William J. Gedney

William J. Gedney (born April 4, 1915 in Orchards , Washington , † November 14, 1999 in Ann Arbor , Michigan ) was an American linguist of Southeast Asian languages ​​and Thaiist .

After graduating, he in 1935 at Whitman College with summa cum laude graduated, Gedney worked as an English teacher in Oregon and the state of Washington . He took a serious interest in linguistics in the summer months when he was off school , but was drafted into the Army Language Unit in New York City when World War II broke out , where he studied the Thai language . At the same time he was studying Sanskrit at Yale University .

In 1947 Gedney completed his PhD and moved to Thailand , where he continued his studies in Thai language and literature with some of the country's most important scholars. At the same time he began to build up a collection of Thai literature that should grow to over 14,000 copies. He gave this small library to the University of Michigan in 1975 . In the following two decades Gedney worked on the Tai languages and carried out numerous projects on them. In particular, he visited many representatives of the lesser-spoken languages ​​of this family in Southeast Asia and South China in order to record the characteristics of these languages. He became known for the accuracy of his notes on the tonal and phonological characteristics of these languages.

All in all, Gedney worked over 22 languages, such as B. Saek , Lue and Yay , which he explored deeply. He put his findings into an eight-volume series published by the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan.

In 1980, Gedney resigned from the faculty of the University of Michigan after serving as dean of the faculty of linguistics between 1972 and 1975 . Throughout his career, Gedney has served with the Linguistic Society of America , the American Oriental Society, the Siam Society of the Association for Asian Studies, and the Southeast Asian Linguistic Society . In 1981 he served as Vice President of the American Oriental Society, and in 1982 as its President.

With the focus on data and his extensive knowledge of the Kam-Tai languages , Gedney became one of the most distinguished researchers in the comparative historical research of Siamese, Thai , and other Tai languages. But his influence extended far beyond linguistics. Researchers in other disciplines, such as history, political science , art history, and anthropology , sought his advice.

William J. Gedney died on November 14, 1999 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.