Terrence Kaufman

Terrence Kaufman (June 12, 1937 – March 3, 2022)^[1] was an American linguist who specialized in lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics, the documentation of unwritten languages, and language contact phenomena. He served as professor emeritus of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.^[2]

Kaufman was born on June 12, 1937 in Portland, Oregon to James Edward Kaufman (1906–1991), a mechanic, and Mary Katherine Kaufman (née Burman; 1910–2001).^[1][3][4][5] Kaufman was of Russian German descent on his father’s side.^[4] Kaufman had one brother.^[4]

Kaufman obtained a BA from the University of Chicago in 1959, and began fieldwork the following year.^[1] In 1963, Kaufman received his PhD in linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on the grammar of the Tzeltal language.^[6][7][8]

Kaufman taught at The Ohio State University from 1963 to 1964, the University of California, Berkeley, from 1964 to 1970, and at the University of Pittsburgh until his retirement in 2011.^[1]

Kaufman produced descriptive and comparative historical studies of languages, including those of the Mayan, Siouan, Hokan, Uto-Aztecan, Mixe–Zoquean, and Oto-Manguean families. His work on empirical documentation of unwritten languages, through fieldwork and training of native linguists, resulted in a substantial body of published work, as well as a substantial unpublished corpus of notes.^[1] Many of his articles were co-authored with the scholars Lyle Campbell, Sarah Thomason, and John Justeson.

In a 1976 paper co-authored with Campbell, Kaufman helped advance the theory that the Olmecs spoke a Mixe–Zoquean language. The theory was based on the significant presence of early Mixe–Zoquean loan words in many Mesoamerican languages, particularly from specific, culturally significant semantic domains.^[9] Along with Campbell and Thomas Smith-Stark, Kaufman carried out research published in Language (1986) which led to the recognition of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area.^[10]

In his book Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics (1988), Kaufman and Thomason developed a theoretical framework for the understanding of the processes of contact-induced language change.^[11]

In 1993, along with John Justeson, Kaufman claimed to have successfully deciphered the Isthmian or Epi-Olmec script.^[12] However, this claim was refuted by anthropologists Michael Coe and Stephen Houston in 2004, after using the decipher key on a recently discovered jade mask. Coe states that the result "turns out to be total nonsense and gobbledygook".^[13][14]

In the years prior to his death, Kaufman was involved in the "Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica", which focused on collecting standardized linguistic data from the under-documented languages of Mesoamerica.^[15]

In the early 1970s, Kaufman visited Guatemala to conduct linguistic surveys in the Mayan highlands. These surveys eventually led to his proposal for a classification of the Mayan languages. In Guatemala, he collaborated with the Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM) in Antigua Guatemala, a Guatemalan NGO intent on becoming a national Mayan-based resource institution.^[16]

In collaboration with PLFM staff — and inspired in part by Kenneth Hale's unpublished paper from the 1960s, American Indians in Linguistics — Kaufman was a key participant in the development of the PLFM's plan to train one hundred community-based native speakers of Mayan languages, mostly individuals educated only to primary school level, to become descriptive linguists for their own languages. He spent the summer leading them through a level of training usually reserved for university students. In this, he was supported by a dozen professional linguists who were pursuing their PhDs, such as Nora England and Judith Maxwell. Each served for several years under the auspices of the Peace Corps to provide year-round, follow-up training^[17][18].

Under Kaufman's leadership, and in consultation with this corps of linguists and Mayan trainees, PLFM developed a proposal for "rational" alphabets for each of the Mayan languages, while respecting the integrity and unique features of each language. The Proposal for alphabets and orthographies for writing the Mayan languages^[19] was published in Spanish in January 1976 under Kaufman's name by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, which supported the proposal. However, due to polarization in Guatemala in the 1970s, the proposal faced opposition from some proponents of orthographies that imposed Spanish language orthography on the Mayan languages. A corps of PLFM Mayan linguists joined national congresses and debates. In 1987, the Congress of the Republic of Guatemala enacted legislation establishing the orthography developed by Kaufman and the Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM) as the official national alphabet. The legally adopted version incorporated a single minor modification to the original proposal. The Mayan trainees, who had assumed leadership of the PLFM in 1976, had been so involved in the consideration of Kaufman's published proposal that some later suggested that they should have been co-authors.^[20]

Additionally, together with a PLFM linguistic aide whom he had trained, Jo Froman, Kaufman completed his nationwide linguistic surveys and a dialect boundary mapping exercise. He then published a proposed classification for the Mayan languages. Translated and edited by Lic. Flavio Rojas Lima of the Seminario de Integración Social, PLFM volunteer, Margarita Cruz, PLFM Director, Tony Jackson, and supported by Ministry of Education language advisor, Salvador Aguado Andreut, the proposal was published in Spanish as Idiomas de Mesoamerica ('Languages of Mesoamerica'), in 1974.^[21]

In June of 1964, Kaufman married Elaine Diana Marlowe.^[3] They later divorced in 1972.^[22]

• Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence (1976). "A Linguistic Look at the Olmec". American Antiquity. 41 (1): 80–89. doi:10.2307/279044. JSTOR 279044. S2CID 162230234.
• Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence (1980). "On Mesoamerican linguistics". American Anthropologist. 82 (4): 850–857. doi:10.1525/aa.1980.82.4.02a00120.
• Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence; Smith-Stark, Thomas C. (September 1986). "Meso-America as a Linguistic Area". Language. 62 (3): 530–570. doi:10.1353/lan.1986.0105. S2CID 144784988.
• Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence (1985). "Mayan Linguistics: Where are we Now?". Annual Review of Anthropology. 14: 187–198. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.14.100185.001155.
• Justeson, John; Kaufman, Terrence (1993). "A decipherment of epi-Olmec hieroglyphic writing". Science. 259 (5102): 1703–1711. Bibcode:1993Sci...259.1703J. doi:10.1126/science.259.5102.1703. PMID 17816888. S2CID 9678265.
• Kaufman, Terrence (June 1976). "Archaeological and Linguistic Correlations in Mayaland and Associated Areas of Meso-America". World Archaeology. 8 (1: Archaeology and Linguistics): 101–118. doi:10.1080/00438243.1976.9979655.
• Kaufman, Terrence (1988). "A Research Program for Reconstructing Proto-Hokan: First Gropings". In DeLancey, Scott (ed.). Papers from the 1988 Hokan–Penutian Languages Workshop. Eugene: University of Oregon. pp. 50–168. OCLC 26917817.
• Kaufman, Terrence (1990). "Language History in South America: What we know and how to know more". In Payne, Doris L. (ed.). Amazonian Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 13–74. ISBN 978-0-292-70414-5.

• Justeson, John; Norman, William; Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence (1985). The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan Language and Script. Middle American Research Institute Publication. Vol. 53. ISBN 0939238829.
• Kaufman, Terrence (1972). El Proto-Tzeltal-Tzotzil. Fonología comparada y diccionario reconstruido. México: UNAM. ISBN 978-9683666253.
• Thomason, Sarah G.; Kaufman, Terrence (1988). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07893-4.

• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages, The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, Oxford University Press.
• Houston, Stephen, and Coe, Michael. 2004. "Has Isthmian Writing Been Deciphered?", Mexicon XXV: 151–161.
• Brigham Young University press release on behalf of Brigham Young University archaeologist Stephen Houston and Yale University professor emeritus Michael Coe disputing Justeson/Kaufman findings.
• Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica Archived March 18, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
• Kaufman's faculty page at the University of Pittsburgh
• Autobiographical notes by Kaufman
• "Works of Terrence Kaufman". Google Scholar.