Joseph Greenberg - Citizendia

"Joseph Greenberg" may also refer to the director better known as Joseph Green

Joseph Greenberg
Born	May 28, 1915 Brooklyn, New York
Died	May 7, 2001 Stanford, California
Nationality	American
Fields	linguistics, African anthropology
Institutions	Columbia University, Stanford University, National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Linguistic Society of America
Known for	work in linguistic typology, genealogical classification of languages
Notable awards	Haile Selassie I Prize for African Research (1967), Talcott Parsons Prize for Social Science (1997)

Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915–May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist and Africanist anthropologist, known for his work in both language classification and typology. Joseph Green ( April 23, 1900 &ndash June 20, 1996) born Yoysef Grinberg, a Events 585 BC - A Solar eclipse occurs as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Year 1915 ( MCMXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year Brooklyn (named after the Dutch town Breukelen) is one of the five boroughs of New York City. Events 558 - In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses Year 2001 ( MMI) was a Common year starting on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar. Stanford is a Census-designated place (CDP in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields Anthropology (/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/ from Greek grc ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos, "human" -λογία -logia) is the study of Columbia University is a private University in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University or simply Stanford, is a private Research university located in The National Academy of Sciences (NAS is a corporation in the United States whose members serve Pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science The American Philosophical Society is a discussion group founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin as an offshoot of his earlier club the Junto. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS is an organization dedicated to scholarship and the advancement of learning The Linguistic Society of America (LSA is a professional society for linguists Linguistic Typology is an international Peer-reviewed journal in the field of Linguistic typology, founded in 1997 In Linguistics, genetic relationship is the usual term for the relationship which exists between Languages that are members of the same Language family. Events 585 BC - A Solar eclipse occurs as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Year 1915 ( MCMXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year Events 558 - In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses Year 2001 ( MMI) was a Common year starting on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar. Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family Linguistic Typology is an international Peer-reviewed journal in the field of Linguistic typology, founded in 1997

He was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, USA, and served for many years on the faculty of Stanford University. Brooklyn (named after the Dutch town Breukelen) is one of the five boroughs of New York City. New York ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University or simply Stanford, is a private Research university located in

1 Contributions to linguistics
2 Selected works by Joseph H. Greenberg
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

Contributions to linguistics

Typology

Greenberg's reputation rests in part on his contributions to synchronic linguistics and the quest to identify linguistic universals. A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all Natural languages For example All languages have Nouns and Verbs, or All spoken In the late 1950s, Greenberg began to examine corpora of languages covering a wide geographic and genetic distribution. He located a number of interesting potential universals as well as many strong cross-linguistic tendencies.

In particular, Greenberg invented the notion of "implicational universal", which takes the form, "if a language has structure X, then it must also have structure Y. A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all Natural languages For example All languages have Nouns and Verbs, or All spoken " For example, X might be "mid front rounded vowels" and Y "high front rounded vowels" (for terminology see phonetics). Phonetics (from the Greek φωνή ( phonê) "sound" or "voice" is the study of the physical sounds of human speech This kind of research was taken up by many scholars following Greenberg's example and continues to be an important kind of data-gathering in synchronic linguistics.

Like Noam Chomsky, Greenberg sought to discover the universal structures underlying human language. Avram Noam Chomsky (noʊm ˈtʃɑmski born December 7 1928 is an American linguist, Philosopher, cognitive scientist, Political Unlike Chomsky, Greenberg’s approach was empirical rather than logico-deductive. Greenberg’s approach, often characterized as "functionalist", is commonly opposed to Chomsky’s rationalist approach. A call to reconcile the Greenbergian and Chomskyan approaches can be found in Linguistic Universals, edited by Ricardo Mairal and Juana Gil (2006). It remains to be seen whether this call will be heeded.

