Murray Barnson Emeneau | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1904-02-28)February 28, 1904 Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada |
| Died | August 29, 2005(2005-08-29) (aged 101) Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Citizenship | American |
| Known for | Dravidian linguistics,linguistic areas |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Dalhousie University(B.A.) Yale University(Ph.D.) |
| Doctoral advisor | Franklin Edgerton |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Yale University University of California, Berkeley |
| Doctoral students | William Bright,Ram Karan Sharma,Bh. Krishnamurti |
| Main interests | Linguistics,Dravidian studies,Sanskrit studies,Indology |
Murray Barnson Emeneau (February 28, 1904 – August 29, 2005) was the founder of the Department ofLinguistics at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[1]
Emeneau was born inLunenburg, a fishing town on the east coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Having distinguished himself in classical languages in high school, he obtained a four-year scholarship toDalhousie University inHalifax to further his classical studies.[2]On obtaining his B.A. degree from Dalhousie, Emeneau was awarded aRhodes Scholarship toBalliol College atOxford University. From Oxford he arrived atYale University in 1926, where he took a teaching appointment in Latin. While at Yale, Emeneau beganSanskrit andIndo-European studies with the SanskritistFranklin Edgerton and Indo-EuropeanistEdgar Sturtevant. In 1931 Emeneau was awarded his Ph.D. with a dissertation on theVetālapañcaviṃśatī.
Given the dire employment situation in the early 1930s, Emeneau stayed on at Yale after completing his dissertation, taking courses in the "new linguistics" being taught byEdward Sapir.[2] Emeneau wrote:
I was exposed to methods of fieldwork on non-literary languages, including intensive phonetic practice and analysis of material, but especially to Sapir's approach to anthropological linguistics, in which language is only part of the total culture, but a most important part, since in it the community expresses in its own way, 'verbifies' its culture.
— 1980, 352
It was Sapir who suggested that Emeneau take up a study of theToda language of theNilgiri hills in South India with an aim toward a comparative study of theDravidian languages. Emeneau may have been the last student of Sapir.[2]
Emeneau contributed study of the lesser known, non-literary languages of the Dravidian family. His work on the Toda language remains essential reading for students of Dravidian. His phonetic descriptions of the language, based on impressionistic data collection without the aid of recording devices, was corroborated some 60 years later by the eminent phoneticiansPeter Ladefoged and Peri Bhaskararao using modern phonetic methods.[3]
His linguistic descriptions of Dravidian languages were often accompanied by sociolinguistic, folkloric, and ethnographic description. Emeneau is also credited with the study ofareal phenomena in linguistics, with his seminal article,India as a Linguistic Area.[4] Emeneau's contribution to Dravidian linguistics includes detailed descriptions ofToda,Badaga,Kolami, andKota.[5]
Perhaps Emeneau's greatest achievement in Dravidian studies is theDravidian Etymological Dictionary (in two volumes), written with Thomas Burrow and first published in 1961. Despite the characteristic reserve that eschewed historical reconstruction, this work, revised in a 1984 second edition, remains the indispensable guide, tool, and authority for every Dravidianist.
In addition to the Department of Linguistics, Emeneau also founded the Survey of California Indian Languages (later renamed theSurvey of California and Other Indian Languages), which has catalogued and documentedindigenous languages of the Americas for several decades.[6]
Emeneau served as president of theLinguistic Society of America (LSA) in 1949 as well as serving as editor of the Society's journal,Language. In 1952 he served as president of theAmerican Oriental Society.
Emeneau was named the Collitz Professor of the Linguistic Society of America in 1953, and at Berkeley he gave the Faculty Research Lecture in 1957. The recipient of four honorary degrees — from theUniversity of Chicago (1968), Dalhousie University (1970), theUniversity of Hyderabad (1987), andKameshwar Singh Darbhanga Sanskrit University (1999) — as well as theWilbur Lucius Cross Medal from Yale and the Medal of Merit of the American Oriental Society. Emeneau was also a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences,[7] a Member of theAmerican Philosophical Society,[8] a Fellow of theBritish Academy, an Honorary Fellow of theRoyal Asiatic Society, an Honorary Member of theLinguistic Society of India and of theVietnam Academy of Social Sciences, and the sole Honorary Member of thePhilological Society (the oldest professional linguistic society in the world).
He was also the visiting professor at The Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh. Well into his 90s, Emeneau was known to visit the Departments of Linguistics and South and Southeast Asian studies at Berkeley, posing interesting and difficult linguistic questions to new generations of students of Indian linguistics.
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