Yes, Jim made sure that there was always a humane dimension in our socio-academic lives. The past few days of immense sorrow, of a terrible sense of loss, and of emotional confusion reflect something that Jim McCawley played a key role in fostering in this Department: a small family of some sort, in which we have been able to be students and faculty and yet interact with each other as peers, in which we have been colleagues with diverse academic interests and still have maintained a lot of respect for each other and have worked as a team for a strong academic unit at the University and in the world, in which we have been able to discuss academic issues, without much protocol, almost anywhere without special appointments when another relevant member is available, and in which we have celebrated special family, i.e., departmental, events some of which are Jim's own innovations. Jim's guide to " interesting food in Chicago." "When I'm close enough to the blackboard to write on it, I'm too close to read what I've written. "Would you say that again using more words?" "If you want to learn about this other sense of the term `government' you'll have to find out on the streets!" "I think I'll just take Jeanine at her word that she understands rather than trying to figure out what it is that she doesn't understand" (In response to another student's interpretation of her question.) "I've already told you more than I know about this." is a highly revisionist version of transformational grammar that probably no one other than myself accepts in all its details and to which I refuse to give any name. John Lawler's memorial in Language 79.3, September 2003 Our favorite quotes from Jim. He was the Andrew McLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics and East Asian Languages at the University of Chicago, and a scholar of an enormous range of subjects, including "syntax and semantics, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and miscellaneous other subjects, ranging from writing systems to philosophy of science," as he put it. Jim was the teacher, colleague, and friend of many people in linguistics who admired him greatly for his deep humanity and decency, his intellect, and the wide spectrum of things he loved and loved to share.
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