Professor Haj Ross


The Department of Linguistics at the University of North Texas regrets to announce the passing of Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus John Robert (Haj) Ross. Haj passed away at his home in Denton, Texas, on the morning of May 13, 2025, with his family present, just a few days after his 87th birthday.

Haj was a beloved teacher, colleague, scholar, and friend to many, and he inspired decades of students to study linguistics. Since the 1960s, his work has been a major influence in syntactic theory and linguistic approaches to poetry, and he taught hundreds of students to uncover linguistic patterns in poetry “the Haj way.”

Haj was the very first undergraduate linguistics major at Yale University, graduating in 1960. After a master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania with Zellig Harris, he went on to complete a PhD at MIT in 1967 with Noam Chomsky, producing one of the most highly cited dissertations of all time in the generative tradition. The dissertation, entitled "Constraints on Variables in Syntax," later published as Infinite Syntax! (1986) quickly reached landmark status in the field, coming to be known simply as "Ross 1967."

Haj was on the linguistics faculty at MIT from 1967-1985. He then visited several universities before moving to the University of North Texas in 1994 as a Professor of English, where he taught linguistics and poetics until his retirement in 2021 as a Distinguished Research Professor.

A world class linguist, a prolific poet, and a masterful linguistic nomenclator, he is honored by the Haj Ross Squibber Endowed Scholarship, which is given each year to an undergraduate or graduate student who shows great promise in linguistics at UNT. He was also festschrifted in 2006 with essays, poetry, and art, by students and colleagues.

Much of Haj's squibs, poetry, essays, and other writings, can be found in various repositories online. John Lawler's page at the University of Michigan is a rich resource of Haj's writing, as is Haj's Wikipedia entry. Squibnet at the University of North Texas is another source of squibs from 1966-1977. Haj's book of art and poetry—"Everything Less Vast than Love, Let Go of"—can be viewed online at the University of North Texas Digital Library. Videos of Haj and John Goldsmith interviewing other linguists can be found on the University of Chicago YouTube channel.

Beyond the linguistics, Haj is legendary for his kindness, his enthusiasm for all things learning, and the infinite number of jokes he was able to call up on a moment's notice—most of which are not fit to be printed here! He was the heart and soul of Linguistics at UNT and one of the foundational thinkers in the larger field. He will be sorely, greatly missed.