A Brief Biography of Turkey RPCV Larry Trask
A Brief Biography
I was born on 10 November 1944 in Olean, New York, and I was raised in the wilderness of western New York State, where the deer outnumber the people by at least 100:1. And I do mean `wilderness': I've seen a black bear walk past our living-room window. My mother's family came from Germany, and my father's from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. My great-great-great-grandfather Trask emigrated from Glasgow in 1800, though my surname is Scandinavian: träsk means `pond' in Norwegian.
I did a BS in Chemistry at RPI in Troy, NY, and an MA in Chemistry at Brandeis University. Then I spent a year in the Peace Corps in Turkey, teaching at a university in Ankara. This was a colorful year to be in Turkey: one afternoon there was a gunfight outside the window of the lab where I was teaching; the army moved in with tanks and occupied the campus; and I was politely informed by a left-wing organization that I would be killed if I didn't leave (nothing personal -- that's just the way things are when you're American). So I left.
After that, I came to England for a two-week holiday, which has now gotten a little out of hand: I've been here since 1970. In London, I developed an interest in linguistics and began learning Basque. Eventually I did a PhD in linguistics (on Basque) at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, under the supervision of C. E. Bazell. After teaching for a while at the Polytechnic of Central London (today the University of Westminster), I got a job teaching at the University of Liverpool. After nine years in Liverpool, I moved south to the University of Sussex (in Brighton), where I work now, in the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences.
