The Linguist’s Calendar: June 7

Alan Turing

June 7

St Gotteschalk, official patron saint of linguists, was murdered on this day in 1066 in Pomerania, after having served as a translator in missionary work.
 
1894: William Dwight Whitney dies in New Haven, Connecticut.
 
1934: Wycliffe Bible Translators starts linguistics courses in Arkansas.
 
1951: Birthday of sociolinguist Deborah Tannen.

1954: Following his conviction for homosexuality, Alan Turing commits suicide.

The Linguist’s Calendar: June 6

Shanawdithit

June 6
 
1799: Russian national poet Alexander Pushkin is born in Moscow. He is widely acknowledged to have given standard Russian its current form.
 
1829: The last known speaker of Beothuk, a woman named Shanawdithit (a k a Nancy April) succumbs to tuberculosis in St John’s, Newfoundland.

The Linguist’s Calendar: June 5

June 5
 
1956: Sri Lanka’s Official Language Act declares Sinhala the only official language. This situation prevails until 1987, when Tamil is recognized as co-official.

The Linguist’s Calendar: June 4

June 4 

1992: A pregnant British woman named Paula Gilfoyle is found hanged in the garage of her home. On the basis of linguistic evidence, her husband is found guilty of having dictated the suicide note (undoubtedly in her own handwriting) to her. The case remains deeply controversial, though.

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Today's entry has an update here.

The Linguist’s Calendar: June 3

Elizabeth Elstob

June 3 


1756: Death of the first known female Anglicist, Elizabeth Elstob, author of Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue.

1760: Birth of French linguist Pierre Étienne (a k a Peter Stephen) Duponceau, to whom we owe the term “polysynthetic”.

The Linguist’s Calendar: June 2

Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy

June 2

1915: Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy and his wife Vera have their first child, a daughter named Elena.

1989: The French government issues a decree on the creation of the Conseil supérieur de la langue française.

The Linguist’s Calendar: June 1

June 1

1940: Evelyn Pike gives birth to a daughter, the first child of linguist Ken Pike.

1952: Michael Ventris produces the last of his Work Notes, where he first reveals his find that Linear B is a written form of Greek.

1981: The first English language daily newspaper in the People’s Republic of China, the China Daily, begins publication.

1987: Stanford University Press publishes Joseph Greenberg’s controversial Language in the Americas.

1991: Geoffrey Pullum’s entertaining and oft-cited The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language is published by the University of Chicago Press.

1993: Within the Lojban movement, a language reform known as The Great Rafsi Reallocation goes into effect.

1999: The Nepalese Supreme Court rules the use of minority languages in the country’s administration “non-constitutional and illegal.”

2002: For the first time since its inception in 1996, the Terralingua organization, promoter of linguistic and biological diversity, gets an office, located in Washington.