Peter Cole is a linguist who is affiliated with the University of Delaware and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Cole received his Doctorate in Linguistics in 1973 from the University of Illinois, and taught at that university until 1988, serving as Coordinator of the Program in Modern Hebrew and teaching courses in syntax, semantics and pragmatics. In 1988 he moved to the University of Delaware. He served in a variety of positions at Delaware, including Chairperson of the Department of Linguistics and Director of the Program in Cognitive Science. In addition, Cole has had visiting positions at Tamkang University, Tamsui, Taiwan, 1984-85; National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Spring 1985; the University of Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht, the Netherlands, Spring 2000; Fulbright Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of Venice, Italy, April-July 2002 and Dipartimento di Scienze del Linguaggio, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Italy, March-June 2008. Additionally, he has has had an affiliation with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology since 1999.
Throughout his career, Cole has been interested in understanding what the diversity of structures in human language can tell us about the human language faculty. His early work was primarily on Modern Hebrew, but he later published extensively on the Quechua languages (especially Imbabura Quichua and Ancash Quechua). More recently, he has worked on the syntax of East Asian languages, among them Chinese and Malay/Indonesian. Several major publications are shown below:
Partial Bibliography of Publications
Books and Journal Issues:
Malay/Indonesian from a Pan-Austronesian Perspective (edited by Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon), 2008, Special issue of Lingua, volume 118, number 10.
Anaphoric Expressions in the Peranakan Javanese of Semarang. (Peter Cole, Gabriella Hermon, Chonghyuck Kim, Chang-yong Sim,Yassir Tjung) 2007, Lincom Studies in Asian Linguistics 72, Lincom Europa (LINCOM GmbH, Gmunder Str. 35, D-81379 München).
Long Distance Reflexives. Editor. (With Gabriella Hermon and James Huang.) 2001, New York: Academic Press.
Language in the Andes. Editor. (With Gabriella Hermon and Mario Daniel Martín.) 1995, Newark, D.E.: Latin American Studies Program, University of Delaware.
Imbabura Quechua: Lingua Descriptive Series. 1982, The Hague: North-Holland Publishing Company.
Radical Pragmatics. Editor. 1981, New York: Academic Press.
Syntax and Semantics: Pragmatics. Editor. 1978, New York: Academic Press.
Syntax and Semantics: Grammatical Relations. Editor. (With J. Sadock.) 1977, New York: Academic Press.
Studies in Modern Hebrew Syntax and Semantics. Editor. 1976, The Hague: North-Holland Publishing Company.
Syntax and Semantics: Speech Acts. Editor. (With J. Morgan.) 1975, New York: Academic Press.
Recent Articles:
Auxiliary Fronting in Peranakan Javanese, (Peter Cole, Yurie Hara and Ngee Thai Yap), 2008, Journal of Linguistics, 44: 1-43.
An Event-Based Account of –kan Constructions in Standard Indonesian, (M.J. Son, and Peter Cole). 2008, Language 84: 3-42.
Malay/Indonesian Syntax from an Austronesian Perspective: an Introduction, (Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon), 2008, Lingua 118, 10.
Voice in Malay/Indonesian. (P. Cole , G. Hermon and Yanti), 2008, Lingua 118, 10.