Mary Haas | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1910-01-23)January 23, 1910 |
| Died | May 17, 1996(1996-05-17) (aged 86) |
| Known for | Training linguists; work inNorth American Indian languages; work inThai, andhistorical linguistics. |
| Spouses | |
| Awards | Honorary doctorates from:
|
| Academic background | |
| Education | PhD inlinguistics,Yale University, 1935 |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | A Grammar of the Tunica Language (1935) |
| Doctoral advisor | Edward Sapir |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Linguist |
| Sub-discipline | Historical linguistics,Language documentation |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Doctoral students | William Bright,William Shipley,Karl Teeter,Catherine Callaghan,Margaret Langdon,Terrence Kaufman,Victor Golla,Marc Okrand,Sydney Lamb |
| Main interests | Native American languages,Thai |
Mary Rosamond Haas (January 23, 1910 – May 17, 1996) was an Americanlinguist who specialized inNorth American indigenous languages,Thai, andhistorical linguistics. She served as president of theLinguistic Society of America. She was elected a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of theNational Academy of Sciences.
Haas was born inRichmond, Indiana.[2] She attendedhigh school andEarlham College in Richmond.[1]
She completed herPhD inlinguistics atYale University in 1935 at the age of 25, with a dissertation titledA Grammar of the Tunica Language.[3] In the 1930s, Haas worked with the last native speaker ofTunica,Sesostrie Youchigant, producing extensive texts and vocabularies.[4]
Haas undertook graduate work oncomparative philology at theUniversity of Chicago. She studied underEdward Sapir, whom she later followed toYale. She began a long career in linguistic fieldwork by studying various languages during the summer months.[1]
Over the ten-year period from 1931 to 1941, Haas studied theWakashan languageNitinat (Ditidaht), as well as a number of languages that were mainly originally spoken in the American Southeast:Tunica,Natchez,Muskogee (Creek),Koasati,Choctaw,Alabama,Cherokee andHichiti. Her first published paper,A Visit to the Other World, a Nitinat Text, written in collaboration withMorris Swadesh, was published in 1933.[5][6]
Shortly after, Haas conducted fieldwork withWatt Sam andNancy Raven, the last two native speakers of theNatchez language inOklahoma.[7] Her extensive unpublished field notes have constituted the most reliable source of information on the now dead language. She conducted extensive fieldwork on theMuskogee language, and was the first modern linguist to collect extensive texts in the language.[8] Her Muskogee texts were published after her death in a volume that was edited and translated by Jack B. Martin, Margaret McKane Mauldin, and Juanita McGirt.[9][10]
DuringWorld War II, the United States government viewed the study and teaching of Southeast Asian languages as important to the war effort,[11] and under the auspices of theArmy Specialized Training Program at theUniversity of California at Berkeley, Haas developed a program to teach theThai language.[12] Her authoritativeThai-English Students' Dictionary, published in 1964, is still in use.[13]
In 1948, she was appointed assistant professor of Thai and Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Berkeley Department ofOriental Languages, an appointment she attributed toPeter A. Boodberg, whom she described as "ahead of his time in the way he treated women scholars—a scholar was a scholar in his book".[4] She became one of the founding members of the UC-Berkeley Department of Linguistics when it was established in 1953. She was a long-term chair of the department, and she was Director of theSurvey of California Indian Languages at Berkeley from 1953 to 1977.[14] She retired from Berkeley in 1977 and in 1984 was elected a Berkeley Fellow.[15]
Mary Haas died at her home in Berkeley, California, on May 17, 1996, at the age of 86.[1]
Haas was noted for her dedication to teaching linguistics, and to the role of the linguist in language instruction. Her studentKarl V. Teeter pointed out in his obituary of Haas[16] that she trained moreAmericanist linguists than her former instructorsEdward Sapir andFranz Boas combined: she supervised fieldwork in Americanist linguistics by more than 100 doctoral students. As a founder and director of theSurvey of California Indian Languages,[17] she advised nearly fifty dissertations, including those of many linguists who were later influential in the field, includingWilliam Bright (Karok),William Shipley (Maidu),Robert Oswalt (Kashaya),Karl Teeter (Wiyot),Catherine Callaghan (Penutian),Margaret Langdon (Diegueño),Sally McLendon(Eastern Pomo),Victor Golla (Hupa),Wick Miller (Acoma),Marc Okrand (Mutsun),Kenneth Whistler (Proto-Wintun),Douglas Parks (Pawnee andArikara), and William Jacobsen (Washo).
In 1963, Haas served as president of theLinguistic Society of America.[18] She was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship in 1964.[19] She was elected a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974,[20] and she was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences in 1978.[21] She receivedhonorary doctorates fromNorthwestern University in 1975, theUniversity of Chicago in 1976,Earlham College, 1980, and theOhio State University in 1980.[2][14]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)