Uriel Weinreich: Builder on Empirical Foundations

Abstract

Abstract In this article, William Labov offers a personal take on the scholarly accomplishments and advising style of Uriel Weinreich, his mentor and later his colleague as well. He also draws on letters he and Weinreich exchanged in the mid-1960s, and he documents aspects of the collaboration that resulted in Weinreich’s most lasting contribution to the study of language change, the 1968 Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog paper (U. Weinreich, W. Labov, and M.I. Herzog. “Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change,” in Directions for Historical Linguistics, eds. W.P. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel. Austin: University of Texas Press, 95–195).