John Lyons (linguist)

Sir John Lyons (* May 23, 1932 in Manchester ) is a British linguist.

His professional life:

• Professor of General Linguistics, University of Edinburgh 1964-1976
• Professor of Linguistics, University of Sussex 1976-1984
• Master, Trinity Hall, Cambridge 1984-2000

He is an important representative of the general linguistics. His main research areas are the general grammar and semantics. The two most influential works are the Introduction to theoretical linguistics from 1968 that has served a whole generation of linguists as an introduction to work, and his comprehensive treatment of the semantics (1977). With the philosophically justified typology of different modalities in a chapter of the latter plant Lyons initiated the modern research in the field of modality.

Writings

• New Horizons in Linguistics. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1970.
• Noam Chomsky. Viking, New York 1970.
• Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1971, ISBN 0-521-05617-9.
• Semantics. 2 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1977, ISBN 0-521-21473-4 and ISBN 0-521-21560-9
• The language. Beck, Munich 1983.
• Introduction to modern linguistics. Beck, Munich, 1989, ISBN 3-406-34222-1.
• New perspectives in linguistics. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1985, ISBN 3-499-21066-5.
• Language and Linguistics: an introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1981, ISBN 0-521-23034-9.
• Linguistic Semantics: an introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-521-43877-2.