Many who are strongly opposed to Greenberg's methods of language classification (see below) nevertheless acknowledge the importance of his typological work, in particular his tremendously influential 1963 article, "Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. "

Mass comparison

Greenberg proposed a controversial method for finding historical relationships when comparing too many languages for traditional methods of establishing regular sound shifts to be practical – a situation that arises particularly when attempting to establish long-range historical families in regions of the world where few if any lower-level families have been reconstructed, or where linguistic diversity is especially high. This method was enthusiastically embraced by a few historical linguists (and many geneticists), though rejected as pseudoscience by most historical linguists. Pseudoscience is defined as a body of knowledge methodology belief or practice that is claimed to be Scientific or made to appear scientific but does not adhere to the See mass lexical comparison and Amerind for a fuller discussion. Mass lexical comparison or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well-known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among Amerind is a putative higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in his 1987 book Language in the Americas.

Using the method of mass comparison, Greenberg arrived at a number of novel classifications of languages. All these classifications were rejected when first proposed as factually incorrect and methodologically unsound. Since then, some have come to be accepted in whole, others in part; some are still rejected; the status of others is pending. Some details and appreciations of these classifications follow.

Genetic classification

African languages

Main article: The Languages of Africa

Greenberg is widely known for his development of a new classification system for African languages, which he published in 1963. The Languages of Africa is a 1963 book of essays by Joseph Greenberg, in which he sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that There are an estimated 2000 Languages spoken in Africa. About a hundred of these are widely used for inter-ethnic communication The classification was for a time considered very bold and speculative, especially in his proposal of a Nilo-Saharan language family, but is now generally accepted among African historical specialists. The Nilo-Saharan languages are a hypothetical group of African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers (hence the term Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change In the course of this work, Greenberg coined the term "Afroasiatic" to replace the earlier term "Hamito-Semitic". The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a Language family with about 375 languages ( SIL estimate and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa

Greenberg's classification was largely based on earlier classifications, making new macrogroups by joining already established families - based on his method of mass comparison. The classification has been used as a basis for further work and some historical linguists have proposed even broader proposals of African language families. Hal Fleming introduced the Omotic family, and Gregersen proposed the joining of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan into a larger Kongo-Saharan family, which were in turn accepted by Greenberg, though in the case of Kongo-Saharan only implicitly. Harold C Fleming is an anthropologist and historical linguist. The Omotic languages are spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. They are often regarded as belonging to the Afro-Asiatic languages. The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa 's largest in terms of geographical area number of speakers and number The Nilo-Saharan languages are a hypothetical group of African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers (hence the term The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa 's largest in terms of geographical area number of speakers and number

Greenberg's work on African languages has been criticised by historical linguists Lyle Campbell and Donald Ringe, who do not feel that his classification is justified by his data and request a reexamination of his macro-phyla by "reliable methods" (Ringe 1993:104). Lyle Richard Campbell (born 1942) is a Linguist who is considered to be one of the foremost experts on Native American languages, especially the Mayan Even Fleming and Lionel Bender, who are sympathetic to Greenberg's classification, acknowledge that at least some of his macrofamilies (particlularly Nilo-Saharan and Khoisan) are not fully accepted by the linguistic community and may need to be split up (Campbell 1997). Lionel Bender may refer to Lionel Bender (linguist (1934–2008 American author and co-author of several books publications and essays regarding African The Nilo-Saharan languages are a hypothetical group of African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers (hence the term The Khoisan languages (also Khoesaan languages) are the indigenous languages of southern and eastern Africa; in southern Africa their speakers are the Khoi

Indo-Pacific languages

In 1971 Greenberg proposed the Indo-Pacific superfamily, which groups together the Papuan languages (several language families spoken in Papua New Guinea and nearby regions which are not Austronesian) together with the native languages of Tasmania and the Andaman Islands, but excludes Australian Aboriginal languages. The Indo-Pacific language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in 1971 consists of the non- Austronesian languages of New Guinea and neighboring islands In Linguistics, a superfamily is a phyletic unit encompassing several language families. The term Papuan languages refers to those Languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. Papua New Guinea (or ˈpæpjuːə in Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania Tasmania is an Australian island and state of the same name It is located south of the eastern side of the Continent, being separated from it by Bass The Andaman Islands are a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal, and are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory of India. This grouping is considered by most linguists to be highly speculative and is not accepted by anyone working on Papuan or Tasmanian languages.

