Magic Words for Language Learning

I have discovered a magical phrase that increases my ability to learn Ewe in the field by at least 100%. It took me years to discover these magic words, so pay attention.

In Togo, the assumption that Togolese make in starting a conversation with a white person (yovo) is that the conversation will be in French. They do not really have the idea of a white person speaking Ewe (or Gengbe), perhaps because not many white people do so. If they approach you, the conversation automatically goes to French.

Magic words: “I don’t speak French” (said in Ewe)

Actually, I do speak French, and my French is pretty good, albeit with a very strong west African accent, since I learned to speak French in Togo as a Peace Corps volunteer. I remember when I was in graduate school, the other graduate students would make fun of me. Obviously, I knew how to speak French (even better than they did) but I had a thick accent. So for them, with their ultra-narrow world views, it seemed funny.

But in Togo, I simply refuse all French, except maybe the occasional “bonjour”. Anything past that leads to “Nyemedona Frasegbe o” (I don’t speak French). Then comes the blank stare for a moment, while the person processes this bizarre and unexpected information. Occasionally, there are follow up questions or comments. Here are some I have gotten:

“You are lying.”

“Then, what do you speak?”

“Where are you from?”

“How many years have you been in Togo?”

Once we get past the bewildered stares and clarificational comments, we can start to talk. 

I have learned so much in this way, including the fact that many people in Togo do not speak Ewe all that well, but are forced to try. This happens especially for people from the north who have recently come to the south. They all speak Ewe to some degree or the other, but not all of them are fluent speakers. I am now witness to this great variation in linguistic ability.

I have also learned quite a bit of Gengbe in this way. Anybody in southern Togo will usually speak Gengbe. It is the lingua franca of southern Togo. I do not really speak Gengbe, but by forcing these conversations I am learning more and more.

Would these magic words work for other people in other countries? 

I think that if I had been courageous enough, they could have helped me with Setswana in Botswana, where I faced a similar problem. People automatically assumed that I did not know any Setswana and would speak English. In retrospect, I could have tried “I do not speak English” (Ga ke itse Sekgoa.) That would have been a much harder sell in Botswana. Also, I have less confidence in my Setswana than I do in my Ewe. So it would have been harder to manage. But I should have tried.

Low-Carb in West Africa: A Paradox?

The other night I was sitting around at night with my sister-in-law and my consultant. I had just listed to the Radio Lome news broadcast, so it was around 7:15pm. My sister-in-law prepared a meal of corn porridge (pate in French, akple in Ewe) for everybody. Given my Wegovy regime, I am not usually hungry at night, so I did not eat any. But everybody else had a huge plate of corn porridge with some sauce on the side. I estimated that the plates had three or four heaping cups of corn porridge.

Togo Diary (June July 2026)

This diary is the record of my stay in Togo during June and July of 2026.

My Wegovy Journey

I am in general very slow to start worrying about my health. I tend to think that the medical establishment is a bunch of money hungry hustlers, prone to administering expensive procedures and to robotically writing out prescriptions in order to quickly solve problems. I try to stay away from them as much as possible.

Audio Interview: Fieldwork in My Career (April 3, 2026)

Abstract: This is an interview that I gave on fieldwork in my career. The interviewer is Essivi Collins, my daugther. The venue was a stroll on the busy streets of New York City. We were walking from Washington Square Village to the Hudson, and then we turned right and walked up the Hudson.

Interview

New York Stories: Space Market

Space Market was buzzing. Students circled the buffet scooping food into their dishes. It was 12:30pm, time for lunch. There were at least 10 customers just at the buffet alone.

The little old guy was rutting into the vegetables with his bare fingers, scraping to get one or two more pieces into his hand. He clenched his hand into a fist to hide them, but I caught the white edge of a piece of cauliflower peeking out between his thumb and forefinger. He held his fist to down his side, and when he thought nobody was looking, popped a vegetable into his mouth, chewing it with as little motion as possible. Then he shuffled down a few feet and started the same process with another one of the food trays that had been displayed in the buffet.

The man was short with a bushy grey beard framing his pink lips. He was obviously homeless, by the clothing his was wearing. But I have seen much worse, and by New York standards, he was actually in pretty good shape. Most likely he was one of the many homeless hanging out in Washington Square Park, just across the street, and had made his way over for his lunchtime routine. As he was rutting around, he had a blank expression on his face, which I now believe was part of his way of hiding his activities. The other odd detail was that he did not carry a food tray in his circuit around the buffet. So if you were willing to put two and two together, it was pretty obvious what he was up to.

