H-ASIA: Murray Emeneau (Feb 24, 1904 - Aug 29, 2005)
Frank Conlon
conlon at U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Mon Sep 19 20:55:16 UTC 2005
The following note was published today on H-ASIA and might be of interest
to some members of the Indology list.
Frank
H-ASIA
September 19, 2005
Obituary of Professor Murray Emeneau, Feb. 24, 1904 - Aug 29, 2005
(x-post University of California, Berkleyan)
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Ed note: I have put together a bibliography of publications by Professor
Emeneau, but there may be omissions, and I suspect the number of
articles and chapters in volumes would be enormous. FFC
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Obituary
Murray Emeneau
14 September 2005
Murray Barnson Emeneau, emeritus professor of linguistics and Sanskrit, died in
his sleep on Aug. 29 at the age of 101, in his Berkeley home. He was an expert
in "language areas" and the Dravidian languages of south and central India and
founder of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages.
Born on Feb. 28, 1904, in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, Emeneau, a Rhodes Scholar,
received his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1931. He worked for several years as a
lecturer and researcher in Sanskrit at Yale, where he was heavily influenced by
Edward Sapir, one of the greatest linguists of the 20th century. On Sapir's
suggestion, Emeneau went to India in 1936 to work on Toda, a non-literary
Dravidian language. He stayed in India for three years, doing linguistic
fieldwork on the Toda, Badaga, Kolami, and Kota languages.
Emeneau was hired in the classics department at Berkeley in 1940 as an
assistant professor of Sanskrit and general linguistics. He became an associate
professor in 1943 and was promoted to full professor in 1946. He wrote 21 books
and, by the time of his death, his other publications numbered in the triple
digits.
When Emeneau first went to India, no linguistic fieldwork on the non-literary
Dravidian languages had been done. Emeneau created this field through work that
includes grammars of Kolami and Toda and a three-volume Kota text. Another of
Emeneau's major achievements in Dravidian studies is the Dravidian Etymological
Dictionary, written with Thomas Burrow and first published in 1961.
Emeneau is also generally seen as having initiated the modern field of
"linguistic areas" in his 1956 article "India as a Linguistic Area," which was
published in the issue of Language that honored Berkeley anthropologist Alfred
L. Kroeber on his 80th birthday.
Emeneau's work in this field continued with studies of mutual linguistic
influences, including a 1962 book on Dravidian borrowings from Indo-Aryan. In
the history of linguistics at Berkeley, he mediated between Kroeber's interest
in "culture areas" and the larger-scale areal focus of Johanna Nichols, a
professor of Slavic languages.
He persuaded Berkeley to establish a Survey of California Indian Languages and
a Department of Linguistics, which he chaired from 1953 to 1956. After a year's
sabbatical, he resumed the post for one year.
The Survey of California Indian Languages later became the Survey of California
and Other Indian Languages, indirectly succeeding the Ethnographic and
Linguistic Survey of California established by Kroeber in 1901. "It was and
remains an immensely significant institution for the documentation of the
indigenous languages of California and elsewhere in the United States outside
Alaska and Hawaii," said Andrew Garrett, acting director of the survey and a
Berkeley professor of linguistics.
In the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, under the leadership of Mary Haas, a fellow
student of Sapir's whom Emeneau hired, generations of graduate students
documented words, grammatical structures, and texts in dozens of California
languages, Garrett noted. Some of those languages have few or no remaining
native speakers today, he added.
Now, he said, the mission of the survey has expanded to include language
documentation throughout the United States and in other parts of the Western
hemisphere -- as well as numerous projects designed to make the results of that
documentation accessible to native communities in California. "It is now
probably the most important university archive of documentary material on the
languages of the continental U.S.," Garrett said.
Emeneau gave the Berkeley Faculty Research Lecture in 1956. On his retirement
from the campus in 1971 he received its highest honor, the Berkeley Citation.
Among his many other honors, Emeneau was the recipient of four honorary
degrees, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal from Yale, and the Medal of Merit of the
American Oriental Society. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and the British Academy, and an honorary member of the Linguistic
Society of India. He was the sole honorary member of the Philological Society,
the oldest linguistic professional society in the English-speaking world.
Emeneau is survived by a stepdaughter, Phyllis Savage, of Tustin. A campus
memorial is tentatively planned for spring 2006.
--Kathleen Maclay
-------------------------------------------
A partial list of publications of the late Murray B. Emeneau
Title Dravidian and Indian linguistics / M.B. Emeneau.
Publisher Berkeley: University of California, Center for South Asia
Studies, 1962.
Title A union list of printed Indic texts and translations in
American libraries / compiled by M. B. Emeneau, by the
aid of a grant from the American Council Learned Societies.
Publisher New York: Kraus Reprint Corp., 1967, c1935.
Series American Oriental series ;v. 7.
Note Reprint of the ed. published by American Oriental Society,
New Haven, Conn.
ISBN 0527026816
Title Dravidian studies : selected papers / by M.B. Emeneau.
Publisher Delhi : Motilal Banarsidass, 1994.
