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

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

Dear Indologists,

 

I am very sorry to hear the news of Frank’s passing. Although I did not interact much with him when I was a student at Penn, After participating in a couple of Roundtables at Harvard in the early 200os organized by Michael Witzel, I had several exchanges with him regarding Dravidian linguistics. He was quite willing to read draft articles and comment on them so that I could improve them. He was very accessible and kind. At Penn had more interaction with David McAlpin. Unfortunately, both are no longer there leaving a big void in the field of Dravidian pre-history.

 

Regards,

Palaniappan

 

 

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of indology list <indology at list.indology.info>
Reply-To: "Witzel, Michael" <witzel at fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Saturday, September 20, 2025 at 9:14 PM
To: indology list <indology at list.indology.info>
Cc: Michael Witzel <ejmwitzel at icloud.com>, "ogura at aa.tufts.ac.jp" <ogura at aa.tufts.ac.jp>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Franklin C. Southworth (1929-2025)

 

Dear Colleagues,

Chiming in with the great tributes to my old friend Frank. We had been in contact for many decades:  personally during our visits to Hawaii, Japan and in the US. We had started several projects, notably the (still  incomplete) substrate dictionary at TUFS's AA-ken (Tokyo University of Foreign Languages)  http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/sarva.

In about 2015 or so he told me that he wanted to retire from research and spend time on his music .. and politics.

 

I will always remember him as a gentle, impressive and always innovative friend and colleague.

 

Michael Witzel,

Wales Research Prof. of Sanskrit

Residence: Zushi, Kanagawa, Japan

 



On Sep 21, 2025, at 2:14, Deven Patel via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> 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/

 

Warmly,

 

Deven

 

-- 

Deven M. Patel


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