James Matisoff: Difference between revisions
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{{Short description|American linguist}} |
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{{Infobox academic |
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| name = James Matisoff |
| name = James Matisoff |
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| birth_name = James Alan Matisoff |
| birth_name = James Alan Matisoff |
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| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1937|7|14}} |
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1937|7|14}} |
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| birth_place = [[Boston |
| birth_place = [[Boston, Massachusetts]], U.S. |
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| spouse = Susan Matisoff |
| spouse = Susan Matisoff |
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| education = {{ubl|[[Harvard University]]|[[International Christian University]]|[[University of California, Berkeley]]}} |
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| thesis_title = A Grammar of the Lahu Language |
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| thesis_year = 1967 |
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| discipline = [[Linguist]] |
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| workplaces = [[University of California, Berkeley]] |
| workplaces = [[University of California, Berkeley]] |
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| doctoral_students = <!--only those with WP articles--> |
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| notable_students = |
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| main_interests = [[Sino-Tibetan languages]] |
| main_interests = [[Sino-Tibetan languages]] |
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| notable_works = ''[ |
| notable_works = ''[[Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus]]'' (STEDT) |
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| notable_ideas = [[Tonogenesis#Origin|Tonogenesis]], [[rhinoglottophilia]], [[sesquisyllable]]s |
| notable_ideas = [[Tonogenesis#Origin|Tonogenesis]], [[rhinoglottophilia]], [[sesquisyllable]]s |
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| module = {{infobox Chinese | child = yes | t = | s = 马蒂索夫 |
| module = {{infobox Chinese | child = yes | t = 馬蒂索夫/馬提索夫| s = 马蒂索夫/马提索夫| p = Mǎdìsuǒfū/Mǎtísuǒfū}} |
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'''James Alan Matisoff''' ( |
'''James Alan Matisoff''' ({{lang-zh||t=馬蒂索夫|s=马蒂索夫|p=Mǎdìsuǒfū}} or {{lang-zh||t=馬提索夫|s=马提索夫|p=Mǎtísuǒfū}}; born July 14, 1937) is Professor [[Emeritus]] of [[Linguistics]] at the [[University of California, Berkeley]]. He is a noted authority on [[Tibeto-Burman languages]] and other languages of [[mainland Southeast Asia]]. |
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==Education== |
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Matisoff was born July 14, 1937, in [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]], to a working-class family |
Matisoff was born July 14, 1937, in [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]], to a working-class family of [[Eastern European Jewish]] origins. His father, a fish seller, was an immigrant from a town near [[Minsk]], [[Byelorussian SSR]] (now [[Belarus]]).<ref>[[David Bradley (linguist)|Bradley, David]]; [[Randy LaPolla|LaPolla, Randy]]; Michailovsky, Boyd; and [[Graham Thurgood|Thurgood, Graham]] (editors). ''[https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/162629307.pdf Language variation: Papers on variation and change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in honour of James A. Matisoff]''. PL-555, xii + 333 pages. Canberra: [[Pacific Linguistics]], The Australian National University, 2003. {{doi|10.15144/PL-555}}</ref> |
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He attended [[Harvard University|Harvard]] from 1954 to 1959, where he met his wife, Susan Matisoff, later a scholar of [[Japanese literature]], when the two shared a Japanese class. He received two degrees from Harvard: an AB in [[Romance languages|Romance]] Languages and Literatures (1958) and an AM in [[French literature|French Literature]] (1959). He then studied Japanese at [[International Christian University]] from 1960 to 1961. |
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==Scholarship== |
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⚫ | He did his doctoral studies in Linguistics at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], where [[Mary Haas]], co-founder of the department, was then chair. Haas had been a student of [[Edward Sapir]] while at [[University of Chicago]] and [[Yale University]], and through her own extensive research in descriptive and documentary linguistics had become a specialist in [[Indigenous languages of the Americas|Native American languages]] and an authority on [[Thai language|Thai]]. Haas was instrumental in |