At the time I was trying to fill my disposable food dish, carefully selecting my proteins, fats, fibers and carbohydrates into a well-balanced meal, which I would take to the front of the store and pay 20 dollars for. When I realized what he was up to, a great wave of nausea passed through me. I felt like I was going to throw up. But I had already filled half of the food dish, so I could not really abandon my task. Instead, I started staring at the old guy trying to get his attention.

When he looked up, our eyes locked. He did not look away, but rather stared back at me, once again with no expression on his face. I was hoping that just by staring at him, he would become dissuaded and leave, but no such luck. He seemed to be saying to me “What are you going to do about it?” The nausea just got worse and worse.

I packed my little meal, putting on a plastic lid, and bending the tinfoil to clamp down on the lid. Then I went to the front of the store to pay. As I left, I said to the cashier, with whom I had a friendly relationship, “There is a little old guy digging into the food with his fingers and eating it.” She looked exasperated and glanced to the back of the store, but did not make any move to call the manager or any other worker at the store. Because I left as quickly as possible, I am not sure how the situation played out. The typical New York response would definitely be to ignore it, hoping it would go away.

I am pretty sure that is the last time I will eat at Space Market.

Where are they now? (written for Peace Corps Togo)

Where Are They Now?

Chris Collins, January 14, 2026

See: Post on Peace Corps Togo

1. Where did you serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer?

I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo from 1985 to 1987. I taught math at the Lycée level, for one year in Notsé and then for a second year in Danyi-Apéyémé.

2. What are you doing now (professionally or personally)?

I am professor of linguistics at New York University. My research interests include linguistic fieldwork in Africa. In particular, I study Ewe, a language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin.

3. How did your Peace Corps Togo experience prepare you for success in your current role or life path? 

My Peace Corps experience laid the foundation for my career as a linguist doing fieldwork in Africa. I learned to speak Ewe, which I have continued working on for my whole career.

If you are curious, here is a picture of my cohort in the Peace Corps:

https://ordinaryworkinggrammarian.blogspot.com/2021/04/peace-corps-togo-1985.html

Here is a summary of my career:

https://ordinaryworkinggrammarian.blogspot.com/2024/11/biographical-notes-technology-review.html#more

Here are some notes on my recent trip to Togo (summer 2025):

https://ordinaryworkinggrammarian.blogspot.com/2025/06/togo-diary-june-july-2025.html#more

4. What is one skill or lesson from service that you still use today?

The Peace Corps taught me basic life skills about working in a foreign country and thinking outside of the box in order to get things done. I also learned to appreciate the people of Togo who showed me so much support, even when their lives were materially much more difficult than mine.

Some other smaller skills are listed here:

https://ordinaryworkinggrammarian.blogspot.com/2019/10/ten-things-i-learned-in-peace-corps.html

5. Any advice you’d give to current or future Volunteers?

Your time in Togo might be the most interesting and intense period in your entire life. Keep a journal, and send regular letters home. You will love to look back at them later. 

The Personality of a Syntactician

I have written this blog post to highlight some personality traits of syntacticians (Ordinary Working Grammarians). It is meant for both linguists and non-linguists.

You know you are a syntactician when….

1.

You are talking to somebody, but start to drift off because they just produced an interesting sentence.

2.

After explaining the fine points of Spanish grammar to your friend, they are surprised to learn that you do not speak a single word of it.

3.

You try to steer the conversation in the direction of interesting syntactic constructions, and your friends and family roll their eyes and snicker, saying ‘Here we go again!’

4.

You obsess over an interesting new sentence you have just noticed, even losing sleep.

5.

You tend to gravitate towards being with other syntacticians, with whom you can discuss ‘cool facts’.

6.

You pester your friends and family by asking for grammaticality judgments, even your own children.

7.

When reading a novel, you sometimes stop in the middle of a page to think about the structure of sentences. 

8.

You love to talk to foreigners because of the interesting grammatical patterns in their speech.

9.

You view your knowledge of English as your own personal syntactic database.

