PROF Nigel Fabb
professor of literary linguistics
6.35 LIVINGSTONE TOWER
Tel : +44 (0)141 548 3799 (Ext. 3799)
Current Research
I am currently writing my tenth book, for Cambridge University Press, which will be on the typology of verse in the world's literatures. It will include some of the work on aesthetics which I have been writing and talking about in the past few years, including the problems of creativity/inspiration and (profound) ineffability.
I currently supervise two PhD students. They are Steven Paton (working on repetition in Burroughs, Stein and other authors), and Gary Thoms (working on experimental 20th century work in English, French and Russian, and its relation to the rules of syntax, morphology and pragmatics). Including other visitors, we are part of a Literary Linguistics Advanced Research group.
The Ma'di grammar which Mairi Blackings and I co-authored has been used as one of the bases for an orthographic standardisation proposal: Blackings, Mairi; Samuel Andema; Sibrino Forojalla; Eluzai Mogga Ladu; Nathania Banja Yoasa. 2009. A Unified Standard Orthography Of Ma'di- Moru (Ti Alu) Languages. Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society. Monograph no.230.
Biographical
Educated at Kings College, Cambridge (English); and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (linguistics, PhD supervised by Noam Chomsky). Harkness Fellow 1980-1982. Secretary of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 1989-1995. Head of the Department of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde from 2003-2006. An editor of Journal of Linguistics since 1997.
"Verbal art in oral cultures: what questions to ask, and why the answers are interesting." School of Oriental and African Studies, March 23 2010.
9. Fabb, N. and M. Halle. 2008. Meter in
Poetry. A new theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 297.
8. Blackings, M. and N. Fabb. 2003. A Grammar of Ma'di. Berlin: Mouton. pp.734. (A grammar of the Central Sudanic language Ma'di.)
7. Fabb, N. 2002. Language and literary structure: the linguistic analysis of form in verse and narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.230.
6. Fabb, N. 1997 Linguistics and literature: language in the verbal arts of the world. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 297. Also published 2006 in Spanish translation.
5. Fabb, N. 1994 Sentence structure. London: Routledge. pp.144. Second edition 2005; pp.122
4. Fabb, N. and A. Durant. 1993. How to write essays, dissertations and theses in literary studies. London: Longman. pp. 143. Second edition 2005 published as How to Write Essays and Dissertations: A Guide for English Literature Students.
3. Montgomery, M., A. Durant , N. Fabb, T. Furniss, and S. Mills. 1992 Ways of reading: advanced reading skills for students of English literature. London: Routledge. pp.257. Second edition 2000; pp.369. Third edition 2006.
2. Durant, A. and N. Fabb. 1990. Literary studies in action. London: Routledge. pp 224.
1. Fabb, N., D. Attridge, A. Durant and C. MacCabe. eds. 1987. The linguistics of writing: Arguments between language and literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press and New York: Methuen. pp. 325. Translated into Spanish as Fabb, N., D. Attridge, A. Durant and C. MacCabe. eds. 1989. Culler/Derrida/Fish/Jameson - La Linguistica de la Escritura. Madrid: Visor.
Fabb, N. forthcoming.
Is literary language a development of ordinary language?
Lingua.
Fabb, N. 2009.
Why is verse poetry?
PN Review.
Fabb, N. 2009.
Symmetric
and asymmetric relations, and the aesthetics of form in poetic language.
European English Messenger.
18/1,
50-59.
Fabb, N.
2009.
Teaching and
Learning Guide for: Linguistics in the Study and Teaching of Literature.
Language
and Linguistics Compass
.
Fabb, N. 2008. Linguistics in the Study and Teaching of Literature. Linguistics and Language Compass.
Fabb, N. and M. Halle. 2006 Metrical complexity in Christina Rossetti's verse.
College Literature
32.2, 91-114.
