Informed only last fall that their department would be reduced to a committee, students and faculty in Linguistics were recently given a reprieve.

Administrators have said little on the issue, but linguistics students and faculty say their department will remain a department for at least one more year.

The news came not from an administrative pronouncement but through a chance phone call from Associate Professor of Linguistics Jill L. Carrier to Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Christoph J. Wolff.

The day before she led the Linguistics concentration meeting for first-years last Wednesday, Carrier--still unaware of her department's status for next year--called Wolff. Only then did the dean say that Linguistics would remain alive for another year.

"I called specifically because I really wanted to know," Carrier says. "I had heard informally that we would not be changed to a committee. I knew that no official word had been put out and I knew that we would be asked [by the first-years]."

News on the department had been so sparse that upper-class concentrators who attended the meeting were surprised by her announcement.

"At the freshmen meetings when I announced this," Carrier says, "because I myself had just been told formally that I could say it, all those present said, `Really?'"

Knowles' Decision

In a letter last summer, Dean of the FacultyJeremy R. Knowles informed department members thathe would transform the linguistics department intoa committee.

That decision, which Knowles says was reachedafter a long review process, incensed manystudents and faculty members.

It also prompted 20 linguistics concentratorsto from the Harvard-Radcliffe UndergraduateLinguists' Society last October.

That group lobbied various administrators tokeep the department intact. After closed-doorpleas proved unsuccessful, members of the groupblasted the administration for its allegedreluctance to take concentrators' complaints intoaccount.

The group became less active after December,members say.

"We didn't get complacent, certainly, becausewe knew that we were still in jeopardy," sayslinguistics concentrator Glenn M. Davis '95. "Butwe knew it was past time to keep talking to thedeans and make our position known over and overagain."

Last October, Knowles formed an advisorycommittee on Linguistics. But its mission--todevise a way of transforming the department into acommittee--did little to dispel the criticism ofconcentrators.

The committee, chaired by Professor ofPhilosophy Warren D. Goldfarb '69, submitted itsreport to Knowles about a month ago.