Shmuel Bolozky is Professor of Hebrew at the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has been on the faculty since 1978 and where he previously served as chairperson between 1985-90, 1995-98 and 2010-12. Since 2005, he has also been serving as Assistant Dean of Advising at the UMass College of Humanities and Fine Arts. He taught linguistics at Tel Aviv University (1972-1978), and Hebrew Linguistics – as a Visiting Professor – at the Hebrew departments of Ben-Gurion University, the Hebrew University, and Tel Aviv University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Linguistics in 1972.
Professor Bolozky's specializations are in the areas of phonology (sound systems of languages) and morphology (word formation) in general, and in Modern Hebrew phonology and morphology in particular. He is also interested in the application of linguistic methodology to the teaching of Hebrew as a foreign language. Professor Bolozky is the author of a book on word formation in Israeli Hebrew, Measuring Productivity in Word Formation: the Case of Israeli Hebrew, Leiden: Brill, 1999, a textbook, Barron's 501 Hebrew Verbs, 1996, A Reference Grammar of Modern Hebrew, 2005, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (co-suthor), and a number of chapters in books, mostly on Hebrew and Semitic linguistics. His articles and reviews have appeared in Hebrew Studies, Hebrew Linguistics, Afroasiatic Linguistics, Journal of Higher Hebrew Education, Shofar, Mehqarim Be-Lashon, Lashon Ve-`ivrit, The Modern Language Journal, Hebrew Annual Review, Hed Ha-'ulpan, Al-`arabiyya, Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik, Linguistic Analysis, Journal of Linguistics, Linguistic Inquiry, Glossa, and a number of festschrifts.
Professor Bolozky has been serving on the editorial boards of a number of journals related to Hebrew Language and Jewish Studies – Hebrew Studies, Shofar, Journal of Higher Hebrew Education – and as President of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH). He has also been a member of the Program Committee of the NAPH's annual International Conference on Hebrew Language and Literature since 1993, and serves as the Associate Director for Hebrew at the National Middle East Language Resource Center (headquarters: Brigham Young University).