Royal Skousen papers on book research and writing, 1973-2010

Sub-Series — Multiple Containers

Identifier: MSS 8255 Series 1 Sub-Series 2 Sub-Series 1

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Contains materials pertaining to the linguistic work of Royal Skousen, professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. In particular are two sets of linguistic theory notebooks that document the theory of analogical modeling, each of which resulted in the publication of a notable linguistic work by Royal Skousen: first "Analogical Modeling of Language" (originally pitched as "Analogical Descriptions of Language"), then "Analogy and Structure". It also contains the corresponding writing files, manuscript drafts, and publication/publicity files for each book. Materials dated 1973-2010.

Dates

Creation: 1973-2010

Creator

Skousen, Royal (creator, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is available for research with permission from the L. Tom Perry Special Collections. Prospective users must request access in writing. The donor agreement requires that Special Collections seek permission from the Skousens until 2045 or their demise; thereafter, Special Collections will solely make decisions regarding access.

Conditions Governing Use

It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain any necessary copyright clearances. Permission to use material from this collection must be obtained from Reference Services at specialcollections@byu.edu.

Biographical / Historical

From the Collection:

Royal Jon Skousen, son of LeRoy Bentley Skousen and Helen Louise McCarty, was born on August 5, 1945 in Cleveland, Ohio, the oldest of ten children. He graduated from Sunset High School in Beaverton, Oregon. When he was 19, his father unexpectedly died of lung cancer. Royal went on to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Finland from 1965 to 1967. After his return in 1968, he married Sirkku Unelma Härkönen; they moved to Orem, Utah and raised seven children together. Meanwhile, Royal received further education in the form of a BA from BYU in English and math. He earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1972, then worked as an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Texas-Austin until 1979, when he was hired by BYU. He was also a visiting professor at the University of California-San Diego in 1981, a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Tampere (Finland) in 1982, and a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen, Netherlands) in 2001. In 1999, he was awarded BYU's Karl G. Maeser Excellence in Research and Creative Arts distinction. Since then he has served as the president of the Utah Association of Scholars, as well as associate editor of the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics since 2003.

Skousen's work in linguistics has dealt chiefly with developing a theory of language called Analogical Modeling, a theory that predicts language behavior by means of examples rather than by rules. He has published three books on this subject: Analogical Modeling of Language (1989), Analogy and Structure (1992), and Analogical Modeling: An Exemplar-Based Approach to Language (2002). More recently, he has published on the quantum computation of Analogical Modeling, notably in his 2005 paper "Quantum Analogical Modeling" (available at www.arXiv.org). Skousen began working on the critical text of the Book of Mormon in 1988. This work represents the central task of the Critical Text Project, to restore by scholarly means the original text of the Book of Mormon, to the extent possible. To date, he has published 9 books on the subject, with 4 more to appear in the next three years. Altogether, up through 2013, he has given 94 presentations and written/published 14 books, 70 articles, and 23 online and media publications. He lives in Spanish Fork with his wife Sirkku and continues to teach and lecture.