Isabelle Haik

Dear Noam,

With you, I learned the unfathomable beauty of science in the making and the delight of investigation towards the truth. I loved the way you treated people as equals, that inherent deeply rooted simplicity that makes your interlocutor feel comfortable and worthy. I will never thank you enough for having allowed me the opportunity of being one of your students in the early eighties. With the goals and formalism of linguistic theory, you have given us the most elegant tools to probe into what has astounded and fascinated me since an early age and to raise the ultimate questions, why, why, . . . why, and why so. I feel very lucky, because this has influenced my life, in its course and its quality. I have continued to listen to the compelling arguments you have put forth in linguistics and in political issues and your analyses and warnings up to the present day.