Obituary: Professor Larry Trask

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Johnsonian linguist whose dictionaries read like novels

LARRY TRASK, Professor of Linguistics at Sussex University, was a remarkable and dominant figure in his field.

Outside his specialist area of Basque, he is best known for three brilliant reference works: his Dictionary of Grammatical Terms (1993) was what first made the whole of Linguistics sit up and realise that here was an exceptional talent - exceptional in the clarity not only of his understanding of complicated matters of detail, but also of his concise explanations, which come straight to the point without padding, obfuscation, or parti pris. If you want to understand some aspect of grammar, in almost …