Following appointments in linguistics at Harvard and UCLA, then in cognitive science at Johns Hopkins University, Anderson came to Yale in 1994 as a Professor of Linguistics. He was further appointed as Professor of Psychology in 2000. From 1995 to 2010, he chaired the Department of Linguistics for all but two short periods, while simultaneously chairing the Cognitive Science program from 1999 to 2006. He was also President of the Linguistic Society of America from 2007 to 2009 and Vice President of the Comité International Permanent des Linguistes from 2009 to 2013.
In building Yale’s Department of Linguistics, Anderson implemented a clear and forward-looking vision. He helped build a department dedicated to treating language as a scientific object of study, and used evidence from language to reveal knowledge of the mind. His vision for the study of linguistics at Yale and beyond drew from empirical, computational, experimental and historical modes of inquiry across all components of the linguistic system.
Anderson’s areas of research reflected an enormous breadth and scale of investigation into language: language and cognition, the theoretical understanding of individual languages, and the building of general theories of how aspects of language work. He did intensive study of (among other languages) Surmiran Rumantsch, Kwak’wala, Georgian, Abkhaz, and Icelandic. Within linguistic theory, his work was particularly influential in phonology and morphology. He also had a longstanding interest in the biological bases of human language (i.e., how human language differs from (and is similar to) animal communication systems, and how the capacity for human language evolved).
Anderson’s 11 books reflect the breadth of his life’s work. His 1992 book, “A-morphous morphology,” is a classic in the field. It has been very influential across theories of linguistics, even the theories that make different assumptions about how language works. As MIT Linguistics and Philosophy’s online death notice put it, several ideas that originated with Anderson are now such common knowledge among linguists that they are not always attributed to him. This includes the idea that information introduced by morphology (word pieces) is not uniquely associated with that item; and that autosegmental rules can (and do) apply to segmental material and not just stress. He was also the first to work out the details of how phonological rules might work at different levels in language. A recurring comment from colleagues is that even those who work in other frameworks are indebted to Anderson for the questions he asked, and for the way his work is about linguistic theory in general, not any one particular model of language, such that any theory needs to be able to explain the phenomena he sets up.
His most recent work focused particularly on the history of linguistics, with an extensively revised and expanded version of his 1986 book “Phonology in the 20th Century” published in 2021. At the time of his death, he was working on a reference grammar of Surmiran Rumantsch.
At Yale, Anderson taught classes in all aspects of linguistics, particularly phonology, morphology, and historical linguistics. He developed the university’s first class on language endangerment and offered popular classes on animal communication and the evolution of language. Dr. Catherine Sheard ‘12 writes: “I took his animal communication class, and it genuinely helped shape my career and really sharpened the way I think about language, cognition, and animal culture. My old notes from that class were extremely helpful when I myself started teaching on that topic — he was such a clear thinker!”. Former students and colleagues repeatedly cite Prof. Anderson’s encouragement, enthusiasm, and assistance as pivotal.
