Joseph Greenberg facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joseph Greenberg
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Joseph Harold Greenberg
May 28, 1915 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
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| Died | May 7, 2001 (aged 85) Stanford, California, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
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| Spouse(s) | Selma Berkowitz |
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| Doctoral students | George W. Grace |
| Influenced | Merritt Ruhlen |
Joseph Harold Greenberg (born May 28, 1915 – died May 7, 2001) was an American linguist. He was famous for studying how languages are built (called linguistic typology) and how they are related to each other (called genetic classification).
Contents
Joseph Greenberg's Life Story
Early Life and Schooling
Joseph Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 28, 1915. When he was 14, he was very good at music and even played a piano concert. He loved playing the piano his whole life.
After high school, he decided to study instead of focusing only on music. He went to Columbia College in 1932. In his last year, he took a class about Native American languages. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1936.
He then went to Northwestern University for his advanced studies, getting his doctorate in 1940. During this time, he traveled to Nigeria and learned the Hausa language. He studied how Islam affected a group of Hausa people.
In 1940, he started more studies at Yale University. But World War II interrupted his plans. He joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and worked as a codebreaker in North Africa and Italy.
Before going to Europe in 1943, Joseph married Selma Berkowitz. They had met during his first year at Columbia University.
His Career as a Linguist
After the war, Greenberg taught at the University of Minnesota. In 1948, he returned to Columbia University to teach anthropology. There, he met other important linguists who influenced his work.
In 1962, Greenberg moved to Stanford University in California. He worked there for the rest of his life. He became president of the African Studies Association in 1965. He was also chosen to be part of important groups like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he received a top award for his work in linguistics, the Gold Medal of Philology.
Greenberg's Work in Linguistics
Understanding Language Types
Greenberg is seen as the person who started modern linguistic typology. This field looks at the common features and patterns found across different languages. In the 1950s, he began studying many languages from all over the world. He found many interesting "language universals" and common trends.
He came up with the idea of "implicational universals." This means if a language has a certain feature (like "X"), then it will also have another feature (like "Y"). For example, if a language has certain middle-front rounded vowels, it will also have high-front rounded vowels. Many researchers still use this idea today.
Greenberg wanted to find the basic structures that all human languages share. He used a "functionalist" approach, which means he looked at how language is used. Another famous linguist, Noam Chomsky, also looked for universal structures but used a different approach.
Many experts who disagree with Greenberg's ideas about language families still agree that his work on language types is very important. In 1963, he published a key article about these universal grammar rules.
Comparing Many Languages at Once
Greenberg believed that to find out how languages are related, you shouldn't just compare two languages at a time. He called his method "mass comparison" or "multilateral comparison." He said that comparing many languages at once helps you see patterns and avoid being fooled by accidental similarities.
He argued that if you compare only two languages, it takes a very long time. And if you have many languages, there are too many ways to group them. For example, with 25 languages, there are trillions of ways to classify them! He thought his method was a necessary first step before doing more detailed comparisons.
Greenberg focused on comparing basic words and grammar rules across many languages. He believed that basic words are rarely borrowed between languages. This makes it easier to see true family connections. Even though he explained why his method worked, some critics still thought it had problems with accidental similarities or borrowed words.
Most historical linguists today do not use mass comparison to find language relationships. They prefer other methods.
Classifying Language Families
African Languages
Greenberg is very well known for his system of classifying the languages of Africa. He published his ideas in a book called The Languages of Africa in 1955, and then revised it.
He grouped hundreds of African languages into four main families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger–Congo, and Khoisan. He also showed that the Bantu languages (spoken across much of Central and Southern Africa) are part of the larger Niger–Congo family. Before him, many thought Bantu was a separate family.
At first, his ideas were seen as very bold. But now, most experts who study African languages accept his classification, except for the Khoisan group. Some linguists have even tried to combine his four African families into even bigger groups.
Languages of New Guinea, Tasmania, and Andaman Islands
In 1971, Greenberg suggested a huge language family called Indo-Pacific. This group includes the Papuan languages (from New Guinea and nearby islands) and the native languages of the Andaman Islands and Tasmania. He believed these languages were all related, but not the Australian Aboriginal languages.
Not all experts agreed with his grouping at first. However, later work by linguists like Stephen Wurm and Malcolm Ross found more evidence supporting his idea that these languages might indeed form one large family.
Languages of the Americas
Most linguists used to classify the Native American languages into 150 to 180 separate families. Some thought that Eskimo–Aleut and Na-Dené were different because they might have come from later migrations.
Greenberg believed that most of these language groups were actually related. In his 1987 book, Language in the Americas, he suggested that almost all Native American languages belong to one huge family, which he called Amerind. He still thought Eskimo–Aleut and Na-Dené were separate.
His book caused a lot of discussion and was criticized by many experts. They found mistakes in his data and disagreed with his method of comparing many languages at once.
However, recent studies in genetics (looking at people's DNA) have found patterns that support Greenberg's Amerind idea. These studies show that the groups he predicted were related by language also share similar genetic patterns.
Languages of Northern Eurasia
Later in his life, Greenberg proposed that most language families in northern Eurasia belong to one large family called Eurasiatic. This group includes languages like Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic.
This idea is similar to an older concept called Nostratic. Greenberg's Eurasiatic group included some languages that Nostratic didn't, like Japonic and Korean.
Greenberg continued working on this project even after he became very sick. His colleague, Merritt Ruhlen, helped publish his final work on Eurasiatic languages after Greenberg passed away in 2001.
Selected Books by Joseph H. Greenberg
Joseph Greenberg wrote many important books about language. Here are some of his most well-known works:
- Studies in African Linguistic Classification (1955)
- Essays in Linguistics (1957)
- The Languages of Africa (1963)
- Language Universals: With Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies (1966)
- Language in the Americas (1987)
- Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family (Volume 1: Grammar, 2000; Volume 2: Lexicon, 2002)
- Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method (2005)
See also
- Linguistic universal
- Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics
- Monogenesis (linguistics)
- Nostratic languages
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