Stan Starosta: A few stories

First of all, Stan’s friends at the Australian National University wish to convey  their sympathies to Aleli and the family, and our sadness and shock at his early passing. As well valuing his scholarly contributions the Canberra linguists retain fond memories of Stan’s lively participation in the social life of many Austronesian conferences over the years, and of Stan’s several visits to the ANU.  One of us, Darrell Tryon, actually attended Stan and Aleli’s wedding, which he remembers ‘as a lovely wedding with beautiful flowers and music including the singing of the “The Hawaiian Wedding Song”’.  

Second,  Medina and I would like to add a few personal reminiscences. I first heard of Stan from Bruce Biggs when Bruce spent two years on the Faculty of UH in 1967–68. He mentioned a very bright young syntactician there called Starosta. We first met Stan and Aleli in January 1970 during a short family visit to Hawaii. It was at a dinner party at the Benders’ place in Hawaii Kai. Stan was courting Lily at the time but they were not yet engaged. Not too long after they were married, they travelled to Australia where Stan had some academic business, and stopped by Auckland for a few days.  Medina remembers Lily bringing orchids to our place. I don’t remember such details but Medina assures me that Stan and I talked linguistics ad nauseum. For several years, from 1973 to 1978, I was Stan’s colleague at the UH.  Soon after the Starostas’ newborn son, Stuart alias Busky, made his appearance in Edinburgh in June 1974,  Medina and I were the first members of the Department to see him. Stan was then on sabbatical leave, I think he went to Edinburgh mainly to study with John Anderson, of localistic case fame. Medina recalls cooking adobo at the Starosta’s flat while Aleli nursed her two week old baby.

I don’t think it is just nostalgia when I recall the 70s as great years for the UH Department of Linguistics. The ambience was great, with a talented and dynamic Faculty, plenty of excellent graduate students and lots of research funds to be had. Stan was one of the bright young stars. In some of his ideas, as we now know, he was ahead of his time.  In a firm but friendly way he would lay down the law to colleragues and students on how to do good science and on the need to tightly constrain syntactic theory, getting rid of syntactic transformations, etc.  Though I was never disciplined enough to follow Stan’s Lexicase model myself his arguments almost always made good sense to me. 

As well as being more than happy to tell you about Lexicase Stan took an interest in everyone else’s work.  In 1975 George Grace gave a groundbreaking course on ethnolinguistics, one that challenged some of the fundamental assumptions of linguistics and  I recall that Stan was among those of us who attended regularly to listen to George’s quiet heresies while contributing to the debate.  Stan’s work came to be widely respected internationally for the originality and quality of his ideas, and for their rigorous application to a range of languages. I have often wondered why he did not become more of a national figure in the USA, whereas some lesser scholars made a bigger splash.  The explanation is complex but this is not the place to consider it. Stan’s substantial achievements as a linguist will endure.

Let me close with some memories of Stan’s sense of humour, particularly his love of verbal play of any sort. In conversation he could never resist a rime, limerick or pun, good or bad. In his professional writing he generally kept this playful streak under control but now and then it it would break through.  Some titles where he succumbed to the lure of rime and catch phrase include:  “The great AUX cataclysm”, “The end of Phrase Structure as we know it”, “A place for case” and “Ergativity east and west.”  In one case he devised a title that was, one might say, punfully whimsical. This was when Stan, Lawrie Reid and I collaborated in a paper on the origins of the Philippines focus system.  The early drafts of the paper Stan called “Out of the fry-an PAN into the i-fire”, a pun that makes sense only in print and only if you are into Austronesian verbal morphology and proto Austronesian.  In a letter to me dated March 1980 he wondered if I would have time to help revise the paper, saying “I am sure you have other irons in the fire in addition to the iron fry-an PAN”. 

Stan, we will miss you, not least for your bad puns.

Andy Pawley