My Principal Contributions to Syntactic Theory

I list my top contributions to syntactic theory. Each of these contributions is either a theoretical innovation and/or a major empirical discovery or exploration. The main criteria for inclusion in the list is: The subjective impact that they have already had on syntactic theory, or the potential impact. In other words, they are not chosen based on citation indices. They are listed roughly in order of subjective impact. 

I have worked on many other very interesting empirical problems including conjunction adverbs, relative clause deletion, negating quantifier phrases, neg-raising, pluractionality, verbal linkers, null prepositions, serial verb constructions, why versus how come, etc. All of these studies have been influential in their own way, in their own corner of the field, but they have more limited theoretical or empirical scope, so I do not include them in the list below.

1. Imposters (with Paul Postal)

Even though the DP 'yours truly' is third person singular, it refers to the speaker. Collins and Postal (2012) refer to this kind of DP as an imposter. The syntactic analysis presented there analyzes imposters as having an outer 'shell' an inner 'core', each having a distinct set of phi-features. The discovery and analysis of imposters has the potential to completely change how we view pronominal systems cross-linguistically.

2. Theory of Implicit Arguments

An implicit argument is an understood unexpressed argument. For example, if you say 'The book was written last year', it is understood that the book was written by somebody (or something in the case of a book written by AI). Implicit arguments have been recognized as an important part of syntactic theory since the seminal work of Tom Roeper. But most theories tend toward the idea of 'semantically present, syntactically absent.' I challenge all that with detailed and systematic evidence showing implicit arguments must be syntactically projected. The diagnostics that I developed have already been applied successfully in Buli, Ewe, Greek and Oshiwambo, in addition to English. My theory of implicit arguments has consequences for the analysis of the passive cross-linguistically, but also for general principles governing the syntax-semantic interface.

3. Smuggling Derivations

Locality of movement has been an important topic at least since Chomsky 1964 (LBLT), and Ross' 1967 thesis. Smuggling describes a way that locality constraints can be circumvented. A constituent X contained in Y is smuggled out of a locality constraint by movement of Y (Y is the smuggler). Since I proposed smuggling derivations in 2005 in the context of the derivation of the passive, they have become the focus of intense study from many corners, see collected papers in Belletti and Collins 2020.

4. Formalizing Minimalist Syntax (with Edward Stabler)

Minimalist syntax is formal theory of the syntactic aspects of the human capacity for language. In the past, discussions of subtle theoretic aspects of the theory often had a vague hand-wavy quality. My formalization with Edward Stabler has completely recast those discussions, making it possible to state hypotheses in a precise testable manner. For example, the formalization in Collins and Stabler 2016 has led to important theoretical discussions of the distinction between copies and repetitions, and the place of workspaces in syntactic derivations.

5. Quotative Inversion (with Phil Branigan)

In English, the subject usually precedes the main verb. But there is a systematic exception to this generalization with quotative inversion: "I am leaving." said John. In this example, the verb 'said' precedes the subject 'John'. In 1996, we gave a detailed analysis of the syntactic properties of quotative inversion, including the transitivity constraint. Since then, the transitivity constraint has become an important challenge for theories of locality and argument structure.

6. Eliminating Labels (Simplest Merge)

The original formulation of Merge produced a label: Merge(A,B) = {A, {A,B}}, where A is the label. I argued in Collins 1997 and Collins 2002 for simplest Merge, where Merge(A,B) = {A,B}. A different set of converging arguments for simplest Merge were given in Seely 2006. Since Chomsky 2013 (POP), simplest Merge has become the standard in minimalist syntax.

7. Morphology as Syntax (with Richard Kayne)

Morphology of syntax (MaS) is a research program that asks the question of whether morphological phenomena can be accounted for syntactically, without any reference to a morphological component.

Summary

Taken together these contributions reflect several consistent threads in my research. A major feature of my work is a commitment to deep empirical exploration of particular phenomena (e.g., imposters, quotative inversion), revealing new and interesting generalizations, connections to other languages, and surprising insights into the structure of the human language faculty. Equally important is a commitment to articulating highly syntactic analyses of various phenomena, and comparing them to alternative non-syntactic accounts (e.g., MaS). Lastly, my work is defined by a commitment to a deep understanding of the theoretical foundations of the field of natural language syntax. These three strands woven together define my contributions as a syntactician.

My Day (Friday, December 12, 2025)

Objective: To give the reader an idea of the texture and contours of my day as an academic.

