EX-UC BERKELEY LINGUSTICS PROFESSOR, HAAS, FOLLOWING LONG ILLNESS, AT AGE 86.Byline: Wolfgang Saxon The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Mary Rosamond Haas, a professor of linguistics whose interests ranged from American Indian languages American Indian languages: see Native American languages. American Indian languages Languages spoken by the original inhabitants of the Americas and the West Indies and by their modern descendants. that were dying to the prehistory prehistory, period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to of languages and modern Thai, died on May 17 at her home in Berkeley. She was 86. She suffered a long illness, according to the University of California at Berkeley (body, education) University of California at Berkeley - (UCB) See also Berzerkley, BSD. http://berkeley.edu/. Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berk'lee/, not /bark'lee/ as in British Received Pronunciation. , where she retired as professor emeritus in 1977. She, along with a handful of graduate students, was trained at Yale University by Edward Sapir, the legendary linguist and anthropologist, and became a force behind the Survey of California Indian Languages. Financed by the state Legislature, the project provided the wherewithal for sending qualified graduate students into the field for studies of the American Indian spoken word. The program, started as a pilot project in 1949, surveyed cultures and languages presumably pre·sum·a·ble adj. That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. doomed to oblivion. In 1953, the survey of surviving Indian tongues became official, and the graduate department of linguistics Noun 1. department of linguistics - the academic department responsible for teaching and research in linguistics linguistics department academic department - a division of a school that is responsible for a given subject was established on the Berkeley campus. In the 1950s and 1960s, Haas used the survey for intensive explorations of the native languages in California and beyond. Such efforts inspired more than 40 dissertations and the careers of a generation of ethnolinguists. Haas was a graduate of Earlham College in her native Richmond, Ind. She received a degree in comparative linguistics at the University of Chicago in 1931 and a Ph.D. at Yale in 1935. Her dissertation was on Tunica tunica /tu·ni·ca/ (too´ni-kah) pl. tu´nicae [L.] a tunic; in anatomy, a general term for a membrane or other structure covering or lining a body part or organ. , an Indian language once spoken in what is now Louisiana. She then delved into fieldwork with various other endangered or extinct species: Natchez, the only known member of its family of languages, as well as several of the Muskogean branch-offs, like Creek-Seminole. As the entry of the United States into World War II loomed, she started working with the Thai language. She helped prepare Thai materials for the armed forces and taught the language in a special training program at Berkeley, an experience that led to her appointment as an assistant professor of Siamese and linguistics in 1947. She was promoted to professor of linguistics in 1957. Her books in print include ``Language, Culture and History: Essays'' (Stanford University Press, 1978), ``Prehistory of Languages'' (Mouton mouton lamb pelt made to resemble seal or beaver. , 1978), ``Thai Vocabulary'' and ``Thai System of Writing'' (Spoken Language Service). Haas is survived by a brother, Robert Haas, of Elkhart Lake, Wis. |
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