The Author

Roger Lass (born January 1, 1937) is a historical linguist, currently an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

He earned his PhD from Yale University in 1965 in Medieval English Language and Literature, and subsequently worked at Indiana University (1964–1971), the University of Edinburgh (1972–1982), and the University of Cape Town (1983–2002).

He has done extensive work in the history of English, the motivation of sound change, and the history of linguistics. He was made an honorary professorial fellow at Edinburgh in 2014.

He was the editor of the third volume of The Cambridge History of the English Language.

Aside from being a (partly remitted) manic depressive, he is a retired freelance academic, formerly Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cape Town and currently an Honorary Research Fellow of both that university and the University of Edinburgh. Though he was trained as a philologist and linguist, his interests are as much in psychology, philosophy of science and biological sciences. In recent years much of his research, teaching and writing has been concerned with evolutionary theory, neuroscience, the biology of language and the philosophy of mind and consciousness.