Andrew Carnie's
More details than anyone really wants to know...
I was born in Calgary, AB, Canada on April 19, 1969 to Jean and Bob Carnie at Foothills Hospital. The Carnies had recently immigrated to Calgary from Scotland. Bob was a professor of English literature at the University of Calgary (Ph.D. St. Andrew's University, taught also at St. Andrew's, Bedford College London, University of Ife Nigeria, and the University of Dundee). Jean was an elementary school teacher. I have two older sisters: Morag who is an archivist for the Archives of Ontario and Fiona who is a violin teacher at Mount Royal College.
I went to Capt. John Palliser Elementary school and University Elementary, then entered French Immersion at Branton Jnr. High. I continued French Immersion at William Aberhart High School. From a young age, I've been obessed with my Scottish heritage. I took up Scottish Country Dancing, Bagpipes and Highland dancing (Laureen McLaren). I danced at St. Giles Scottish Country dance group (where my sister Fiona is now the teacher), and played pipes with several pipe bands including the 78th Frasier Highlanders and the Glengarry Highlanders. I started folkdancing at Calgary Folkdance Fridays back when I was 15. I also held a number of jobs he was miserable in including being a bellman at the Palliser Hotel, a cook at Wendy's, a night security guard, and the night auditor, and later the front desk manager at the largest hotel in the now defunct Relax Inn chain.
In 1987, I moved to Toronto to pursue BA (hons, 1991), Celtic Studies and theoretical linguistics at the University of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto (Fisher house). I originally wanted to learn Scottish Gaelic, but the course offerings were more condusive to learning Modern Irish Gaelic, which has been my empirical focus ever since. I was captivated by theoretical syntax & phonology from the beginning in my intro to linguistics class with Elizabeth Cowper, and went to take many more classes in theoretical linguistics with her, Diane Massam, Keren Rice and Elan Dresher. In the summers I kept himself alive by working front desk at the defunct Journey's End hotels in Toronto, and then was the linguistics dept secretary. While in Toronto, I folkdanced with IFDC
In 1991, I moved to Boston to go to graduate school in Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although I had early illusions of being a phonologist, I eventually focused on syntactic theory. I studied with Noam Chomsky, Ken Hale, Morris Halle, David Pesetsky, Alec Marantz, Shigeru Miyagawa, Jim Higginbotham, Wayne O'Neil, Michael Kenstowicz, and Irene Heim. I wrote my dissertation on Irish Copular constructions and VSO order under the direction of Ken Hale, with Morris Halle, David Pesesky and Alec Marantz as the other members of my committee.
In Boston, I danced with the MIT folk dance club, briefly directed their performance group Vinovana. I also learned to do clogging, contra dancing and cajun dancing. I danced contra down with the LCFD club in Jamaica Plain.
It was also at MIT that I met my best pal, colleague and occasional co-author Heidi Harley.
In 1995 I moved home to Calgary for a semester where I did part of my SSHRC postdoc fellowship under the direction of Eithne Guilfoyle. Then I did the rest of it down at the University of California Santa Cruz under Jim McCloskey. When I was in SC, I lived with Rachel Walker, her husband Geoff and Adam Ussishkin in a supercool house. I danced with the Cabrillo College Folkdancers and used to drive every tuesday up to SF to dance with the Castro Folk dancers. 1996-1997 was a fairly unhappy year spent in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan. I liked Ann Arbor and made some great folkdance friends (AAFD) there are in Detroit (OWDC) but my temporary work situation was suboptimal in many ways.
IN 1997-1998, I was lucky enough to get a job teaching at Harvard for a year, although bizarrely I was hired as a semanticist not a syntactician. That year I danced with the MIT folkdance club again and with Mandala, a semi-professional performance group, which was great fun.
Finally in 1998, I got a tenure track job in Tucson, Arizona at the University of Arizona. The department here is great, I have fantastic colleagues and our program is an exciting, welcoming, friendly and intellectually challenging place to be. Tucson is good too, if you don't mind the heat and driving everywhere. I'm pretty settled here. I've been writing up a storm (see my publication list & CV), and enjoying working with my colleagues, grad students and undergrads. I love teaching (well, I hate grading...). In 2004 I got tenure and was promoted to Associate professor. That's also the year I switched from visiting visas to a green card.
When I arrived I immediately started dancing with the Tucson Folkdance Club which is a nice bunch of enthusastic balkan heads. In 2000, the Turkish Students Association at the University asked me to come and teach them Turkish dances so they could perform at Tucson Meet Yourself a local ethnic festival. Terry Freidman and I took turns running this group. They did a fantastic job at the festival and enjoyed learning to do some recreational dances too. The students in the group and their friends decided they wanted to form their own recreational dance group. This was the start of the International Dance Club at the University. Around the same time I was asked to teach a beginner's class at the YMCA. That group, which is now the largest and most accessible group in town became the Lighthouse Folkdance club. All three groups are still going, but in 2003 due to an illness I had to drop running the I-dance club. It's gotten a little smaller but we're planning on trying to revive it this coming year and the next. From 98 to 2004 I danced with the Tucson Ethnic Dance Ensemble (TEDE). This is a nice low-key group with a vaguely strange penchant for German dancing at Oktoberfest. In 2003 I also danced with Kalinka, the Russian performance group affiliated with the Arizona Balalaika Orchestra. The squats nearly killed me! I've also taught a number of workshops around Arizona and across the country. I've taught short workshops at Tucson Meet Yourself, at MIT, at Calgary Folkdance Fridays, and twice at the LCFD semiannual camp in Boston and at the Balalaika and Domra Association annual meeting. In 2004 I took up square dancing at the Square and Round Dance Association of Southern Arizona (SARDASA) center. First with the Primetime mainstream group on Thursday and more recently with the plus level Tucson Twirlers. Summer 2005 I did caller's school with Rick Gittleman, but I still need a lot of practice before I'm ready for a public performance.
In 2000 I bought a house in Oro Valley that I'm very proud of, except I never have time to keep the garden up to the community standards. I belong to two cats: Calvin and Pangur. I am their human hostage and slave, but I'm not complaining, that's the price to be paid when you are a ailurophile. In the past couple of years I've been hosting a Robbie Burns at my house, as a tribute to my Dad. This has become the social event of the linguistics season.
In 2006 my first Ph.D. student, Dan Siddiqi, graduated. I got to hood him at convocation, which was a real thrill. (I'll even upload some pictures sometime). He's off to teach at Texas Tech next year. Yay Dan!
Well that's enough of this self-indulgent missive. You are either a true friend or very bored to have made it to the end. I've delibrately left off all the juicy bits, you'll have to ask me for those!