Fabb, N. and M. Halle. 2006 Telling the numbers: a unified
account of syllabo-tonic English and syllabic Polish and French verse.
Research in Language
4. 5-30.
Fabb, N. and Hutchison, I. 2005 "... and remmain yoor obeddeend omble zervand": the invented spelling system of William Baillie of Dunain (1789-1869)
Transactions of the Philological Society
103:3, 323-338.
Fabb, N. 2004. Form as fiction.
Belgian Journal of English Language and Literatures
, New series 2, 63-73.
Fabb, N. 2003. Metrical rules and the notion of ``maximum'': a reply to Derek Attridge.
Language and Literature,
12: 73-80
Fabb, N. 2002. The metres of Dover Beach.
Language and Literature
, 11: 99-117.
Fabb, N.. 2001. Weak monosyllables in iambic verse and the communication of metrical form.
Lingua
, 110: 771-790
Fabb, N. 1999. Verse constituency and the locality of alliteration.
Lingua, 108: 223-245
Fabb, N. 1992. Reduplication and Object movement in Ewe and Fon.
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics
, 13: 1-39.
Fabb, N. 1992. The Licensing of Fon Verbs. J
ournal of West African Languages
21: 1-9.
Fabb, N. 1990.
The difference between English restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses.
Journal of Linguistics
, 26: 57-77.
Fabb, N. 1988. English suffixation is constrained only by selectional restrictions.
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 6: 527-539.
Durant, A. and N. Fabb. 1987. Ten years on in the Linguistics of Writing.
Prose Studies
10: 51-71.
Fabb, N. (forthcoming)
Linguistics and literature.
The Handbook of Linguistics
,
second edition, edited by M. Aronoff and J. Rees-Miller. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fabb, N. and M. Halle. (forthcoming) Counting in verbal art. The Cognition of Literature . Yale University Press.
Fabb, N. and M. Halle. (forthcoming) Grouping in the stressing of words, in metrical verse, and in music. Language and Music as Cognitive Systems . Oxford University Press.
Fabb, N.
and M. Halle. 2009.
Pairs and trplets: a theory of
metrical verse.
Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms. From
language to metrics and beyond.
Edited by Jean-Louis Aroui and Andy Arleo. John Benjamins.
pp. 167-192.
Fabb. N. 2009.
Formal interactions in poetic meter.
Versatility in Versification:
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Metrics.
Edited by
Tonya Kim Dewey and Frog.
Peter Lang. pp.147-165.
Fabb, N. 2006. Generated metrical form and implied metrical form. In E. Dresher and N. Friedberg (eds) Formal Approaches to Poetry. Berlin: Mouton
Fabb, N. 2006. Approaches to linguistics. Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics Second Edition Elsevier
Fabb, N. 2002. Complex implied form, leisure pursuits, and cultural studies. In Hans Lauge Hansen (ed) Changing philologies; contributions to the redefinition of foreign language studies in the age of globalization. Museum Tusculanum Press 2002
Fabb, N. 2001. Language and Literature. in N. Smelser and P. Bates eds. The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences. Elsevier. 2001 (vol 12, pp.8282-7)
Fabb, N. 2000. Linguistics and Literature. In The Handbook of Linguistics, edited by M. Aronoff and J. Rees-Miller, 446-465. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fabb, N. 1999. Relative Clauses. In Concise Encyclopedia of Grammatical Categories, edited by K. Brown and J. Miller. Elsevier.
Fabb, N. 1998. Compounding. In The Handbook of Morphology, edited by A. Zwicky and A. Spencer, 66-83. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fabb, N. 1995. The density of response: a problem for literary criticism and cognitive science. In Linguistic Approaches to Literature: papers in literary stylistics (Discourse Analysis Monographs 17), edited by J.Payne and J. Wheatley, 143-157. Birmingham: University of Birmingham.
Fabb, N. 1993. Relative Clauses. In The Pergamon Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Pergamon and Aberdeen University Press.
