The Linguist’s Calendar: May 31

Bolivian Parliament Building

May 31 

2001: A new Bolivian penal law authorizes the use of an interpreter in cases where the defendant does not speak Spanish.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 30

Louis Hjelmslev

May 30 

1965: Death of Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 29

Jacques Chirac

May 29 

1996: In a speech in Quimper, Brittany, French president Jacques Chirac admits that France might sign the European charter on minority languages.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 28

May 28 

1863: At Antoine d’Abbadie’s place, messieurs de Cliarencey, d’Abbadie, Cliodzko and Selicebel agree to found a linguistic society. This later develops into the famous Société de Linguistique de Paris.

1915: Birth of Joseph Greenberg in Brooklyn, New York.

1945: One of the last strongholds of number inflection in the Swedish verbal system falls, as the major Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå begins using singular forms even with plural subjects.

 

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 27

Karl Bühler

May 27 

1879: Birth of Karl Bühler, the German psychologist to present his “Organon” model of language in 1934.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 26

Kaspar Hauser

May 26

1828: The feral child Kaspar Hauser is discovered in Nuremberg, Germany.

1998: In a manifestation called the “National Sorry Day,” Australia offers an apology to the Aboriginal population for the policy (lasting into the early 1970s) of removing children from Aboriginal families to Anglophone households. Among numerous other disastrous outcomes, this policy was responsible for the extinction of many Aboriginal languages.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 25

Minsk, Belarus

May 25

1917: The town of Minsk in Belarus gives official recognition to Yiddish. The special status of Yiddish in the republic is later manifested in the coat of arms, which bears the inscription “Workers of the world, unite” in Russian, Belarusan, Polish, and Yiddish.

1925: Otto Jespersen gives his last lecture at the University of Copenhagen.

1948: Andrew Booth’s computer intended for machine translation experiments is de­mon­stra­ted to re­pre­sen­ta­tives of the Rockefeller foundation, which finances the project.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 24

Fidelia Fielding

May 24

The Day of Slavic Writing is a national holiday in Bulgaria, to commemorate the invention of St Cyril and St Method in the 9th century.

1873: In a talk before the Société de Linguistique de Paris, A Dufriche-Desgenettes makes the first documented use of the word phonème.

1917: A Russian orthography reform is officially accepted by a Special Meeting of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

1936: At the Shantok Burial Ground in Uncasville, Connecticut, a monument is erected to Fidelia Fielding (1827–1908), the last speaker of Pequot-Mohegan.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 23

Big Bill Neidjie

May 23  

1947: Typologist Bernard Comrie is born in Sunderland, Britain.
 

1998: Founding of the Linguistics Society of Taiwan.

1999: Closing of the first international conference on language teacher education at the University of Minnesota.

2002: The Australian language Gagadu vanishes as the only remaining speaker Big Bill Neidjie draws his last breath.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 22

Zellig Harris

May 22 

1992: Chomsky’s mentor Zellig Harris dies.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 21

Monument to the
Estonian Language

May 21

1994: Solemn inauguration of the monument to the Estonian language in Kadrina, Estonia.

2002: Joseph Mesa is convicted for the murder of two of his classmates. He is sentenced despite his plea of insanity, according to which the murders were inspired by voices in his head. Since Mesa is deaf, however, these were not literally speaking voices, but glove-clad hands urging him to kill—in American Sign.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 20

Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn)

May 20

Eliza Doolittle Day, encourages “proper use” of language.

1980: Francophone Québec votes in favor of remaining a Canadian province.

1999: Opening of the first international conference on language teacher education at the University of Minnesota.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 19

May 19 

1859: Paul “Broca’s area” Broca holds his first meeting together with the Société d’Anthropologie, which he has just founded.

1965: Publication of Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.

 

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 18

May 18 

1842: At 1 p.m. in the rooms of the Statistical Society, 4 St Martin’s Place, London, the Philological Society is founded "for the investigation of the Structure, the Affinities, and the History of Languages; and the Philological Illustration of the Classical Writers of Greece and Rome."

2001: The “Plain Language Group,” appointed by the Swedish government, arranges a conference on the theme “Plain Language Opens Sweden.”

 

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 17

Mary Haas

May 17 

1996: Death of American linguist Mary Haas.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 16

Eugene, Oregon

May 16

1998: The first American “Linguistic Olympics” takes place in Eugene, Oregon. The competition had been held in Russia since 1965.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 15

Carl Wernicke

May 15 

1848: Carl Wernicke—who later identifies “Wernicke’s area,” an important language center of the brain—is born.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 14

Swedish parliament building

May 14 

Sign Language Day in Sweden, commemorating the official recognition of Swedish Sign by the parliament in 1981.

