Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946, Thornbury[1]) is a British-born[2]linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, includingGreenlandic,Inuktun,Chukchi andNitinaht.
As a young teenager, Fortescue and his family moved toCalifornia where he went toLa Jolla High School, graduating in 1959.[1][3] He finished school atAbingdon School in 1963.[4] In 1966, he received a B.A. with "Honours with great Distinction" in Slavic languages and literatures fromUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he then taught Russian from 1968 to 1970 and finished an M.A. in Slavic languages and literatures. In the years from 1971 to 1975 he taught English for the International Language Centre inOsaka and theUniversity of Aix/Marseille.[3] He took a PhD in Linguistics at theUniversity of Edinburgh from 1975 to 1978[5] with the thesisProcedural discourse generation model for 'Twenty Questions'.[6] With a Danish scholarship, he visited University of Copenhagen and did fieldwork inGreenland in from 1978 to 1979, and this research became supported from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities in the period from 1979 to 1982. In 1984, he becameassociate professor ineskimology at theUniversity of Copenhagen, and in 1989 docent.[3] He became professor inlinguistics in 1999, and retired in 2011.[2]
On the occasion of his retirement in 2011, a special issue in the journalGrønland was published in 2012 as afestschrift. After retiring, he moved to England,[1] where he was elected an associate ofSt Hugh's College.[7] An edited book was published as a festschrift in his honour in 2017.[8] In 2019, he was elected toAcademia Europaea.[7]
Fortescue'sComparative Eskimo Dictionary, co-authored with Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan,[9] is the standard work in its area, as is hisComparative Chukotko-Kamchatkan Dictionary.[10] In his bookPattern and Process,[11] Fortescue explores the possibilities of a linguistic theory based on the philosophical theories ofAlfred North Whitehead.[12][13][better source needed]
A more complete listing is available in theFestschrift in his honor.[8]
1984.Some Problems Concerning the Correlation and Reconstruction of Eskimo and Aleut Mood Markers. Institut for Eskimologi, Københavns Universitet.
1990.From the Writings of the Greenlanders: Kalaallit Atuakklaannit. University of Alaska Press.ISBN9780912006437
1991.Inuktun: An Introduction to the Language of Qaanaaq, Thule. Institut for eskimologis skriftrække, Københavns Universitet.ISBN9788787874168
1992. Editor.Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. John Benjamins Publishing Co.ISBN9789027250353
1994. With Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan.Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates. Alaska Native Language Center.ISBN9781555000516
1998.Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence. London and New York: Cassell.ISBN9780304703302
2001.Pattern and Process: A Whiteheadian Perspective on Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Co.ISBN9781588110589
2002.The Domain of Language. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.ISBN9788772897066
2005.Comparative Chukotko-Kamchatkan Dictionary. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.ISBN9783110184174
^abKaplan, Lawrence D.; Berge, Anna, eds. (2017). "Publications on Indigenous Languages by Michael D. Fortescue".Studies in Inuit Linguistics. In Honor of Michael Fortescue. Fairbanks, Alaska: Alaska Native Language Center. pp. 185–190.ISBN978-1-55500-125-4.
Bobaljik, Jonathan David (1998). "Review ofComparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates". Book Reviews.Anthropological Linguistics.40 (3):514–518.JSTOR30028655.
Dorais, Louis-Jacques (2011). "Review ofComparative Eskimo Dictionary With Aleut Cognates, Second Edition". Book Reviews.Études/Inuit/Studies.35 (1–2): 294.doi:10.7202/1012850ar.
Vajda, Edward J. (2003). "Review ofPattern and Process: A Whiteheadian Perspective on Linguistics". Book Notices.Language.79 (3): 653.doi:10.1353/lan.2003.0194.
