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Terrence Kaufman

April 10, 2024

Terrence Kaufman (1937[1] – March 3, 2022) was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Terrence Kaufman
Born(1937-06-14)June 14, 1937
DiedMarch 3, 2022(2022-03-03) (aged 84)
TitleProfessor emeritus
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of California at Berkeley
ThesisGrammar of Tzeltal (1963)
Academic advisorsWilliam F. Shipley, Mary Haas
Academic work
Era21st century
DisciplineLinguistics and anthropology
Sub-disciplineMesoamerican
InstitutionsUniversity of Pittsburgh, University of California at Berkeley

Academic career edit

 
A drawing of the Tuxtla Statuette, which also used inscriptions from Kaufman's work

Kaufman received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1963 with his thesis on the grammar of Tzeltal.[2][1] Post-PhD, he taught at Ohio State University (1963-1964) and at UC Berkeley (1964-1970) prior to taking up the position at the University of Pittsburgh that he held until his retirement in 2011.[3]

Over the course of his career, Kaufman produced descriptive and comparative-historical studies of languages of the Mayan, Siouan, Hokan, Uto-Aztecan, Mixe–Zoquean and Oto-Manguean families. His work on empirical documentation of unwritten languages through fieldwork and training of native linguists gave rise to a rich body of published work as well as a substantial unpublished corpus of notes.[3] Many of his articles were co-authored with other scholars such as Lyle Campbell, Sarah Thomason and John Justeson.

In a 1976 paper co-authored with Lyle Campbell, he advanced a theory that the Olmecs spoke a Mixe–Zoquean language, based on the substantial presence of early Mixe–Zoquean loans in many Mesoamerican languages, particularly from specific, culturally significant semantic domains.[4] Along with Lyle Campbell and Thomas Smith-Stark, Kaufman carried out research published in Language (1986) which led to the recognition of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area.[5]

In Language contact, Creolization, and genetic linguistics (1988), co-authored by Kaufman and Sarah Thomason, the authors developed a theoretical framework for the understanding of the processes of contact-induced language change.[6]

Along with John Justeson, in 1993 he claimed to have successfully deciphered the Isthmian or Epi-Olmec script.[7] This claim has been rejected by anthropologists Michael Coe and Stephen Houston in 2004 after using the decipher key on a recently discovered jade mask. Coe states that the result "turns out to be total nonsense and gobbledygook,".[8][9] In the years prior to his death, Kaufman was involved in the "Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica" or PDLMA, focused on collecting standardized linguistic data from the under documented languages of Mesoamerica.[10]

 
A map showing Kaufman's theory of Mayan Language migration

Early advocate and activist for role of native speakers

In the early 1970s, Dr. Kaufman visited Guatemala to conduct linguistic surveys in the Mayan highlands which would eventually lead to his proposal for a classification of the Mayan languages. In the process, he stopped at the Proyecto Linguistico Francisco Marroquin (PLFM) in Antigua Guatemala, a Guatemalan NGO intent on becoming a national Mayan-based resource institution.

Together with PLFM staff, and inspired in part by MIT Kenneth Hale's 1960s unpublished paper, American Indians in Linguistics, Kaufman was a principal participant in the development of the PLFM's plan to train one hundred community-based native speakers of Mayan languages, mostly primary school graduates, to become descriptive linguists for their own languages. He devoted his summers, uncompensated, to lead a level of training for them usually reserved for university students. In this, he was augmented by a dozen professional linguists who were pursuing their PhDs. Each served for several years under the auspices of the Peace Corps to provide year-round follow-up training.

Under Dr. Kaufman's leadership, and in consultation with this corps of linguists and Mayan trainees, PLFM developed a proposal for "rational" alphabets for each of the Mayan languages which respected the integrity and unique features of each. This Proposal for alphabets and orthographies for writing the Mayan languages was published in Spanish in January 1976 under Dr. Kaufman's name by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education (which supported the proposal). In the polarized environment of 1970s Guatemala, the proposal was not without powerful opponents. With different goals, some insisted on orthographies which imposed the irregularities and values of Spanish language orthography on the Mayan languages, to the detriment of the latter.