Languages of the Americas

Americanist linguists classify the native languages of the Americas into two large families, Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dené, spoken in well-defined parts of North America, and some 600 to 2000 other separate families (Diamond 1997:368), spoken in the rest of North America and through Central and South America. Indigenous languages of the Americas (or Amerindian Languages are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Eskimo-Aleut is a Language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. South America is a Continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a Early on, Greenberg (1957:41) became convinced that many of the reportedly unrelated languages could be classified into larger groupings. In his 1987 book Language in the Americas, he supported the Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dené groupings, but proposed that all the other Native American languages belonged to a single family. Eskimo-Aleut is a Language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. He termed this postulated family Amerind. Amerind is a putative higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in his 1987 book Language in the Americas.

This theory is rejected and has been soundly criticized by most historical linguists. The criticisms are directed not so much toward the classification per se, but primarily to the method of mass lexical comparison used to establish it, which the majority of historical linguists consider inherently unreliable (see above); and toward the large number of errors that have been shown to be present in the sources used by Greenberg, such as wrong or non-existent words, incorrect translations, words attributed to the wrong languages, and unsupported or wrong identification of prefixes and suffixes. Mass lexical comparison or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well-known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among

While some of these errors (which, according to Greenberg's defenders, only affect a few percent of the data) could conceivably lead to an artificial increase in the similarity measure, others would merely introduce random noise in the measurement, and therefore tend to reduce it — which would only strengthen Greenberg's conclusions. Nevertheless, the allegations of widespread errors in the data along with objections to his methodology have led most linguists to dismiss this part of Greenberg's work as unscholarly and invalid.

Eurasiatic languages

Later in his life, Greenberg proposed to join many language families of Europe and Asia into a single group called Eurasiatic, fairly similar to Illich-Svitych's older Nostratic proposals but differing in important ways - notably the exclusion of the Afro-Asiatic languages, which has since become popular among Nostraticists as well. Eurasiatic is a hypothetical macro-family proposed by Joseph Greenberg that groups together several language families of Europe Asia and North America Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych ( Russian: Владислав Маркович Иллич-Свитыч 1934-1966 was a founding father of comparative Nostratic The Nostratic languages constitute a proposed Language family that according to its proponents includes a high proportion of the language families of Europe The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a Language family with about 375 languages ( SIL estimate and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa He continued to work on this project from the time of his diagnosis with fatal pancreatic cancer until his death.

Selected works by Joseph H. Greenberg

1957. Essays in Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

1963 (ed. ). Universals of Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.

1963. "Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements," in Universals of Language, pp. 73–113. Cambridge: MIT Press.

1963. The Languages of Africa. The Languages of Africa is a 1963 book of essays by Joseph Greenberg, in which he sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (From the same publisher: second revised edition, 1966; third edition, 1970. All three editions simultaneously published at The Hague by Mouton &. Co. )

1970. "Some generalizations concerning glottalic consonants, especially implosives. " International Journal of American Linguistics 36, 123-145.

1971. "The Indo-Pacific hypothesis. " In Thomas A. Sebeok et al. (editors), Current Trends in Linguistics, Volume 8: Linguistics in Oceania, 807-871. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.

1978 (ed. ). Universals of Human Language, Volume 1: Method and Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

1978 (ed. ). Universals of Human Language, Volume 2: Phonology. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

1978 (ed. ). Universals of Human Language, Volume 3: Word Structure. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

1978 (ed. ). Universals of Human Language, Volume 4: Syntax. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

1987. Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

2000. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 1: Grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

2005. Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, edited by William Croft. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References

Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 4). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-195-09427-1.

Diamond, Jared (1997). Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton. ISBN 0393038912.

Mairal, Ricardo and Juana Gil (2006). Linguistic Universals. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-54552-5.

Ringe, Donald A. (1993). "A reply to Professor Greenberg". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Vol 137: 91-109.

External links

Memorial Resolution
Obituary from Stanford Report
"What we all spoke when the world was young", New York Times (February 1, 2000)
Response to Campbell (1989)
Rebuttal to Ringe (1993)

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