David Adger

Adger was born in Kirkcaldy. At the age of eleven Adger became fascinated by language, reading Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea.[2] At the age of sixteen, Adger won a school competition coordinated by the University of St Andrews and spent the money on copies of Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.[2] He studied linguistics and artificial intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. Adger has described his undergraduate teaching as one of the "exhilarating experiences of my life".[2] He remained in Edinburgh for his graduate studies, working toward a master's in cognitive science. He completed a doctorate under the supervision of Elisabet Engdahl in 1994.[3] During his doctorate he worked at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[2] His doctoral research considered Agr nodes.

Adger was appointed to the University of York in 1993.[4] In 2002 Adger moved to the Queen Mary University of London.[4] His research considers the science of language, and whether human brains create language because of our ability to recognise patterns or because of an innate ability to communicate via language.[5] He has investigated the nature of grammatical structure and the relationship between sociolinguistic theories and syntactic structure.[6]

In 2015 Adger was elected President of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain.[7] He visited the University of Maryland, College Park in 2016, where he delivered a series of lectures discussing minimalist syntax, semantics and merge.[8]

Adger is married to Anson W. Mackay, a geographer at University College London. He is a member of 500 Queer Scientists, an organisation that champions LGBT scientists and engineers.[11] Adger was listed as one Queen Mary University of London role models in 2018.[4]