But the considerable corps of PLFM Mayan linguists, trained by Kaufman and his colleagues, joined national congresses and debates at the highest level, bringing to the process recognized linguistic expertise, and they prevailed. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan National Congress enacted legislation which made the alphabet that Dr. Kaufman and the PLFM had proposed (with one minor change) the legal, national alphabet of the country. The Mayan trainees had been so engaged in the consideration of Kaufman's published proposal that some later suggested that they should have been co-authors.

Kaufman was known by his friends as "Top Kat," after his initials, and sported a distinctive beard, beret and manner of dress unusual in Antigua at the time. He was the kind of expert (like PLFM colleagues Dr. Nora England and Dr. Judith Maxwell after him) who was committed to sharing his hard-won expertise with native speakers themselves, enabling them to play the dominant roles in decisions about their own languages. Native speakers trained by Terry Kaufman and colleagues assumed leadership of the PLFM in 1976. They were invited to present technical papers at international academic meetings. Carrying Guatemalan diplomatic passports, they represented and added to the prestige of not only their communities and linguistic groups, but of the country as a whole.

In the process, together with a PLFM linguistic aide, Jo Froman, whom he had trained, Kaufman completed his nation-wide linguistic surveys and a dialect boundary mapping exercise. He then published a proposed classification for the Mayan languages. Translated and edited by Lic. Flavio Rojas Lima of the Seminario de Integración Social, PLFM volunteer Margarita Cruz, PLFM Director Tony Jackson and supported by Ministry of Education language advisor Dr. Salvador Aguado Andreut, the proposal was published only in Spanish in 1974 as Idiomas de Mesoamerica (Languages of Meso-America).

Selected bibliography edit

Articles edit

  • Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence (1976). "A Linguistic Look at the Olmec". American Antiquity. 41 (1): 80–89. doi:10.2307/279044. JSTOR 279044. S2CID 162230234.
  • Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence (1980). "On Mesoamerican linguistics". American Anthropologist. 82 (4): 850–857. doi:10.1525/aa.1980.82.4.02a00120.
  • Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence; Smith-Stark, Thomas C. (September 1986). "Meso-America as a Linguistic Area". Language. 62 (3): 530–570. doi:10.1353/lan.1986.0105. S2CID 144784988.
  • Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence (1985). "Mayan Linguistics: Where are we Now?". Annual Review of Anthropology. 14: 187–198. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.14.100185.001155.
  • Justeson, John; Kaufman, Terrence (1993). "A decipherment of epi-Olmec hieroglyphic writing". Science. 259 (5102): 1703–1711. Bibcode:1993Sci...259.1703J. doi:10.1126/science.259.5102.1703. PMID 17816888. S2CID 9678265.
  • Kaufman, Terrence (June 1976). "Archaeological and Linguistic Correlations in Mayaland and Associated Areas of Meso-America". World Archaeology. 8 (1: Archaeology and Linguistics): 101–118. doi:10.1080/00438243.1976.9979655.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  • Kaufman, Terrence (1988). "A Research Program for Reconstructing Proto-Hokan: First Gropings". In DeLancey, Scott (ed.). Papers from the 1988 Hokan–Penutian Languages Workshop. Eugene: University of Oregon. pp. 50–168. OCLC 26917817.
  • Kaufman, Terrence (1990). "Language History in South America: What we know and how to know more". In Payne, Doris L. (ed.). Amazonian Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 13–74. ISBN 978-0-292-70414-5.

Books edit

  • Justeson, John; Norman, William; Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence (1985). The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan Language and Script. Middle American Research Institute Publication. Vol. 53. ISBN 0939238829.
  • Kaufman, Terrence (1972). El Proto-Tzeltal-Tzotzil. Fonología comparada y diccionario reconstruido. México: UNAM. ISBN 978-9683666253.
  • Thomason, Sarah G.; Kaufman, Terrence (1988). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07893-4.