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⚫ | He did his doctoral studies in Linguistics at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], where [[Mary Haas]], co-founder of the department, was then chair. Haas had been a student of [[Edward Sapir]] while at [[University of Chicago]] and [[Yale University]], and through her own extensive research in descriptive and documentary linguistics had become a specialist in [[Indigenous languages of the Americas|Native American languages]] and an authority on [[Thai language|Thai]]. Haas was instrumental in Matisoff's decision to research a language of mainland Southeast Asia for his dissertation.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://sealang.net/thai/matisoff.htm|title=Remembering Mary Haas' s Work on Thai James A}}</ref> |
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⚫ | Matisoff's doctoral dissertation was a grammar of the [[Lahu language]], a [[Tibeto-Burman languages|Tibeto-Burman]] language belonging to the [[Loloish languages|Loloish]] branch of the family. He spent a year in northern Thailand doing field work on Lahu during his graduate studies with support from a [[Fulbright-Hays Scholarship|Fulbright-Hays Fellowship]]. He completed his PhD in Linguistics in 1967, and made several field studies thereafter through an [[American Council of Learned Societies]] fellowship. His ''Grammar of Lahu'' is notable both for its depth of detail and the theoretical eclecticism which informed his description of the language. He later published an extensive dictionary of Lahu (1988) and a corresponding [http://escholarship.org/uc/item/72n9j1f6#page-1 English-Lahu lexicon] (2006). |
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⚫ | Matisoff's doctoral dissertation was a grammar of the [[Lahu language]], a [[Tibeto-Burman languages|Tibeto-Burman]] language belonging to the [[Loloish languages|Loloish]] branch of the family. He spent a year in northern Thailand doing field work on Lahu during his graduate studies with support from a [[Fulbright-Hays Scholarship|Fulbright-Hays Fellowship]]. He completed his PhD in Linguistics in 1967, and made several field studies thereafter through an [[American Council of Learned Societies]] fellowship. His ''Grammar of Lahu'' is notable both for its depth of detail and the theoretical eclecticism which informed his description of the language. He later published an extensive dictionary of Lahu (1988) and a corresponding [http://escholarship.org/uc/item/72n9j1f6#page-1 ''English-Lahu lexicon''] (2006). |
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⚫ | After four years teaching at [[Columbia University]] (1966–1969), Matisoff accepted a professorship at Berkeley.<ref>http://stedt.berkeley.edu/JAM</ref> At Berkeley, his research has encompassed a wide range of topics, from historical and comparative linguistics to tonal phenomena, variational semantics, [[language contact]], [[Yiddish language|Yiddish]], and Tibeto-Burman morphosyntax. Before his retirement, he taught classes on the Linguistics of Southeast Asia, Tibeto-Burman Linguistics, Historical Semantics, Morphology, and Field Methods. In Field Methods, graduate students learn the methods of language description through eliciting data from a native speaker. The languages studied in Matisoff’s field methods classes in different years include: [[Lai languages|Lai Chin]], [[Sherpa language|Sherpa]], and [[Uyghur language|Uighur]], among numerous others. |
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==Career== |
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Matisoff has coined a number of terms used in linguistics, including [[Tonogenesis#Origin|tonogenesis]], [[rhinoglottophilia]], [[Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area|Sinosphere]] and [[Indosphere (linguistic subgrouping)|Indosphere]], ''[[Cheshirisation]]'', which refers to the trace remains of an otherwise disappeared sound in a word, and ''[[sesquisyllabic]]'' to describe the [[Iamb (foot)|iambic stress pattern]] of words in languages spoken in Southeast Asia, such as the [[Mon–Khmer]] languages.{{Citation needed|date=April 2011}} |
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⚫ | After four years teaching at [[Columbia University]] (1966–1969), Matisoff accepted a professorship at [[University of California, Berkeley|Berkeley]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://stedt.berkeley.edu/JAM|title = James A. Matisoff}}</ref> At Berkeley, his research has encompassed a wide range of topics, from historical and comparative linguistics to tonal phenomena, variational semantics, [[language contact]], [[Yiddish language|Yiddish]], and Tibeto-Burman morphosyntax. Before his retirement, he taught classes on the Linguistics of Southeast Asia, Tibeto-Burman Linguistics, Historical Semantics, Morphology, and Field Methods. In Field Methods, graduate students learn the methods of language description through eliciting data from a native speaker. The languages studied in Matisoff’s field methods classes in different years include: [[Lai languages|Lai Chin]], [[Sherpa language|Sherpa]], and [[Uyghur language|Uighur]], among numerous others. |
