Julian C. Boyd

Who was Julian C. Boyd?

Julian Charles Boyd was an American linguist, reputed for his expertise on modality in English, as well as for his pedagogical excellence at the University of California, Berkeley, where he spent most of his academic career.

Boyd was born in Orlando and raised in Bogalusa on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Beginning his undergraduate education at Georgetown University, he transferred after two years to Williams College, where he graduated with a B.A. in English in 1952. He continued his studies in English language and literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, receiving an M.A. in 1954 and a Ph.D. in 1965, with a thesis on Deep and Surface Structure in the Accusative and Infinitive Expressions in Modern English. In 1964, he joined the English faculty at Berkeley and remained there for the rest of his career, although he also taught at the nearby Graduate Theological Union during the 1970s and 80s.

Boyd joined the Berkeley faculty in the 1960s, a period of intense interest in linguistics during which many scholars hoped the field would provide the humanities with a "scientific" basis.