References edit

  1. ^ a b Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, 14-Volume Set, Volume 1–14 (Second ed.). Elsevier Science. December 20, 2005. ISBN 0080442994.
  2. ^ "Terrence Kaufman Papers on Indigenous Languages of Mesoamerica". Survey of California and Other Indian Languages · California Language Archive. UC Berkeley. Retrieved October 7, 2020.
  3. ^ a b "Language Log » Terry Kaufman 1937-2022". Retrieved September 27, 2022.
  4. ^ Kaufman, Terrence (January 1, 1976). "A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs". American Antiquity. 41 (1): 88.
  5. ^ England, Nora. "Mesoamerican Languages". Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved October 8, 2020.
  6. ^ Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. University of California Press. February 12, 1992. ISBN 0520078934.
  7. ^ Justeson, John S. and Terrence Kaufman (1993), A Decipherment of Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing. Science, March 19, 1993, pp. 1703–1711.
  8. ^ Kohn, David (February 9, 2004). "A TRANSLATION UNMASKED". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved February 9, 2004.
  9. ^ Bauman, Joe (January 27, 2004). "Secrets of old mask still hidden, duo say". Deseret News. Retrieved January 27, 2004.
  10. ^ . University of Albany. Way Back. Archived from the original on September 5, 2019.
  • Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages, The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, Oxford University Press.
  • Houston, Stephen, and Coe, Michael. 2004. "Has Isthmian Writing Been Deciphered?", Mexicon XXV: 151–161.
  • on behalf of Brigham Young University archaeologist Stephen Houston and Yale University professor emeritus Michael Coe disputing Justeson/Kaufman findings.
  • Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica March 18, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  • Autobiographical notes by Kaufman
  • "Works of Terrence Kaufman". Google Scholar.

