , the Linguaphone Institute and the Wolfson Foundation . In the latter, he was since 1987 member of the Trusteeship Council (trustee) .

Honors

In 1976 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and in 1985 he was made a Knight Bachelor .

He has received numerous honorary doctorates . Among other things, he received them from the Lund University , the University of Uppsala , the University of Paris , the University of Liege , the Radboud University Nijmegen , the University of Salford , the University of Reading , the University of Leicester , of Newcastle University , the University of Durham , the University of Bath (1985, as Doctor of Letters , D.Litt), the Open University , the University of Essex , Bar Ilan University , the University of Southern California , the University of Westminster , Brunel University , University of Sheffield , University of Glasgow , Charles University in Prague , University of London , Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan , Aston University , Richmond, The American International University in London, University of Copenhagen , University of Bucharest and Queen Margaret University .

He was a Foreign Fellow of the Academia Europaea , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences , the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences , the Finnish Academy of Sciences , the British Academy (since 1975), the Royal Holloway, University of London , Goldsmiths, University of London , Imperial College London , King's College London and Queen Mary, University of London . He was also a Fellow and Research Fellow of UCL and Honorary Master of the Gray's Inn Bar Association .

Personal

Quirk was a supporter of the Labor Party . In 1946 he married Jean Williams, with whom he had two sons. In 1984 he married the German linguist Gabriele Stein , with whom he lived in Germany and England .

Fonts

• The Concessive Relation in Old English Poetry , Gazelle Book Services Ltd, 1954
• Studies in Communication , Secker & Warburg, 1955 (1959 edition) (with AJ Ayer and others)
• An Old English Grammar , Metheun, 1955 (with Charles Leslie Wrenn , an extended edition was published in 1994 in collaboration with SE Deskis )
• Charles Dickens and appropriate language , University of Durham, 1959
• The Teaching of English , Oxford University Press, 1959 (revised 1964) (Editor, with Albert Hugh Smith )
• The Study of the Mother Tongue , HKLewis, 1961, ISBN 978-0718602741
• The Use of English , Longmans, 1962 (expanded edition 1968)
• Systems of Prosodic and Paralinguistic Features in English , Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1964, ISBN 978-9027905741 (with David Crystal )
• A Common Language , London, Reading and Fakenham, 1964, ISBN unknown (with Albert H. Marckwardt )
• Investigating Linguistic Acceptability , Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 1966, ISBN 978-9027905857 (with Jan Svartvik )
• Essays on the English Language- Medieval and Modern , Prentice Hall Press, 1968, ISBN 978-0582523999
• Elicitation Experiments in English , Prentice Hall Press, 1970, ISBN 978-0582524521 (with Sidney Greenbaum )
• A Grammar of Contemporary English , Langenscheidt ELT, 1972, ISBN 978-0582524446 (with Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik)
• The English Language and Images of Matter (Language and language learning, 34) , Oxford University Press, 1972, ISBN 978-0194371216
• A University Grammar of English , Langenscheidt ELT, 1973, ISBN 978-0582552074 (with Sidney Greenbaum)
• The Linguist and the English Language , Hodder & Stoughton Educational, 1974, ISBN 978-0713157437
• Old English Literature: a practical introduction , Hodder Arnold, 1975, ISBN 978-0713158083 (with Valerie Adams , Derek Davy )
• A Corpus of English Conversation , Student Literature , 1980, ISBN 978-9140047403 (with Jan Svartvik)
• Style and Communication in the English Language , Hodder Arnold, 1982, ISBN 978-0713162608
• English in the World , Cambridge University Press, 1985, ISBN 978-0521315227 (with Henry Widdowson )
• A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language , Longman, 1985, ISBN 978-0582517349 (with Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik)
• Words at Work , Singapore University Press, 1986, ISBN 978-9971691028
• English in Use , Longman, 1990, ISBN 978-0582066120 (with Gabriele Stein )
• A Student's Grammar of the English Language , Longman, 1990, ISBN 978-0582059719 (with Sidney Greenbaum)
• An Introduction to Standard English , publisher unknown, 1993, ISBN unknown
• Grammatical and Lexical Variance in English , Longman, 1995, ISBN 978-0582253599

Web links

• Charles Quirk at Hansard (English)
• Randolph Quirk: A selection of Lord Quirk's votes . theyworkforyou (English).
• Voting Record - Lord Quirk (13698) . The Public Whip .
• Lord Quirk . UK Parliament website.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lord Quirk . UK Parliament website , accessed December 21, 2017.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Randolph Quirk . Article on University College London website , based on an interview by Keith Brown with Randolph Quirk, February 2001, accessed December 21, 2017.
3. ^ House of Lords: Members' expenses . House of Lords website , accessed December 21, 2017.