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He edited the journal ''[ |
He edited the journal ''[[Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area]]'' for many years (subsequently edited by his student [[Randy LaPolla]], then by LaPolla's student Alec Coupe). Matisoff participated in establishing the [http://stedt.berkeley.edu/icstll/icstll-list.html International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics] (abbreviated ICSTLL), an annual conference held since 1968. |
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===Coined terms=== |
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⚫ | In 1987, Matisoff began the [[Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus]] (STEDT) project, an [[historical linguistics]] project aimed at producing an [[etymological dictionary]] of [[Sino-Tibetan languages|Sino-Tibetan]] organized by semantic field. The project maintains a [http://stedt.berkeley.edu/search large, publicly accessible lexical database] of nearly one million records with data on Sino-Tibetan languages from over 500 sources. This database is used to identify and mark [[cognate]]s for the purposes of better understanding the historical development of the Sino-Tibetan language family and the subgroupings of the languages therein, and to reconstruct the theoretical [[proto-language]] of the language family, Proto-Sino-Tibetan.<ref>https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0712570&WT.z_pims_id=5408</ref> |
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Matisoff has coined a number of terms used in linguistics, including [[Tonogenesis#Origin|tonogenesis]], [[rhinoglottophilia]],<ref>{{cite book|author-last1=Matisoff |author-first1=James A. |author-link=James Matisoff |year=1975 |chapter=Rhinoglottophilia: The Mysterious Connection between Nasality and Glottality |editor-first1=Charles A. |editor-last1=Ferguson |editor-link1=Charles A. Ferguson |editor-first2=Larry M. |editor-last2=Hyman |editor-link2=Larry Hyman |editor-first3=John J. |editor-last3=Ohala |editor-link3=John Ohala |title=Nasálfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and Nasalization, Universals Language Project, Stanford University, Stanford |pages=265–87}}</ref> [[Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area|Sinosphere]] and [[Indosphere (linguistic subgrouping)|Indosphere]], ''[[Cheshirisation]]'', which refers to the trace remains of an otherwise disappeared sound in a word,<ref>Matisoff, James. 1991. "Areal and universal dimensions of grammatization in Lahu." In: Traugott & Heine, eds., ''Approaches to grammaticalization''. John Benjamins, pp. 383–453.</ref> and ''[[sesquisyllabic]]'' to describe the [[Iamb (foot)|iambic stress pattern]] of words in languages spoken in Southeast Asia, such as the [[Mon–Khmer]] languages.<ref>Matisoff, James A. (1973). 'Tonogenesis in Southeast Asia'. In Larry M. Hyman (ed.), [http://gsil.sc-ling.org/pubs/SCOPILS_1_3_4/consonant_types_and_tone.pdf ''Consonant Types and Tone''] (Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics No. 1), pp. 73–95. Los Angeles: Linguistics Program, University of Southern California.</ref> |
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In a 1990 paper criticizing [[Joseph Greenberg]]'s tendency to [[Lumpers and splitters#Language classification|lump]] when [[language classification|classifying languages]], Matisoff humorously coined the term ''columbicubiculomania'' (from ''[[wikt:columbi|columbi]]'' + ''[[wikt:cubiculo|cubiculo]]'' + ''[[wikt:mania|mania]]''), which he defined as "a compulsion to stick things into [[pigeonholing|pigeonholes]], to leave nothing [[unclassified language|unclassified]]."<ref name="megalocomparison">{{cite journal|last=Matisoff|first=James A.|title=On megalocomparison|journal=Language|publisher=Project Muse|volume=66|issue=1|year=1990|issn=1535-0665|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/452745|doi=10.1353/lan.1990.0035|pages=106–120}}</ref> |
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===STEDT=== |
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{{main|Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus}} |
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⚫ | In 1987, Matisoff began the [[Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus]] (STEDT) project, an [[historical linguistics]] project aimed at producing an [[etymological dictionary]] of [[Sino-Tibetan languages|Sino-Tibetan]] organized by semantic field. The project maintains a [http://stedt.berkeley.edu/search large, publicly accessible lexical database] of nearly one million records with data on Sino-Tibetan languages from over 500 sources. This database is used to identify and mark [[cognate]]s for the purposes of better understanding the historical development of the Sino-Tibetan language family and the subgroupings of the languages therein, and to reconstruct the theoretical [[proto-language]] of the language family, Proto-Sino-Tibetan.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0712570&WT.z_pims_id=5408|title = NSF Award Search: Award # 0712570 - Sino Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus}}</ref> |