Context: The semester ended Wednesday, so there are no classes or other schedule activities.

1.

Every day before coming to the office, I set my goals for that day. My goal for today is to finish reading Syntax I papers (nine all together, 11 to 30 pages long) and to submit grades for that class.

2. [8:15am]

I arrive at the office. I make sure my office is set up the way I like it, and put my tea in the microwave. [5 minutes]

3.

I receive some follow up remarks from the editor (of CHMP) on my paper “Distinguishing Copies and Repetitions” (with Erich Groat). I reply to the editor’s comments. [15 minutes]

4.

My student ZW has written to me asking him to check some sound files for transcription. He wants a second opinion. I struggle with the transcriptions, but send some comments anyway. I ask him to send more minimal pairs. The back and forth about the sound files goes on most of the morning. [15 minutes plus]

5.

My student ON wants to post their QP on Lingbuzz, and has sent me an e-version to look over. I decide to focus on one particular section. I read it, and send some comments. Then I write to them on Whatsapp too, explaining my comments. [15 minutes]

6.

A prestigious journal writes to me and asks me to review a paper. I study the abstract, and agree to review it, even though I know it is going to take me at least half a day to do the review, and the paper will probably not be that interesting. It is a service to the community. [5 minutes]

7.

All my e-mail has now been cleared (after 1 hour of work), so I reward myself with a second cup of green tea. 

I had to quite coffee a decade ago because if I drink it, I cannot sleep at night. I had to quit diet coke last year, because of health problems. I am left with green tea, which I fortunately enjoy a great deal.

8.

I return to the objective for the day: grading Syntax I papers. 

9.

I finish grading Syntax I papers around noon. Then I calculate the grades for the semester, and try to enter them into the system called Albert. But the system is very slow, probably because there are too many people entering grades now. I will come back to it later in the day.

I now realize that I made a big mistake in the course. I let the students optionally hand in a draft around mid-November. But not everybody did. The people who handed in drafts mostly did better than the people who did not. Next time I teach either Syntax I or II (at the graduate level), rough drafts will be a required part of the syllabus.

10.

Field Methods papers are due today by the end of the day, but only one person has handed in the paper so far (by around 12:30pm). I print it out, so I can read it after lunch. The others will come in gradually during the day. 

I cannot really read papers on a computer screen, especially if there are more than a few of them. It hurts my eyes.

11. [12:30pm]

I order a low-carb lunch from a nearby diner by phone: cheeseburger (no bun), side salad, pickle and small side of coleslaw. They give good sized portions, so it is filling. I walk to go pick up the lunch in order to get some fresh air. 

I sit my office and listen to 70s songs. My student JDS writes me on Whatsapp and tells me about an upcoming job interview. We go back and forth on that a bit. [1 hour all together for lunch]

12. 

I look through my physical mail that I brought from home this morning. I have not picked up mail in a month, so there is quite a bit of sorting. [15 minutes]

13. 2:00pm

I start reading the Field Methods papers. I now have three, since two came in over lunch. The papers are 19, 27, 28 pages long. The other papers will come in later tonight, and I will read them on Monday.

14. [4:00pm]

I finish reading the three papers from Field Methods.

15.

I recheck Albert to see if I can enter grades for Syntax I. It is working, so I enter the grades.

16. [4:20]

I get ready to go home. I pack up my bag, and leave.

Chris Collins: A Portrait of a Syntactician (written by ChatGPT)

 Chris Collins, Professor of Linguistics at NYU, is a theoretically oriented scholar whose work is defined by clarity, formal rigor, and a systematic approach to syntactic structure. His analytical style emphasizes explicit proposal-building, precise formulation of predictions, and careful methodological control, reflecting a view of syntax as a craft refined through sustained practice and intellectual seriousness.

As a teacher, Collins is strongly committed to mentorship and to the development of essential skills in students. His instructional philosophy centers on structured reasoning, clear argumentation, and the principled use of formal representations, demonstrating a belief that rigorous training is foundational to serious linguistic inquiry.

His engagement with linguistic fieldwork shows an equally strong empirical commitment. Collins approaches lesser-described languages with curiosity, respect, and attention to ethical practice, valuing both the scientific and human dimensions of documentation. He treats firsthand investigation as an essential complement to theoretical work.

