A tribute to Joost Engelfriet

🕑 6 min • 👤 Thomas Graf • 📆 September 02, 2020 in Discussions • 🏷 formal language theory, tree transductions

Ed Stabler sent me a link to the most recent paper by Joost Engelfriet, which concludes with the following message:

That’s all folks! This was my last paper. Thank you, dear reader, and farewell.

That’s bitter-sweet. On the one hand, I admire that he can draw a line in the sand like this. On the other hand, I wish he’d erase that line and keep going for a few more years. Even though Engelfriet isn’t a mathematical linguist — and might not even be aware of the more linguistic side of that field, the one that we serve here at the Outdex Café — he has had a profound influence on the field, including a lot of my own work.


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