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Matisoff has authored two monographs so far presenting results from the STEDT project: ''[http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress/ucpl/vol_140/ The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus]'' (2008) and ''[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/19d79619 The Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman]'' (2003, 800 p.). |
Matisoff has authored two monographs so far presenting results from the STEDT project: ''[http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress/ucpl/vol_140/ The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus]'' (2008) and ''[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/19d79619 The Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman]'' (2003, 800 p.). |
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Although Matisoff retired from Berkeley in 2002, he continues to publish extensively and |
Although Matisoff retired from Berkeley in 2002, he continues to publish extensively and was Principal Investigator for the STEDT project until its end in 2015. In 2015, the final print and software releases for STEDT were disseminated to the public, concluding the decades-long ''Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus'' (STEDT).<ref name="Matisoff2015">Matisoff, James A. 2015. [http://stedt.berkeley.edu/~stedt-cgi/rootcanal.pl/group/1 ''The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus'']. Berkeley: University of California. ([http://stedt.berkeley.edu/dissemination/STEDT.pdf PDF])</ref><ref name="STEDT2015">Bruhn, Daniel; Lowe, John; Mortensen, David; Yu, Dominic (2015). ''Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Database Software''. Software, UC Berkeley Dash. {{doi|10.6078/D1159Q}}</ref> |
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==See also== |
==See also== |
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== Bibliography == |
== Bibliography == |
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* {{cite journal | doi = 10.2307/598429 | last = Matisoff | first = J. | year = 1970 | title = Glottal dissimilation and the Lahu high-rising tone: |
* {{cite journal | doi = 10.2307/598429 | last = Matisoff | first = J. | year = 1970 | title = Glottal dissimilation and the Lahu high-rising tone: A tonogenetic case-study | jstor = 598429| journal = Journal of the American Oriental Society | volume = 90 | issue = 1| pages = 13–44 }} |
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* Matisoff, J. (1972). "Lahu nominalization, relativization, and genitivization". John Kimball, (ed.), ''Syntax and Semantics,'' Vol. 1, 237-57. ''Studies in Language Series.'' New York: Seminar Press. |
* Matisoff, J. (1972). "Lahu nominalization, relativization, and genitivization". John Kimball, (ed.), ''Syntax and Semantics,'' Vol. 1, 237-57. ''Studies in Language Series.'' New York: Seminar Press. |
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* Matisoff, J. (1972). ''The Loloish tonal split revisited''. |
* Matisoff, J. (1972). ''The Loloish tonal split revisited''. |
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* Matisoff, J. (2003). "Lahu". Graham Thurgood and Randy LaPolla, (eds.), ''The Sino-Tibetan Languages,'' 208-221. London and New York: Routledge. |
* Matisoff, J. (2003). "Lahu". Graham Thurgood and Randy LaPolla, (eds.), ''The Sino-Tibetan Languages,'' 208-221. London and New York: Routledge. |
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* Matisoff, J. (2003). "Southeast Asian Languages". William Frawley and Bernard Comrie, (eds.), ''International Encyclopedia of Linguistics,'' 2nd Edition, Vol. IV, 126-130. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
* Matisoff, J. (2003). "Southeast Asian Languages". William Frawley and Bernard Comrie, (eds.), ''International Encyclopedia of Linguistics,'' 2nd Edition, Vol. IV, 126-130. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
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* Matisoff, J. (2006). ''English-Lahu Lexicon.'' University of California Publications in Linguistics, Vol. 139. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. |
* Matisoff, J. (2006). ''[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/72n9j1f6#page-1/ English-Lahu Lexicon].'' University of California Publications in Linguistics, Vol. 139. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. |
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* Matisoff, J. (2008). ''The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: |
* Matisoff, J. (2008). ''[http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress/ucpl/vol_140/ The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus].'' With comments on Chinese comparanda by Zev J. Handel. University of California Publications in Linguistics, Vol 140. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. |
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==External links== |
==External links== |
