James Matisoff
Encyclopedia
James A. Matisoff is a professor emeritus
of Linguistics
at the University of California, Berkeley
and noted authority on Tibeto-Burman languages
and other languages of mainland Southeast Asia
.
Matisoff was born July 14, 1937, in Boston
, Massachusetts
to a working-class family. He attended Harvard
from 1954 to 1959, where he met his wife, Susan Matisoff, later a scholar of Japanese literature
, when the two shared a Japanese class. He received two degrees from Harvard: an A.B. in Romance
Languages and Literatures (1958) and an A.M. in French Literature
(1959). He then studied Japanese at International Christian University
from 1960-61.
He did his doctoral studies in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where Mary Haas
, co-founder of the department, was then chair. Haas had been a student of Edward Sapir
while at University of Chicago
and Yale
, and through her own extensive research in descriptive and documentary linguistics had become a specialist in Native American languages
and an authority on Thai
. Haas was instrumental in Matisoff’s decision to research a language of mainland Southeast Asia for his dissertation.
Matisoff's doctoral dissertation was a grammar of the Lahu language
, a Tibeto-Burman
language belonging to the Loloish
branch of the family. He spent a year in northern Thailand doing field work on Lahu during his graduate studies with support from a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. He completed his PhD in Linguistics in 1967, and made several field studies thereafter through an American Council of Learned Societies
fellowship. His Grammar of Lahu is notable both for its depth of detail and the theoretical eclecticism which informed his description of the language. He later published an extensive dictionary of Lahu (1988) and a corresponding English-Lahu lexicon (2006).
After four years teaching at Columbia University
(1966–1969), Matisoff accepted a professorship at Berkeley. At Berkeley, his research has encompassed a wide range of topics, from historical and comparative linguistics to tonal phenomena, variational semantics, language contact
, Yiddish
, and Tibeto-Burman morphosyntax. Before his retirement, he taught classes on the Linguistics of Southeast Asia, Tibeto-Burman Linguistics, Historical Semantics, Morphology, and Field Methods. In Field Methods, graduate students learn the methods of language description through eliciting data from a native speaker. The languages studied in Matisoff’s field methods classes in different years include: Lai Chin
, Sherpa
, and Uighur
, among numerous others.
Matisoff has coined a number of terms used in linguistics, including tonogenesis, rhinoglottophilia
, Sinosphere
and Indosphere
, Cheshirisation
, which refers to the trace remains of an otherwise disappeared sound in a word, and sesquisyllabic to describe the iambic stress pattern of words in languages spoken in Southeast Asia, such as the Mon–Khmer languages.
His service to the linguistics community includes having edited the journal Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area for many years (now edited by his former student, Randy LaPolla
), and having helped to establish the International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, an annual conference since 1968 which draws scholars from Asia, Europe, North America, and the Pacific.
In 1987, Matisoff began the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) project, an historical linguistics
project aimed at producing an etymological dictionary
of Sino-Tibetan
organized by semantic field. The project is reported to have created a large lexical database of nearly one million records with data on Sino-Tibetan languages from over 500 sources. This database is used to identify and mark cognate
s for the purposes of better understanding the historical development of the Sino-Tibetan language family and the subgroupings of the languages therein, and to reconstruct the theoretical proto-language
of the language family, Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
Matisoff has published two monographs so far presenting results from the STEDT project: The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus (2008) and The Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (2003, 800 p.).
Although Matisoff retired from Berkeley in 2002, he continues to publish extensively and is Principal Investigator for the STEDT project.
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...
of Linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and noted authority on Tibeto-Burman languages
Tibeto-Burman languages
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Chinese members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken thoughout the highlands of southeast Asia, as well as lowland areas in Burma ....
and other languages of mainland Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
.
Matisoff was born July 14, 1937, in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
to a working-class family. He attended Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
from 1954 to 1959, where he met his wife, Susan Matisoff, later a scholar of Japanese literature
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
, when the two shared a Japanese class. He received two degrees from Harvard: an A.B. in Romance
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
Languages and Literatures (1958) and an A.M. in French Literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
(1959). He then studied Japanese at International Christian University
International Christian University
There are several rankings related to ICU, shown below.-Alumni rankings:According to the Weekly Economist's 2010 rankings and the PRESIDENT's article on 2006/10/16, graduates from ICU have the 24th best employment rate in 400 major companies, and their average graduate salary is the 4th best in...
from 1960-61.
He did his doctoral studies in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where Mary Haas
Mary Haas
Mary Rosamund Haas was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics.-Early work in linguistics:...
, co-founder of the department, was then chair. Haas had been a student of Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
while at University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
, and through her own extensive research in descriptive and documentary linguistics had become a specialist in Native American languages
Indigenous languages of the Americas
Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
and an authority on Thai
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
. Haas was instrumental in Matisoff’s decision to research a language of mainland Southeast Asia for his dissertation.
Matisoff's doctoral dissertation was a grammar of the Lahu language
Lahu language
Lahu is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Lahu people of China, Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos. It is widely used in China, both by Lahu people, and by other ethnic minorities in Yunnan, who use it as a lingua franca. However, the language is not widely used nor taught in any schools in...
