Fred Walter Householder Jr. was an American linguist at
Indiana University at
Bloomington,
Indiana. He received his training in classics from
Columbia University, completing a PhD there in 1941. Householder held joint appointments in the departments of classics and linguistics at
Indiana University from 1948 to 1983, and chaired the Department of Linguistics from 1974 to 1980. Householder specialized in the study and theory of
syntax, in languages from Greek and Latin to Chinese and Azerbaijani. In 1965, the first issue of the
Journal of Linguistics published Householder's criticism of the work of
Noam Chomsky and
Morris Halle, challenging their work on
phonology, in particular their methodology. Chomsky and Halle responded in the second issue, defending their work on the potential for phonology to unlock universal meanings in sound and speech. He retired in 1983, and after his death in 1994, Indiana University established the Fred W. Householder Memorial Fund to provide scholarships to students specializing in
Kurdish linguistics, one of the focuses of his research. == Bibliography ==