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{{Wikiquote|James Matisoff}} |
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*[http://stedt.berkeley.edu/JAM Personal page at the STEDT project website] |
*[http://stedt.berkeley.edu/JAM Personal page at the STEDT project website] |
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*[http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/fac/matisoff.html Faculty page at the UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics] |
*[http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/fac/matisoff.html Faculty page at the UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics] |
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*[http://stedt.berkeley.edu/JAM/pubs Full list of publications] |
*[http://stedt.berkeley.edu/JAM/pubs Full list of publications] |
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*[http://stedt.berkeley.edu/ STEDT project page] |
*[http://stedt.berkeley.edu/ STEDT project page] |
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*[http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress/ucpl/vol_140 The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: |
*[http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress/ucpl/vol_140 ''The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus''] |
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*[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/72n9j1f6#page-1 English-Lahu Lexicon] |
*[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/72n9j1f6#page-1 ''English-Lahu Lexicon''] |
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⚫ | |||
*[https://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/JAMAT James A. Matisoff Collection of Lahu language documentation and field methods materials in the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive] |
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*[https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1934031/ Window onto a Vanished World: Lahu texts from Thailand in the 1960’s by James A. Matisoff] |
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{{Authority control}} |
{{Authority control}} |
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[[Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni]] |
[[Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni]] |
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[[Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty]] |
[[Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty]] |
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[[Category:Columbia University faculty]] |
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[[Category:Neologists]] |
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[[Category:Jewish American academics]] |
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[[Category:Linguists of Yiddish]] |
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[[Category:Historical linguists]] |
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[[Category:American lexicographers]] |
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[[Category:20th-century linguists]] |
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[[Category:21st-century linguists]] |
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[[Category:Linguists of Loloish languages]] |
Latest revision as of 02:32, 21 June 2024
James Matisoff | |||||||
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Born | James Alan Matisoff July 14, 1937 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. | ||||||
Spouse | Susan Matisoff | ||||||
Academic background | |||||||
Education | |||||||
Thesis | A Grammar of the Lahu Language (1967) | ||||||
Academic work | |||||||
Discipline | Linguist | ||||||
Institutions | University of California, Berkeley | ||||||
Main interests | Sino-Tibetan languages | ||||||
Notable works | Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) | ||||||
Notable ideas | Tonogenesis, rhinoglottophilia, sesquisyllables | ||||||
Chinese name | |||||||
Traditional Chinese | 馬蒂索夫/馬提索夫 | ||||||
Simplified Chinese | 马蒂索夫/马提索夫 | ||||||
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James Alan Matisoff (simplified Chinese: 马蒂索夫; traditional Chinese: 馬蒂索夫; pinyin: Mǎdìsuǒfū or simplified Chinese: 马提索夫; traditional Chinese: 馬提索夫; pinyin: Mǎtísuǒfū; born July 14, 1937) is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a noted authority on Tibeto-Burman languages and other languages of mainland Southeast Asia.
Education
[edit]Matisoff was born July 14, 1937, in Boston, Massachusetts, to a working-class family of Eastern European Jewish origins. His father, a fish seller, was an immigrant from a town near Minsk, Byelorussian SSR (now Belarus).[1]
He attended Harvard from 1954 to 1959, where he met his wife, Susan Matisoff, later a scholar of Japanese literature, when the two shared a Japanese class. He received two degrees from Harvard: an AB in Romance Languages and Literatures (1958) and an AM in French Literature (1959). He then studied Japanese at International Christian University from 1960 to 1961.