As a scholar, Collins is reflective, steady, and focused on substance rather than academic display. His manner suggests long experience with theoretical debates combined with an unwavering commitment to clarity, integrity, and intellectual seriousness. He is driven by the desire to understand how language works, to refine analytic tools, and to guide others in developing the skills required for rigorous linguistic research.

Syntax Interface Lecture, Utrecht (Introductory Remarks by Lex Cloin-Tavenier)

Introduction Chris Collins's Syntax Interface Lecture at Utrecht University (December 4 2025)

(posted with the permission of Lex)

It is my pleasure to introduce today's speaker, professor Chris Collins from New York University, and tell you a little about him.

Chris received his B.S. in mathematics from MIT in 1985. After that, his time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo ignited a lifelong interest in comparative linguistics, as he tried to learn the Togolese language Ewe. This interest eventually culminated in his PhD thesis titled Topics in Ewe Syntax, completed in 1993, again at MIT, under the supervision of Ken Hale.

Since graduating, Chris has held various different professorships in several departments around the globe, including full professor at Cornell University, invited professor at Université Paris 7, and visiting professorships at the University of Legon, Ghana, and the University of Botswana. He has been a full professor at New York University since 2006.

For the research in one of his areas of expertise, comparative African syntax, he has made many trips to do field work over the years to parts of Africa where Ewe and notably also Khoisan languages are spoken, like Togo and Botswana. Among other things, this has resulted in no less than six grammars and dictionaries of African languages to his name.

Another area of expertise is theoretical syntax. In this work, he focuses on fundamental issues in Minimalist syntax and its interfaces. Examples include his work on the role of smuggling in argument structure, joint work with Daniel Seely on the labelling algorithm, and his collaboration with Richard Kayne on their model of Morphology as Syntax.

Nearly all of this information can be found on his blog https://ordinaryworkinggrammarian.blogspot.com/, where he actively keeps the world at large informed on his current thoughts, endeavors, and musings (both big and bigger).

Today, he will give a talk on a topic that touches closely on the contents of his latest MIT Press book Principles of Argument Structure: A Merge-Based Approach, which was recently nominated by the Linguistic Society of America as a finalist in consideration for the 2026 Bloomfield award.

Chris, on behalf of our SIL organization, I'd like to offer you our congratulations on this nomination, and, more pressingly, the floor.

Lex Cloin-Tavenier. 

My Trip to Google (November 21, 2025)

These are photos from my fieldwork expedition to the Google office space in lower Manhattan (near 8th avenue and 15th street). I was invited by an old NYU student (a syntactician naturally), who now works as a hotshot programmer for Google. I accepted with the goal of finding out as much as I could about the Google office space and culture. I was not disappointed. 

I left the department at 11:20 to walk there, but it only took me 15 minutes, even at my slow hobbling pace. It is very close by. So I waited outside talking to my student for 20 minutes before our host arrived.

I also took this opportunity to find out about how to pitch my idea for a 'Noam Chomsky Award' to Google. My idea is that the award will be administered by LSA, but there should be a cash prize (10,000-100,000 dollars). One idea is that Google could sponsor the award. I thought it would be a nice community/academic tie in for them, because of the importance of natural language to their products (e.g., Chrome, Gemini).

Below is the huge neon sign you see when you first enters the building. The only way to enter the building is by invitation, and even then you need a government sponsored ID. Without it, they will turn you away. I know this because one of our group members was turned away.

We headed right to the cafeteria. They had a wide range of standard NYC food, including Indian food, middle eastern, a souther barbecue (with collard greens, naturally), a huge salad bar. I am living with a low carb diet now, but I had no problem finding tasty dishes. I ate a salad, some falafel, and two pieces of delicious curry chicken. The cuisine was a all of a very high quality. The best part -- it is totally free. You just take your food, and eat (and then clear your own plates). Employees can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there for free every day of the week, saving thousands of dollars throughout the year (and making them much more efficient and happy workers, I suppose).

Afterwards, we headed to a terrace on the same floor to look out over the city. Beautiful views! If I worked there, I would eat lunch on the terrance every single day.

Below is yours truly soaking in the sunshine.

Apparently in the photo below, you can see Bobst library, just to the left of the white building (once again, attesting to the physical proximity of Google to the department).

Then we went to the top floor to look out over the city.