, a Tibeto-Burman
Tibeto-Burman languages
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Chinese members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken thoughout the highlands of southeast Asia, as well as lowland areas in Burma ....
language belonging to the Loloish
Loloish languages
The Loloish languages, also known as Ngwi or in China as Yi, are a family of fifty to a hundred languages of the Tibeto-Burman language family. They are most closely related to Burmese and its relatives. Both the Loloish and Burmish branches are well defined, as is their superior node, Lolo–Burmese...
branch of the family. He spent a year in northern Thailand doing field work on Lahu during his graduate studies with support from a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. He completed his PhD in Linguistics in 1967, and made several field studies thereafter through an American Council of Learned Societies
American Council of Learned Societies
The American Council of Learned Societies , founded in 1919, is a private nonprofit federation of seventy scholarly organizations.ACLS is best known as a funder of humanities research through fellowships and grants awards. ACLS Fellowships are designed to permit scholars holding the Ph.D...
fellowship. His Grammar of Lahu is notable both for its depth of detail and the theoretical eclecticism which informed his description of the language. He later published an extensive dictionary of Lahu (1988) and a corresponding English-Lahu lexicon (2006).
After four years teaching at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
(1966–1969), Matisoff accepted a professorship at Berkeley. At Berkeley, his research has encompassed a wide range of topics, from historical and comparative linguistics to tonal phenomena, variational semantics, language contact
Language contact
Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
, Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
, and Tibeto-Burman morphosyntax. Before his retirement, he taught classes on the Linguistics of Southeast Asia, Tibeto-Burman Linguistics, Historical Semantics, Morphology, and Field Methods. In Field Methods, graduate students learn the methods of language description through eliciting data from a native speaker. The languages studied in Matisoff’s field methods classes in different years include: Lai Chin
Lai Language
Lai are those Kukish languages spoken by the Lai people. They include Laiholh spoken around the Haka capital of Chin State in Burma and in the Lawngtlai district of Mizoram, India. In Bangladesh, a related language is spoken by the Bawm people. Known locally as Hakha Holh, it is probably the...
, Sherpa
Sherpa language
Sherpa is a language spoken in parts of Nepal and Sikkim mainly by the Sherpa community. About 130,000 speakers live in Nepal , some 20,000 in India , and some 800 in Tibet ....
, and Uighur
Uyghur language
Uyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...
, among numerous others.
Matisoff has coined a number of terms used in linguistics, including tonogenesis, rhinoglottophilia
Rhinoglottophilia
In linguistics, rhinoglottophilia refers to the connection between laryngeal and nasal articulations. The term was coined by James A. Matisoff in 1975....
, Sinosphere
Sinosphere
In areal linguistics, Sinosphere refers to a grouping of countries and regions that are currently inhabited with a majority of Chinese population or were historically under Chinese cultural influence...
and Indosphere
Indosphere
Indosphere is a subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman languages as defined by linguist James Matisoff, which includes languages that are typologically and morphologically a closeness to Indo-Aryan languages...
, Cheshirisation
Cheshirisation
Cheshirisation, or cheshirization, is a term coined by James Matisoff to refer to a type of sound change where a trace remains of a sound that has otherwise disappeared from a word. The term is a neologism, i.e. it is not an established scientific term. It is used here to describe a process that...
, which refers to the trace remains of an otherwise disappeared sound in a word, and sesquisyllabic to describe the iambic stress pattern of words in languages spoken in Southeast Asia, such as the Mon–Khmer languages.
His service to the linguistics community includes having edited the journal Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area for many years (now edited by his former student, Randy LaPolla
Randy LaPolla
Randy J. LaPolla is a professor of linguistics at LaTrobe University, specializing in the morphosyntax of Chinese, Qiang and Dulong/Rawang. He is well-known as the author of a grammar of Qiang and as the coauthor of Van Valin and LaPolla , a major work in Role and Reference Grammar...
), and having helped to establish the International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, an annual conference since 1968 which draws scholars from Asia, Europe, North America, and the Pacific.
In 1987, Matisoff began the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) project, an historical linguistics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
project aimed at producing an etymological dictionary
Etymological dictionary
An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the OED and Webster's, will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology....
of Sino-Tibetan
Sino-Tibetan languages
The Sino-Tibetan languages are a language family comprising, at least, the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. They are second only to the Indo-European languages in terms of the number of native speakers...
organized by semantic field. The project is reported to have created a large lexical database of nearly one million records with data on Sino-Tibetan languages from over 500 sources. This database is used to identify and mark cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
s for the purposes of better understanding the historical development of the Sino-Tibetan language family and the subgroupings of the languages therein, and to reconstruct the theoretical proto-language
Proto-language
A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
of the language family, Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
Matisoff has published two monographs so far presenting results from the STEDT project: The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus (2008) and The Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (2003, 800 p.).
Although Matisoff retired from Berkeley in 2002, he continues to publish extensively and is Principal Investigator for the STEDT project.
External links
- Personal page at the STEDT project website
- Faculty page at the UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics
- STEDT project page
- The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus
- English-Lahu Lexicon