You’ve likely never stopped to think about the structure of a sentence or paused to ponder why you pronounce a word the way you do, but Dan Siddiqi does this on a daily basis.
Siddiqi joined the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies for a year-long appointment as an assistant professor. Siddiqi, a morphologist, studies how words are built. For example, he might question why the word “cats” offers an “s” sound at the end, while “dogs” uses a “z” sound. He also may question why a word such as “likely” takes on “unlikely”, while “possible” takes on “impossible.” Siddiqi reveals that the reasoning is Latin words use “in” while other words use “un”.
“We talk all the time and we never think about how we do this ridiculously complicated thing,” says the professor.
Siddiqi just wrapped up two third year classes; a syntax course, which examined how sentences are built, and a comparative syntactic theory course which explored the four competing theories of syntax.
As Siddiqi explains, unlike other sciences such as physics or math where the theories are hundreds of years old, syntax theories are still in their infancy as they have only been around for the past 50 years and are still competing.
Siddiqi sees his job as two-fold: “The first part is to get people to think about language. The second is to advance humankind’s understanding of language, which will ultimately advance our knowledge of humankind.” As Siddiqi says, “Language is the one thing that makes us different from every other animal on the planet.”
This year, Siddiqi asked his students to explore a language they had never seen before and compare it with English. Among the many interesting language rules they discovered, they found that verbs always have to come second in German, and adjectives and nouns have to agree with one another in Spanish.
The large handmade card pinned to Siddiqi’s bulletin board is a testament to how much his students appreciate his teaching. Inside the card is a thank you along with a plea for him not to return to the U.S. in June. The front of the card contains a sentence diagram or “tree” which states, “Canada has adopted Dan”.
“I love it here,” admits Siddiqi despite his pending return south of the border.
Siddiqi explains that he never intended to apply for positions outside of the U.S., but he was convinced otherwise by Carleton’s interesting program and faculty. “Everyone seemed so happy and there was so much collaborative work between cognitive science and linguistics. The student interest in social sciences and linguistics here made the offer too good to pass up,” says Siddiqi. “Carleton has really got their act together.”