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An embattled scholar still champions his dream experiment in language formation

In 1976 the linguist Derek Bickerton was visited in Hawaii by a kindred spirit, Talmy (Tom) Givón, a professor at UCLA. Neither was particularly taken with the pleasantries of academe, and they bonded over their outré status. Givón, an Israeli expat who had fought in the Suez War, in 1956, once advertised his antagonism to the academy by showing up at a linguistics conference garbed in

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