I did some fieldwork to find the workers at play: pool tables, pingpong tables, just ways to blow off steam. As we were roaming the hallways, I noticed signs pointing to an exercise room, but I did not enter, so I do not know what kind of facilities they have. I know that they do not have a swimming pool, because I asked about that.

And to top it all off, there was a huge Lego wall, where you could go and grab some Legos to play with, although nobody was playing with them when we passed by.

A few more things I learned: Google workers only need to work at the office two days per week. The rest of the time, they can work at home. So the workers do not have a fixed desk space, but rather a fixed working area that they go to (an area behind glass walls). They all have lockers, so they can store things in the locker when they work at home.

CV (2025)

 Here is an updated version of my CV.

Please let me know if you need any of the papers listed there.

CV (2025)

Retirement Plan

Goals: 

i.  To retire after the age 65 in order to receive Medicare benefits.

ii. To retire by the age of 67 (or earlier) in order to receive NYU retirement package.

Age Year Activity

62 2025-2026 Teaching

63 2026-2027 Teaching

64 2027-2028 Sabbatical Togo (Full Year)

65 2028-2029 Reduced Teaching, NYU Option C 

(or Full Teaching, NYU Option A)

66 2029-2030 Reduced Teaching, NYU Option C 

(or Full Teaching, NYU Option A)

67 2030-2031 Retirement (location???)

Source:

NYU Tenured Faculty Retirement Program

https://www.nyu.edu/about/leadership-university-administration/office-of-the-president/office-of-the-provost/academic-policies-procedures/tenured-faculty-retirement-program.html

 

Togo Diary (June July 2025)

August 2 Saturday

I got into Newark just before 8pm last night. The flight was a transitional zone from me, from one life to another. A kind of dead buffer zone linking my two lives. It is a part of travel that I am least interested in. In fact, I dread it.

Remembering Haj Ross

When I was an undergraduate at MIT (1982-1985), I took Ken Hale’s graduate introduction to syntax. I remember a large guy in the back of the room asking difficult questions throughout the semester. I thought to myself, “How could I think of such questions to ask?” He turned out to be Haj Ross, another professor at MIT. He was taking Ken’s course to catch up on the so-called Government and Binding (GB) framework. 

After that, while still an undergraduate, I signed up for Haj’s seminar on Islands. There were very few people in the class (only 2 or 3 as I recall). He could go on about any syntax topic, bringing up endless interesting examples and counter-examples from English and other languages. He was one of my earliest models for what a syntactician is supposed to be like.

One day, as we were heading to the soda machine during break, he called the cans of soda “industrial sludge” and he told me an anecdote about the Navajo: when they make rugs, they intentionally leave a small error in the rug. I may be mistaken, but I think he wanted to tell me that no work is perfect, and that the imperfections are part of the beauty of the work. That little piece of wisdom has helped me finish writing many papers.

Later in my student days, I heard one professor refer to Haj (somewhat derisively) as ‘a walking counter-example’. But to me his facility with language and English syntax was something of a miracle.

I tried to stay in contact with him, especially later when I got to NYU (2005) and started collaborating with Paul Postal. I would send Haj papers from time to time, and he would send me observations. I was looking forward to learning all kinds of things from him. I had been asking him questions about what it was like to study with Zellig Harris, and he would answer. Now, there is nobody left to ask about that. Here is an excerpt:

“After his syntax class (there were about 25 of us, crunched into a small room, with not enough chairs for us all, none of us cared, we were in the Holy Presence, we knew our great good luck).   At the end of class, some of us would come up to him, with suggestions, questions, requests for a time to see him, the usual. And some questions about syntax. Nothing interesting to report on all of the above, except the questions about syntax. Most of those he would answer immediately, vocally.  But sometimes, rarely, the questioner would have hit something which pierced through to a higher level. He would reach into his righthand pocket of the decrepit jacket he always wore, and pull out a 3X5 yellow pad, and wrote down something that had caught his fancy. After writing it, the pad would go back to its invisible home. Of course, I longed to have a pocketable, 3X5-paddable question to go into the sacred pocket…I can still hope that maybe something that I had asked made it into the sacred pocket.”

Lastly, here is a great syntax observation from Haj, that I just dug up from e-mail today. As far as I know, nobody has ever pursued this observation, which is like a golden nugget.

