Who is this guy Doug, anyway?
Doug Pulleyblank’s career has spanned five decades and multiple continents: from Alberta to Cameroon; from Ottawa, Ontario to Ìbàdàn and Ìlórìn, Nigeria; from MIT to Montreal, from USC to UBC (and many others along the way). His 1983 doctoral dissertation from MIT – Tone in Lexical Phonology – remains a classic in tonal morphology and phonology, and his research has significantly and repeatedly influenced the development of phonological theory and the phonological study of many African languages, especially Yorùbá.
Doug has been faculty in Linguistics at the University of British Columbia since 1991, where he has served intermittently as Department Head and also Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts. He has also frequently taught abroad — at the African Linguistics School, CreteLing, the Girona International Summer School in Linguistics, and several LSA Summer Institutes. He has supervised more than twenty PhD dissertations and a dozen-plus MA theses, and his dedication to students, languages and linguistic puzzles has built connections across generations and around the globe. He is also very well known in the field for his love of family, outdoor adventures, and general joie de vivre.