Series MLBD series in linguistics ;vol. 7]
ISBN 8120808584
Title A Dravidian etymological dictionary by T. Burrow and M. B.
Emeneau
Publisher Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961
Title Ritual structure and language structure of the Todas.
Publisher Philadelphia, Oct. 1974.
Series American Philosophical Society.Transactions, n.s.,v.64, pt.6
ISBN 0871696460 :
Title Dravidian borrowings from Indo-Aryan,
Publisher Berkeley, University of California Press, 1962.
Series University of California publications in linguistics;v. 26.
Title Brahui and Dravidian comparative grammar.
Publisher Berkeley, University of California Press, 1962.
Series University of California publications in linguistics; v. 27.
Title Toda songs [edited by] M. B. Emeneau.
Publisher Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971.
ISBN 0198151292
Title Toda grammar and texts.
Publisher Philadelphia : American Philosophical Society, c1984.
Series Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society ;v. 155.
Title Kolami, a Dravidian language, by M. B. Emeneau.
Edition [2d.ed.]
Publisher Annamalainagar, Annamalai University, 1961.
Series Annamalai University, Publications in linguistics, 2.
Title Kota texts, pt. 1, by M.B. Emeneau.
Publisher Berkeley, University of California Press, 1944.
Series University of California pubs in linguistics,v. 2, no. 1
Title Kota texts.
Publisher Berkeley, University of California Press, 1944-46.
Description 2 v.
Series University of California pubs in linguistics, v.2-3
Title Language and linguistic area : essays
Publisher Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1980.
ISBN 0804710473
Title Sanskrit Sandhi and exercises
Edition Second revised edition
Publisher Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968
Title Jambhaladatta's version of the Vetalapancavinsati; a
critical Sanskrit text in transliteration, with an
introduction, and English translation, by M. B. Emeneau.
Publisher New Haven, Conn. American oriental society, 1934.
Series American Oriental series,v.4
Note "This edition of Jambhaladatta's version of the
Vetalapancavinsati was submitted to the faculty of
the Graduate School of Yale University in candidacy for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1931." .
.
Author Kalidasa.
Uniform Title [ Sakuntala.]
Title Abhijnana-Sakuntala. Translated from the Bengali recension
by M.B. Emeneau
Publisher Berkeley, University of California Press, 1962.
Title The strangling figs in Sanskrit literature
Publisher Berkeley, Univ. of California P ress, 1949
Series University of California pubs in classical philology,v. 13, no. 10
Title Dravidian borrowings from Indo-Aryan, by M.B. Emeneau
and T. Burrow
Publisher Berkeley University of California Press 1962
Series University of California pubs in linguistics, v. 26
Author Bloomfield, Maurice, 1855-1928.
Title Vedic variants: a study of the variant readings in the
repeated mantras of the Veda
by Maurice Bloomfield and Franklin Edgerton.
Publisher Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania, 1930-
Description 3 v.
Series Special publications of the Linguistic Society of America
Note Vol 3 by M. Bloomfield, F. Edgerton and M.B. Emeneau.
Contents v.1. The verb.--v.2. Phonetics.--v.3. Noun and pronoun
inflection.
Title Sanskrit studies of M.B. Emeneau : selected papers
/ edited by B.A. van Nooten.
Publisher Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, 1988.
Series Occasional paper / Center for South and Southeast Asia
Studies, University of California, Berkeley; no. 13
Title India and historical grammar; lecture on diffusion and
evolution in comparative linguistics, and lecture on India
and the linguistic areas delivered as special lectures at
the Linguistics Dept. of the Annamalai University in 1959,
Publisher Annamalainagar: Annamalai University, 1965.
Series Annamalai University pubs in linguistics, no.5
Title Dravidian linguistics; ethnology and folktales; collected
papers
Publisher Annamalainagar : Annamalai University, 1967.
Series Annamalai University. Dept. of Linguistics. Pub no. 8
Title Dravidian comparative phonology; a sketch.
Publisher Annamalainagar : Annamalai University, 1970.
Series Annamalai University. Dept. of Linguistics. Pub no. 22
Note Revised version of the author's Sketch of Dravidian
comparative phonology, 1959.
Title Kolami, a Dravidian language.
Publisher Berkeley, University of California Press, 1955.
Series University of California pubs in linguistics,v.12
Title A course in Annamese. Lessons in the pronunciation and
grammar of the Annamese language, prepared by M.B. Emeneau ...
with the collaboration of Diether von den Steinen ...
Publisher Berkeley, Army Specialized Program, University of California,
1944.
Note Multigraphed.
Title An Annamese reader, prepared by Ly-duc-Lam, M.B. Emeneau,
and Diether von den Steinen, for Army Specialized Training
Program, University of California.
Publisher Berkeley, Calif., 1944.
Note Reproduced from type-written copy.
Title Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar.
Publisher Berkeley, University of California Press, 1951.
Series University of California pubs in linguistics,v.8
Title Studies in Indian linguistics : Professor M. B. Emeneau
Sastipurti volume / edited by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti.
Publisher Poona : Centres of Advanced Study in Linguistics, Deccan
College, and Annamalai University, 1968.
FFC
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