April 10, 2024
terrence, kaufman, 1937, march, 2022, american, linguist, specializing, documentation, unwritten, languages, lexicography, mesoamerican, historical, linguistics, language, contact, phenomena, emeritus, professor, linguistics, anthropology, university, pittsbur. Terrence Kaufman 1937 1 March 3 2022 was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages lexicography Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena He was an emeritus professor of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh Terrence KaufmanBorn 1937 06 14 June 14 1937DiedMarch 3 2022 2022 03 03 aged 84 TitleProfessor emeritusAcademic backgroundAlma materUniversity of California at BerkeleyThesisGrammar of Tzeltal 1963 Academic advisorsWilliam F Shipley Mary HaasAcademic workEra21st centuryDisciplineLinguistics and anthropologySub disciplineMesoamericanInstitutionsUniversity of Pittsburgh University of California at Berkeley Contents 1 Academic career 2 Selected bibliography 2 1 Articles 2 2 Books 3 ReferencesAcademic career edit nbsp A drawing of the Tuxtla Statuette which also used inscriptions from Kaufman s workKaufman received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1963 with his thesis on the grammar of Tzeltal 2 1 Post PhD he taught at Ohio State University 1963 1964 and at UC Berkeley 1964 1970 prior to taking up the position at the University of Pittsburgh that he held until his retirement in 2011 3 Over the course of his career Kaufman produced descriptive and comparative historical studies of languages of the Mayan Siouan Hokan Uto Aztecan Mixe Zoquean and Oto Manguean families His work on empirical documentation of unwritten languages through fieldwork and training of native linguists gave rise to a rich body of published work as well as a substantial unpublished corpus of notes 3 Many of his articles were co authored with other scholars such as Lyle Campbell Sarah Thomason and John Justeson In a 1976 paper co authored with Lyle Campbell he advanced a theory that the Olmecs spoke a Mixe Zoquean language based on the substantial presence of early Mixe Zoquean loans in many Mesoamerican languages particularly from specific culturally significant semantic domains 4 Along with Lyle Campbell and Thomas Smith Stark Kaufman carried out research published in Language 1986 which led to the recognition of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area 5 In Language contact Creolization and genetic linguistics 1988 co authored by Kaufman and Sarah Thomason the authors developed a theoretical framework for the understanding of the processes of contact induced language change 6 Along with John Justeson in 1993 he claimed to have successfully deciphered the Isthmian or Epi Olmec script 7 This claim has been rejected by anthropologists Michael Coe and Stephen Houston in 2004 after using the decipher key on a recently discovered jade mask Coe states that the result turns out to be total nonsense and gobbledygook 8 9 In the years prior to his death Kaufman was involved in the Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica or PDLMA focused on collecting standardized linguistic data from the under documented languages of Mesoamerica 10 nbsp A map showing Kaufman s theory of Mayan Language migrationEarly advocate and activist for role of native speakersIn the early 1970s Dr Kaufman visited Guatemala to conduct linguistic surveys in the Mayan highlands which would eventually lead to his proposal for a classification of the Mayan languages In the process he stopped at the Proyecto Linguistico Francisco Marroquin PLFM in Antigua Guatemala a Guatemalan NGO intent on becoming a national Mayan based resource institution Together with PLFM staff and inspired in part by MIT Kenneth Hale s 1960s unpublished paper American Indians in Linguistics Kaufman was a principal participant in the development of the PLFM s plan to train one hundred community based native speakers of Mayan languages mostly primary school graduates to become descriptive linguists for their own languages He devoted his summers uncompensated to lead a level of training for them usually reserved for university students In this he was augmented by a dozen professional linguists who were pursuing their PhDs Each served for several years under the auspices of the Peace Corps to provide year round follow up training Under Dr Kaufman s leadership and in consultation with this corps of linguists and Mayan trainees PLFM developed a proposal for rational alphabets for each of the Mayan languages which respected the integrity and unique features of each This Proposal for alphabets and orthographies for writing the Mayan languages was published in Spanish in January 1976 under Dr Kaufman s name by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education which supported the proposal In the polarized environment of 1970s Guatemala the proposal was not without powerful opponents With different goals some insisted on orthographies which imposed the irregularities and values of Spanish language orthography on the Mayan languages to the detriment of the latter But the considerable corps of PLFM Mayan linguists trained by Kaufman and his colleagues joined national congresses and debates at the highest level bringing to the process recognized linguistic expertise and they prevailed In the 1980s the Guatemalan National Congress enacted legislation which made the alphabet that Dr Kaufman and the PLFM had proposed with one minor change the legal national alphabet of the country The Mayan trainees had been so engaged in the