He did his doctoral studies in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where Mary Haas, co-founder of the department, was then chair. Haas had been a student of Edward Sapir while at University of Chicago and Yale University, and through her own extensive research in descriptive and documentary linguistics had become a specialist in Native American languages and an authority on Thai. Haas was instrumental in Matisoff's decision to research a language of mainland Southeast Asia for his dissertation.[2]
Matisoff's doctoral dissertation was a grammar of the Lahu language, a Tibeto-Burman language belonging to the Loloish branch of the family. He spent a year in northern Thailand doing field work on Lahu during his graduate studies with support from a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. He completed his PhD in Linguistics in 1967, and made several field studies thereafter through an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship. His Grammar of Lahu is notable both for its depth of detail and the theoretical eclecticism which informed his description of the language. He later published an extensive dictionary of Lahu (1988) and a corresponding English-Lahu lexicon (2006).
Career
[edit]After four years teaching at Columbia University (1966–1969), Matisoff accepted a professorship at Berkeley.[3] At Berkeley, his research has encompassed a wide range of topics, from historical and comparative linguistics to tonal phenomena, variational semantics, language contact, Yiddish, and Tibeto-Burman morphosyntax. Before his retirement, he taught classes on the Linguistics of Southeast Asia, Tibeto-Burman Linguistics, Historical Semantics, Morphology, and Field Methods. In Field Methods, graduate students learn the methods of language description through eliciting data from a native speaker. The languages studied in Matisoff’s field methods classes in different years include: Lai Chin, Sherpa, and Uighur, among numerous others.
He edited the journal Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area for many years (subsequently edited by his student Randy LaPolla, then by LaPolla's student Alec Coupe). Matisoff participated in establishing the International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (abbreviated ICSTLL), an annual conference held since 1968.
Coined terms
[edit]Matisoff has coined a number of terms used in linguistics, including tonogenesis, rhinoglottophilia,[4] Sinosphere and Indosphere, Cheshirisation, which refers to the trace remains of an otherwise disappeared sound in a word,[5] and sesquisyllabic to describe the iambic stress pattern of words in languages spoken in Southeast Asia, such as the Mon–Khmer languages.[6]
In a 1990 paper criticizing Joseph Greenberg's tendency to lump when classifying languages, Matisoff humorously coined the term columbicubiculomania (from columbi + cubiculo + mania), which he defined as "a compulsion to stick things into pigeonholes, to leave nothing unclassified."[7]
STEDT
[edit]In 1987, Matisoff began the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) project, an historical linguistics project aimed at producing an etymological dictionary of Sino-Tibetan organized by semantic field. The project maintains a large, publicly accessible lexical database of nearly one million records with data on Sino-Tibetan languages from over 500 sources. This database is used to identify and mark cognates for the purposes of better understanding the historical development of the Sino-Tibetan language family and the subgroupings of the languages therein, and to reconstruct the theoretical proto-language of the language family, Proto-Sino-Tibetan.[8]
Matisoff has authored two monographs so far presenting results from the STEDT project: The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus (2008) and The Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (2003, 800 p.).
Although Matisoff retired from Berkeley in 2002, he continues to publish extensively and was Principal Investigator for the STEDT project until its end in 2015. In 2015, the final print and software releases for STEDT were disseminated to the public, concluding the decades-long Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT).[9][10]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Bradley, David; LaPolla, Randy; Michailovsky, Boyd; and Thurgood, Graham (editors). Language variation: Papers on variation and change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in honour of James A. Matisoff. PL-555, xii + 333 pages. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 2003. doi:10.15144/PL-555
- ^ "Remembering Mary Haas' s Work on Thai James A".
- ^ "James A. Matisoff".
- ^ Matisoff, James A. (1975). "Rhinoglottophilia: The Mysterious Connection between Nasality and Glottality". In Ferguson, Charles A.; Hyman, Larry M.; Ohala, John J. (eds.). Nasálfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and Nasalization, Universals Language Project, Stanford University, Stanford. pp. 265–87.
- ^ Matisoff, James. 1991. "Areal and universal dimensions of grammatization in Lahu." In: Traugott & Heine, eds., Approaches to grammaticalization. John Benjamins, pp. 383–453.