Fabb, N. 1992. Things to make and do: some new ways of teaching undergraduate literature. In Channels of Communication, edited by Hobsbaum, Lyons, McGhee, 203-212. Glasgow: University of Glasgow.
Fabb, N. 1990. The Language of Signs. In The Guinness Encyclopedia, 610-11.
Fabb, N. 1988. Doing affixation in the GB Syntax. In Morphology and Modularity, edited by M. Everaert, A. Evers, R. Huybregts, M Trommeln. Dordrecht: Foris. pp. 129-145
Fabb, N. and A. Durant 1987 'Introduction' in Fabb et al. (eds) The Linguistics of Writing. Manchester: Manchester UP. pp.1-14, A. Durant and N. Fabb 1987 'New courses in the linguistics of writing', in Fabb et al. (eds) The Linguistics of Writing. Manchester: Manchester UP. pp.224-240.
Fabb, N. and M. Halle. 2010. Dylan Thomas's syllabic verse, polymeters, and Bracketed Grid Theory. Linguistic Society of America, parasession on metrical poetry.
Fabb, N. 2010. The Linguistics of Surprise. CUNY Phonology Forum. Invited speaker.
Fabb, N. 2008. What is a line of verse? (conference:) European Society for the Study of English, Aarhus Denmark. Invited speaker.
Fabb, N. 2008. Limits on complexity in metrical verse. (conference:) The Branches of Poetry, Reykholt Iceland. Invited speaker.
Fabb, N. and Jonathan Sawday (2008) Blanks. Architexture conference, University of Strathclyde.
Fabb, N. and M. Halle. 2007. The grid. (conference:) Conference on Language and Music as Cognitive Systems. Cambridge UK. Keynote speaker.
Fabb, N. and M. Halle. 2007. Alliteration and Metre in Beowulf. Conference: Alliteration in Culture, organized by the Folklore Society at the Warburg Institute.
Fabb, N., 2006. Counting in verbal art. Invited speaker. Literature and Cognitive Science. Storrs, CT.
Fabb, N., 2005 The aesthetics of poetic metre. Invited speaker. Metrics and Versification: the State of Play. Cambridge University.
Fabb, N., 2005. Pairs and triplets: universals of metrical verse. invited speaker. Conference on the typology of metrical forms.
Fabb, N., 2005. Propositions and their attribution: the aesthetics of reading the walls. Scottish Word and Image Group Dundee 2005.
Fabb, N., 2004. New Methods In Literary Linguistics And Their Relevance For Linguistics And Literature Students. Linguistics sub ject centre event (for which I was also organizer). London, November 26 2004
Fabb N, and M.Halle 2004. Algorithms and aesthetics: metrical form in poetry. American Society for Aesthetics annual meeting Houston, 2004.
Fabb, N., 2003. Literary form as content / literary form as fiction. Keynote address. 27th Atlantic Provinces Linguistics Association meeting, Prince Edward Island.
Fabb, N., 2003. Lines. Invited speaker. Words and Music Conference, Columbia Missouri.
Fabb, N., and M. Blackings. 2003. Language tutorial on Madi. Linguistics Association of Great Britain, Oxford.
Fabb, N., 2002. How does literary form hold of a literary text? Paper presented at the conference on Relevance Theory and Literature, Huddersfield.
In 2009-10 I will be teaching the 'reading and writing' strand of the first year English classes (shared with Eleanor Bell and Elspeth Jajdelska), a third/fourth year class Ways of Reading, and a third/fourth year class Meaning in Language, Literature and Culture, and undergraduate and postgraduate theses.
My Erdös number is 6 (Fabb > Halle > Chomsky > Schützenberger > Eilenberg > Niven > Paul Erdös)
My Bacon number is 3 (Fabb > Kevin Allen > Michael Paul Chan > Kevin Bacon)
Therefore, my Erdös-Bacon number is 9.