Professor Richard M. Hogg, distinguished historian of English and contributing co-editor of the multi-volume Cambridge History of the English Language, died recently of a heart attack at the age of 63. I first met him when I was an undergraduate and he was a junior lecturer, and I liked him enormously (hey, everyone did). I saw far too little of him over the subsequent decades, while he worked at the University of Manchester and I at the University of California. I was looking forward to seeing him again now that we once again both reside in the UK. It was a shock to learn that it is now too late. There is an excellent obituary in today's Guardian, written by Richard's colleague Nigel Vincent, who paints a clear picture of this warm and delightful human being. Richard's death deprives us of the second volume of a major grammar of Old English (almost complete when he died) and a history of English dialectology (reportedly three-quarters complete).
Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at September 24, 2007 08:09 AM