# Victor Raskin

Victor Raskin (born April 17, 1944) is a distinguished professor of linguistics at Purdue University. He is the author of Semantic Mechanisms of Humor and Ontological Semantics and founding editor (now editor-at-large) of Humor, the journal for the International Society for Humor Studies.
He is an associate director and founding faculty member of CERIAS at Purdue University along with Gene Spafford and Mikhail Atallah.

## Biography

Victor Raskin was born in Irbit, USSR (now Russian Federation) in 1944. He obtained a doctorate in linguistics from Moscow State University in 1970. He has been married to Marina Bergelson since 1965; his daughter Sarah was born in 1982. He and his wife emigrated from the U.S.S.R. to Israel in 1973, and have been Israeli citizens since 1973. They moved to the United States in 1978, became permanent residents of the United States in 1979, and became U.S. citizens in 1984.

### Education

* 1970: Ph.D. in Structural, Computational, and Mathematical Linguistics, Moscow State University, USSR
* 1966: M.A./M.S. summa cum laude in Structural and Computational Linguistics, Moscow State University, USSR
* 1964: B.A./B.S. in Structural and Computational Linguistics, Moscow State University, USSR

### Experience

* 1999–present Editor-at-Large, HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research
* 1998–present Charter Member, Internal Advisory Board, Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), Purdue University
* 1994–present PI- and VP-level consultant on natural language and information technology for research laboratories and businesses
* 1980–present Professor of English and Linguistics, Purdue University
* 2000 President, International Society of Humor Research
* 1995-99 Chair, Graduate Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics, Purdue University
* 1987-99 Editor-in-Chief, HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research
* 1979-99 Chair, Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics, Purdue University
* 1979-80 Associate Professor of English and Linguistics, Purdue University
* 1978-79 Associate Professor of English, Purdue University
* 1978 Visiting Professor of Linguistics, University of Michigan
* 1973-78 Senior Associate Professor of Russian and Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
* 1973-78 Senior Associate Professor of Linguistics (half-time), Tel Aviv University, Israel
* 1966-73 From Lecturer to Acting Associate Professor of Linguistics, Moscow State University
* 1962-73 From Junior Assistant to Group Leader, Computational Linguistics Lab, Moscow State University

## Major publications
### Solely authored books

* К теории языковых подсистем /Towards a Theory of Linguistic Subsystems/ (420 pp.), Moscow University Press, 1971
* Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (302 pp.), Dordrecht - Boston - Lancaster: D. Reidel, 1985

### Co-authored books

* Методы семантического исследования ограниченного подъязыка /Methods of Semantic Investigation of a Restricted Sublanguage/ (414 pp.), Moscow University Press, 1971 (with B. Gorodetsky)
* Словари словосочетаний и частотные словари слов ограниченного подъязыка /Dictionaries of Word Combinations and Dictionaries of Words with Frequencies of a Restricted Sublanguage/ (538 pp.), Moscow University Press, 1972 (with B. Y. Gorodetsky, A. E. Kibrik, L. S. Logakhina, G. V., Maksimova, and E. S. Prytkov)
* 200 задач по языковедению и математике /200 Problems in Linguistics and Mathematics/ (252 pp.), Moscow University Press, 1972 (with Boris Gorodetsky)
* Продуктивное словосложение в шугнанском, венгерском, саамском, хиналугском и лезгинском языках: Результаты полевой лингвистики /Productive Word Compounding in Shugnan, Hungarian, Saami, Hinalug, and Lezghin: Field Linguistics Results (678 pp.). Moscow: Moscow University Press, 1974 (with Boris Gorodetsky—the book was confiscated and the run, apparently, destroyed after and because of Raskin's emigration in 1973).
* Language and Writing: Applications of Linguistics to Rhetoric and Composition (279 pp.), Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987 (with I. H. Weiser)
* Ontological Semantics (350 pp.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004 (with Sergei Nirenburg).

## Former students

* Christian F. Hempelmann
* Salvatore Attardo
* Sergei Nirenburg
* Dallin D. Oaks