John R. ‘Haj’ Ross, 87, Professor Emeritus of linguistics and poetics who taught at UNT from 1994 to 2021, died May 13 in Denton. His work had a major influence on syntactic theory and linguistic approaches to poetry, and his 1967 dissertation at MIT, “Constraints on Variables in Syntax,” is considered a landmark in the field.

Haj earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale as its first undergraduate linguistics major and a master’s at the University of Pennsylvania before heading to MIT for his Ph.D., where he studied under Noam Chomsky. He served on the MIT linguistics faculty from 1967 to 1985.

He then taught internationally before joining UNT in 1994, where he served as director of the doctoral program in poetics in the Department of English and moved to the new Department of Linguistics and Technical Communication in 2008.

Named a Distinguished Research Professor in 2012, he described his primary areas of research as semantax — “an interfield that sees syntax and semantics as inseparably interpenetrating” — and poetics — “the study of verbal art with the help of detailed linguistic analyses of texts.” He also was known for coining terms for syntactic phenomena, such as pied piping, sluicing and gapping.

Over his long career, he collected “squibs” (another term he popularized), short descriptions of linguistic data that resist analysis. He shared these for study by other researchers online, and the Haj Ross Squibber Endowed Scholarship was created in his honor, given annually to a student who shows great promise in linguistics at UNT.

The recommendation for his Professor Emeritus distinction upon his retirement in 2021 called him “a prolific poet of both national and international repute” and went on to say: “His continued popularity among the students across disciplines spanning several decades is unparalleled and his dedication toward his students is unmatched. Dr. Ross’ contributions to the field of linguistics for over 50 years have made him a household name in every linguistics department around the world.”

His colleagues say he also will be remembered for his legendary kindness, his enthusiasm for learning and an infinite number of jokes.

Haj’s book of art and poetry — Everything Less Vast Than Love, Let Go Of — is available on the UNT Digital Library.