- ^ Matisoff, James A. (1973). 'Tonogenesis in Southeast Asia'. In Larry M. Hyman (ed.), Consonant Types and Tone (Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics No. 1), pp. 73–95. Los Angeles: Linguistics Program, University of Southern California.
- ^ Matisoff, James A. (1990). "On megalocomparison". Language. 66 (1). Project Muse: 106–120. doi:10.1353/lan.1990.0035. ISSN 1535-0665.
- ^ "NSF Award Search: Award # 0712570 - Sino Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus".
- ^ Matisoff, James A. 2015. The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus. Berkeley: University of California. (PDF)
- ^ Bruhn, Daniel; Lowe, John; Mortensen, David; Yu, Dominic (2015). Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Database Software. Software, UC Berkeley Dash. doi:10.6078/D1159Q
Bibliography
[edit]- Matisoff, J. (1970). "Glottal dissimilation and the Lahu high-rising tone: A tonogenetic case-study". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 90 (1): 13–44. doi:10.2307/598429. JSTOR 598429.
- Matisoff, J. (1972). "Lahu nominalization, relativization, and genitivization". John Kimball, (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 1, 237-57. Studies in Language Series. New York: Seminar Press.
- Matisoff, J. (1972). The Loloish tonal split revisited.
- Matisoff, J. (1973). "Tonogenesis in Southeast Asia". Larry M. Hyman, (ed.), Consonant Types and Tone, 71-95. Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics, No. 1. Los Angeles: UCLA.
- Matisoff, J. (1973). The grammar of Lahu, 2 ed. 1982.
- Matisoff, J. (1975). "Rhinoglottophilia: The mysterious connection between nasality and glottality". Charles Ferguson, Larry M. Hyman, and John Ohala, (eds.), Nasálfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and Nasalization, 265-87. Stanford, California: Stanford University Language Universals Project.
- Matisoff, J. (1978). Variational semantics in Tibeto-Burman: The 'organic' approach to linguistic comparison.
- Matisoff, J. (1979). Blessings, curses, hopes, and fears: Psycho-ostensive expressions in Yiddish, 2 ed., 2000.
- Matisoff, J. (1988). The dictionary of Lahu.
- Matisoff, J. (1990). "On megalocomparison". Language. 66 (1): 106–20. doi:10.2307/415281. JSTOR 415281.
- Matisoff, J. (1991). "Areal and universal dimensions of grammatization in Lahu." Elizabeth C. Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization, 1991, Vol. II, 383–453.
- Matisoff, J. (1991). "Jiburish revisisted". Acta Orientalia. 52: 91–114.
- Matisoff, J. (1997). Sino-Tibetan Numeral Systems: prefixes, protoforms and problems, 1997.
- Matisoff, J. (2003). Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: system and philosophy of Sino-Tibetan reconstruction.
- Matisoff, J. (2003). "Lahu". Graham Thurgood and Randy LaPolla, (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 208-221. London and New York: Routledge.
- Matisoff, J. (2003). "Southeast Asian Languages". William Frawley and Bernard Comrie, (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Vol. IV, 126-130. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Matisoff, J. (2006). English-Lahu Lexicon. University of California Publications in Linguistics, Vol. 139. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
- Matisoff, J. (2008). The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus. With comments on Chinese comparanda by Zev J. Handel. University of California Publications in Linguistics, Vol 140. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
External links
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png)
- Personal page at the STEDT project website
- Faculty page at the UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics
- Full list of publications
- STEDT project page
- The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus
- English-Lahu Lexicon
- 2017 interview at ICSTLL 50
- James A. Matisoff Collection of Lahu language documentation and field methods materials in the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive
- Window onto a Vanished World: Lahu texts from Thailand in the 1960’s by James A. Matisoff
- 1937 births
- Living people
- Linguists from the United States
- Linguists of Southeast Asian languages
- Linguists of Sino-Tibetan languages
- Harvard University alumni
- University of California, Berkeley alumni
- University of California, Berkeley faculty
- Columbia University faculty
- Neologists
- Jewish American academics
- Linguists of Yiddish
- Historical linguists
- American lexicographers
- 20th-century linguists
- 21st-century linguists
- Linguists of Loloish languages