Fellow negationists –

Just when you thought nothing else could possibly raise:

From an old folk song:

Oh the Erie was a-rising

And the gin was a-gettin’ low

And I scarcely think

We’ll get a drink

Till we get to Buffalo

Till we get to Buffalo.

NB:  *We’ll get a drink till we get to Buffalo.

Peace and Happy New Year!

Haj

2025 NYU Doctoral Convocation

On Thursday May 8th, 2025, I attended the NYU Doctoral Convocation. The reason I was there was that my student, Selikem, requested that I attend so that I could ‘hood’ him. This was my first time to attend a college graduation ceremony during my time at NYU, and during my whole life. 

I arrived at Silver Center (Heights Alumni Lounge) at 9:00am Thursday, carrying my robe, hood and cap in a bag. Soon after, the other professors started filing in, most of them already wearing their ‘regalia’. You are supposed to wear regalia that matches the institution where you got your graduate degree. So I should have worn MIT colors. But when I ordered the robe from Herff, they just sent me black (which does not look like the MIT colors, which are red and silver-grey and really nice looking). The hat was also too small. The did agree to send me a larger hat, but I was not able to get MIT colors.

Once everybody was assembled, at around 11:00am, we filed out of the Silver Center, into Washington Square Park, which is in effect, a park owned by NYU. We went around the fountain in the center of the park, and then took a left to go into the Skirball Center across the street. 

As we were going to the auditorium, a security person asked me (but nobody else in the faculty line) if I had a ticket. I barely comprehended the question and said ‘what?’. Then they said ‘never mind’ and let me through. This is the curse of being a tall heavy person, you always attract attention.

Upon entering the auditorium, the faculty where seated on the stage. My number in the line was 50, and my chair was labeled with my name. Every faculty member on the stage was responsible for ‘hooding’ some graduate student. In the audience were the students (200-300 hundred) and then hundreds of other guests, mostly the families of the students, I imagine.

After several speeches, the hooding started. The students filed into the stage one-by-one, each holding their hoods. Then their designated faculty member took the hood from them, and the student turned and faced the audience. The faculty member fit the hood over the head of the student, and they either hugged or shook hands. After that, the student went back to sit in the audience.

Wearing the robe, hood and cap made me hot and thirsty. In addition, we were all sitting on a well-lighted stage facing an audience of hundreds of people. The organizers provided a little bottle of water for each of us, under the chairs, but I was afraid to drink it, because there did not seem like any way to use the restroom (once on the stage).

In our department this year, there were three graduates getting hooded. So after the ceremony we all went over to Washington Square Park and took some group photos. After taking pictures, I left the park at around 1:00pm. 

The ceremony provides a formal way for the student to gain closure and to transition from one period to the other. It also provides a nice context for the whole family to recognize the student’s achievements, and for the student to implicitly thank the family for always being there for him or her. In my case, it was a pleasure to be able to hood my student Selikem. I have greatly enjoyed working with him these last few years, advising him and watching his progress.  I include a picture of us below, taken by his wife Mawusi.

My Y-DNA Haplogroup

 My Y-DNA Haplogroup is I-FT2223. Some information is given in the file pasted below.  If you share my haplogroup or any haplogroup downstream from I-M223, please let me know.

A partial I-FT2223 ancestral path is:

A-PR2921 > A-L1090 > A-V168 > A-V221 > BT-M42

> CT-M168 > CF-P143 > F-M89 > GHIJK-F1329 > HIJK-PF3494 

> IJK-L15 > IJ-P124 > I-L758 > I-M170 > I-P215 (I2) > I-CTS2257 

> I-L460 > I-P214 > I-M223 > I-P222 > I-CTS616 > I-CTS10057 

> I-Z161 > I-CTS4348 > I-L801 > I-Z178 > I-Z165 > I-CTS6433 

> I-S2364 > I-ZS3 > I-Y4924 > I-Y4928 > I-L1272 > I-Y5715

> I-FT112201 > I-Y5717 > I-Y5718 > I-FT2223

Top Likes and Dislikes of Working in Academics (Revised)

After more than three decades working in academics (graduated from MIT 1993), this is a small list of things that I like and dislike the most. I understand that my position at a private university in the United States is very privileged. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for having my job. 

I believe that this list might be useful to somebody starting their career, and wondering whether academics is right for them. I would love to hear feedback from others on their experiences.