This article is the result of a collaboration between Godart-Wendling and Lambek in the form of an interview. The former asks the latter to retrace in broad outline his interest in the application of mathematics to linguistics. Prompted by her penetrating questions, he recalls how his old formation of categorical grammar arose from algebra, but borrowed techniques from logic. He recalls how later he turned to rewrite rules to explicate verb-conjugations and kinship terminologies in natural languages and how, more recently, he returned to a simpler version of categorial grammar, which lends itself to easy one-dimensional calculations in place of the original two-dimensional proof-trees.