Mary Haas
Mary Rosamund Haas (born January 12, 1910 in Richmond , Indiana , † May 17, 1996 in Alameda County , California ) was an American linguist who was particularly concerned with the indigenous languages of North America .
Haas was a student of Edward Sapir at Yale and therefore, like him, pursued an anthropological approach in her linguistic work that took into account the cultural background of the respective language communities. She conducted field research on the Tunica , Natchez, and Creek ( Muskogee ) languages . As part of the Second World WarBecause of its military engagement in Asia, the US government obliged leading linguists to study Asian languages so that they could produce textbooks and dictionaries on these languages, which up to this point did not exist in the Anglo-American region. Haas was assigned the Thai .
Haas worked at the University of California, Berkeley from about this time . In 1974 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1978 to the National Academy of Sciences .
Works (selection)
- 1950: Tunica texts. In: University of California Publications in Linguistics , 6. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
- 1964: Thai-English Student's Dictionary. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- 1969: The Prehistory of Languages. Paris: Mouton.
Web links
- Haas at the University of California, Berkeley
- Entry on Language Log about the circumstances of Haas' work on Thai
- Literature by and about Mary Haas in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Haas, Mary |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Haas, Mary Rosamund |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American linguist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 12, 1910 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Richmond , USA |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 17, 1996 |
| Place of death | Alameda County |