[INDOLOGY] Franklin C. Southworth (1929-2025)

[Rosane Rocher]

Dear Colleagues,

Franklin (Frank) Southworth breathed and lived linguistics. In addition 
to teaching Marathi, his primary function in our Department of South 
Asia Studies, and maintaining steady work on Indo-Aryan and Dravidian 
languages, he developed in the last years before his retirement from 
Penn an interest in -and teaching- language as communication. I remember 
vividly his exploration of the effect of gender in that context, how 
differently women and men initiate, maintain, and conclude novel 
conversations.

Not only was Frank's retirement a loss for us, his following move to 
Hawaii robbed us even of the pleasure of occasional visits of a 
congenial and always interesting colleague.
Rosane Rocher
Professor Emerita of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania

On 9/20/25 1:14 PM, Deven Patel via INDOLOGY wrote:
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> It is with sadness that we report the passing of Franklin C. 
> Southworth, Professor Emeritus in the Department of South Asia 
> Regional Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin 
> Southworth was a leading historical linguist of South Asia. Over the 
> course of his distinguished career, Professor Southworth made 
> foundational contributions to our understanding of the Dravidian and 
> Indo-Aryan language families, their interactions, and the ways in 
> which linguistic evidence can illuminate the prehistory of the 
> subcontinent. His last academic contributions include an article 
> entitled “Rice and Language Across Asia: Crops, Movement, and Social 
> Change” (2011) and the Routledge volume /Linguistic Archaeology of 
> South Asia/ (2005), which synthesized decades of research into a 
> landmark study of language contact, migration, and cultural exchange. 
> Trained in linguistics and anthropology, Professor Southworth spent 
> much of his academic life at Penn, where he taught and mentored 
> generations of students in South Asian linguistics, anthropology, and 
> area studies.
>
> Professor Southworth's webpage gives a longer list of his intellectual 
> contributions: https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~fsouth/ 
> <https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~fsouth/>
>
> Warmly,
>
> Deven
>
> -- 
> Deven M. Patel
>
>
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