Jorge was born in Texas and was educated at Rice University and at Yale. His dissertation, Constraints on Deletion in Syntax, was the first systematic investigation of deletion and ellipsis processes in generative linguistics, and did for those phenonema what Ross's thesis had done for extraction phenomena. Working initially at Harvard (1973-80), he explored issues in syntactic theory, Turkish syntax, and the typology of anaphora.

The second phase of his career began in 1980, when he moved to UC Santa Cruz, and broadened his research program to include morphological parsing. Many would agree, though, that his most significant achievement since 1980 has been to take a Linguistics Department on the brink of closure (in 1979) and build it into a Department internationally recognized for the excellence of its graduate and undergraduate programs. During his ten years as Department Chair (1980-90), he hired seven faculty members, established the graduate program, routinely taught more courses than he was supposed to, and created the pedagogical style for which the Department is now famous.

Jorge's academic leadership brought him to the attention of UCSC's central administration and from 1990 to 2000 he held numerous administrative appointments outside the Department, many of them simultaneously. His most recent service was an arduous 5-year term as Dean of Humanities.

In Fall 2000, the UCSC Linguistics Department welcomes him back as a full-time scholar and teacher, to begin the third phase of his career.

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