1978: The replacement of English he and she with an epicene third person pronoun is much discussed among the pages of the New York Times. Most noteworthy of today’s contributions is that from Lawrence Ross of Huntington, New York, who offers sap (from homo sapiens).

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 13

Franz Boas

May 13 

1876: Ferdinand de Saussure joins the Société de Linguistique de Paris.

1942: Franz Boas gives his last public lecture.

2000: First international conference on Kurdish linguistics kicks off at the University of Kiel, Germany.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 12

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 12

 

1891: Otto Jespersen defends his PhD thesis, Studier Over Engelske Kasus.

1906: “Great name changing day”—24,800 Finns switch from Swedish to Finnish-sounding surnames.

1948: Andrew Booth’s computer intended for machine translation experiments becomes operational.

2005: For the very first time, a British member of parliament swears allegiance to the Queen in Cornish. While Welsh and Scots Gaelic had been used in this context before, Andrew George of St Ives became the first to swear an oath ending in Ytho Dew re’m gweressa rather than So help me God.

 

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 11

Armenian parliament building

May 11 

2001: Armenia signs the European minority language convention.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 10

Alvin Liberman

May 10 

1839: For the first time, the Bible becomes available in Hawaiian.

1917: Birthday of phonetician Alvin Liberman.

1986: The Australian language Mangala becomes extinct as its last native speaker, Jack Butler, dies at the age of 85.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 9

May 9 

1753: In a letter to British member of parliament Peter Collinson, Benjamin Franklin expresses his worries about the future United States becoming German-speaking. Not only do the German immigrants not speak English, but they are also “generally the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation.”

1938: Dictating for his wife from his sick bed, Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy composes his last letter to Roman Jakobson.

1950: A S Chikobav criticizes “Marrism” in the Pravda. This is the beginning of a debate on the so-called Japhetic language family, a debate which rages until June 20th, when Stalin himself sides with the critics.

1973: Publication of Roger Brown’s classic The First Language: The Early Stages, which studies the language acquisition of Adam, Eve, and Sarah.

 

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 8

Truganini

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 8 

1876: Ethnic and linguistic cleansing of Tasmania is completed, as Truganini, the last speaker of a Tasmanian language (also the last full-blooded Tasmanian) goes to meet her maker.

1913: In a letter to Edward Sapir, Alfred Kroeber reports that he believes to have found that Klamath-Modoc is related to one of the language families in California.

1924: Afrikaans becomes official in South Africa.

2000: Poland adopts the “Law concerning the Polish language,” which, among other things, aims to “combat vulgar language use.”

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 7

Joseph Greenberg

May 7

2001: Joseph Greenberg, professor emeritus at Stanford, dies at the age of 85, of pancreatic cancer.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 6

May 6 

1911: During his third linguistics course at the University of Geneva, Ferdinand de Saussure runs short of time. In a letter to M L Gautier, Saussure complains that he has too many issues to discuss for the limited lecture time allotted to him. He also says that he basically has material for a textbook, only he cannot recall where the manuscript is. His course in general linguistics was eventually published posthumously, and was based on his students’ lecture notes.

 

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 5

Francis I

May 5

1539: French king Francis I signs the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts, which makes French, rather than Latin, the official language of the kingdom.

1998: Ted Kaczynski is sentenced to four life terms for the terrorist attacks hitherto ascribed to the so-called Unabomber. Linguistic evidence played a major role in the Kaczynski case.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 4

Audrey Hepburn

May 4 

1904: The Russian administration in Lithuania decides to allow the Lithuanian alphabet (and in practice, the Lithuanian language itself) in print.

1919: The so-called ‘May-fourth movement’ is founded among students in Beijing. Its main goal is to protest against Japanese imperialism, but the movement also plays a role in linguistic history in working for a writing reform. As a result Bái-huà (‘colloquial language’) is recognized as the standard written form of Chinese in 1992.

1929: Birth of Audrey Hepburn, who played the role of Eliza in the film My Fair Lady, one of the all-too-few films featuring a linguist hero.

1943: Otto Jespersen is buried at the Lundehave cemetery.

1968: American linguist Frederick Newmeyer presents his first public talk, “Durative keep in English” at the University of Illinois.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 3

Jean-Marc Itard

May 3 

1806: Jean-Marc Itard delivers his second report on Victor the Wild Child.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 2

Paul Kretschmer

May 2   

1866: Birth of German Hellenist and comparative linguist Paul Kretschmer.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 1

David Crystal

May 1 

1875: Karl Verner first presents the theory later known as Verner’s law in a letter to Vilhelm Thomsen. It is published only the following year, as Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung.

1893: At the age of 33, Otto Jespersen becomes chair of English at the University of Copenhagen.

1997: David Crystal’s impressive Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language is published by the Cambridge University Press.