Contributors' Column

Dennis R. Preston is University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University. His main research interests are sociolinguistics, dialectology, and language attitudes and folk belief. He directed the Linguistic Society of America's 2003 Institute at Michigan State and was president of ADS in 2001-2002, at which time he was appointed editor for the vicennial Needed Research in American Dialects, forthcoming in PADS (89). His most recent accomplishment is finding the word vicennial and using it in a sentence.

Donald M. Lance (1931-2002), a Texan who received his doctorate in English linguistics from the University of Texas, taught for 30 years at the University of Missouri and made himself an expert on the name of his adopted state. Lance was well known and well liked through his active participation in many professional organizations, including the American Dialect Society, American Name Society, Modern Language Association, and Dictionary Society of North America. Among his publications are the 12th edition of John Samuel Kenyon's American Pronunciation (with Stewart Kingsbury, Ann Arbor: Wahr, 1994) and Language Variation in North American English: Research and Teaching (with Wayne Glowka, New York: MLA, 1993).

Stuart Davis is professor of linguistics at Indiana University. He is primarily a phonologist, having published numerous articles on a wide range of phonological issues. Additionally, he has developed a research interest in African American English and in the history of linguistics in antebellum America.

Erica J. Benson is assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She just completed her doctoral dissertation in linguistics, "'This Girl Wants Out!' A Sociolinguistic Analysis of need/want + Prepositional Adverb and need/want + Prepositional Phrase," at Michigan State University. She was awarded a Presidential Honorary Membership to the American Dialect Society for 2002.