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.
Warmly,
Deven