consideration of Kaufman s published proposal that some later suggested that they should have been co authors Kaufman was known by his friends as Top Kat after his initials and sported a distinctive beard beret and manner of dress unusual in Antigua at the time He was the kind of expert like PLFM colleagues Dr Nora England and Dr Judith Maxwell after him who was committed to sharing his hard won expertise with native speakers themselves enabling them to play the dominant roles in decisions about their own languages Native speakers trained by Terry Kaufman and colleagues assumed leadership of the PLFM in 1976 They were invited to present technical papers at international academic meetings Carrying Guatemalan diplomatic passports they represented and added to the prestige of not only their communities and linguistic groups but of the country as a whole In the process together with a PLFM linguistic aide Jo Froman whom he had trained Kaufman completed his nation wide linguistic surveys and a dialect boundary mapping exercise He then published a proposed classification for the Mayan languages Translated and edited by Lic Flavio Rojas Lima of the Seminario de Integracion Social PLFM volunteer Margarita Cruz PLFM Director Tony Jackson and supported by Ministry of Education language advisor Dr Salvador Aguado Andreut the proposal was published only in Spanish in 1974 as Idiomas de Mesoamerica Languages of Meso America Selected bibliography editArticles edit Campbell Lyle Kaufman Terrence 1976 A Linguistic Look at the Olmec American Antiquity 41 1 80 89 doi 10 2307 279044 JSTOR 279044 S2CID 162230234 Campbell Lyle Kaufman Terrence 1980 On Mesoamerican linguistics American Anthropologist 82 4 850 857 doi 10 1525 aa 1980 82 4 02a00120 Campbell Lyle Kaufman Terrence Smith Stark Thomas C September 1986 Meso America as a Linguistic Area Language 62 3 530 570 doi 10 1353 lan 1986 0105 S2CID 144784988 Campbell Lyle Kaufman Terrence 1985 Mayan Linguistics Where are we Now Annual Review of Anthropology 14 187 198 doi 10 1146 annurev an 14 100185 001155 Justeson John Kaufman Terrence 1993 A decipherment of epi Olmec hieroglyphic writing Science 259 5102 1703 1711 Bibcode 1993Sci 259 1703J doi 10 1126 science 259 5102 1703 PMID 17816888 S2CID 9678265 Kaufman Terrence June 1976 Archaeological and Linguistic Correlations in Mayaland and Associated Areas of Meso America World Archaeology 8 1 Archaeology and Linguistics 101 118 doi 10 1080 00438243 1976 9979655 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a CS1 maint date and year link Kaufman Terrence 1988 A Research Program for Reconstructing Proto Hokan First Gropings In DeLancey Scott ed Papers from the 1988 Hokan Penutian Languages Workshop Eugene University of Oregon pp 50 168 OCLC 26917817 Kaufman Terrence 1990 Language History in South America What we know and how to know more In Payne Doris L ed Amazonian Linguistics Austin University of Texas Press pp 13 74 ISBN 978 0 292 70414 5 Books edit Justeson John Norman William Campbell Lyle Kaufman Terrence 1985 The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan Language and Script Middle American Research Institute Publication Vol 53 ISBN 0939238829 Kaufman Terrence 1972 El Proto Tzeltal Tzotzil Fonologia comparada y diccionario reconstruido Mexico UNAM ISBN 978 9683666253 Thomason Sarah G Kaufman Terrence 1988 Language contact creolization and genetic linguistics Berkeley University of California Press ISBN 0 520 07893 4 References edit a b Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics 14 Volume Set Volume 1 14 Second ed Elsevier Science December 20 2005 ISBN 0080442994 Terrence Kaufman Papers on Indigenous Languages of Mesoamerica Survey of California and Other Indian Languages California Language Archive UC Berkeley Retrieved October 7 2020 a b Language Log Terry Kaufman 1937 2022 Retrieved September 27 2022 Kaufman Terrence January 1 1976 A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs American Antiquity 41 1 88 England Nora Mesoamerican Languages Oxford Bibliographies Oxford University Press Retrieved October 8 2020 Language Contact Creolization and Genetic Linguistics University of California Press February 12 1992 ISBN 0520078934 Justeson John S and Terrence Kaufman 1993 A Decipherment of Epi Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing Science March 19 1993 pp 1703 1711 Kohn David February 9 2004 A TRANSLATION UNMASKED Baltimore Sun Retrieved February 9 2004 Bauman Joe January 27 2004 Secrets of old mask still hidden duo say Deseret News Retrieved January 27 2004 Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica PDLMA University of Albany Way Back Archived from the original on September 5 2019 Campbell Lyle 1997 American Indian Languages The Historical Linguistics of Native America Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics Oxford University Press Houston Stephen and Coe Michael 2004 Has Isthmian Writing Been Deciphered Mexicon XXV 151 161 Brigham Young University press release on behalf of Brigham Young University archaeologist Stephen Houston and Yale University professor emeritus Michael Coe disputing Justeson Kaufman findings Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica Archived March 18 2012 at the Wayback Machine Kaufman s faculty page at the University of Pittsburgh Autobiographical notes by Kaufman Works of Terrence Kaufman Google Scholar Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Terrence Kaufman amp oldid 1211871935, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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