16.2469, All: Obituary: Jacques Arends

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2469. Wed Aug 24 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2469, All: Obituary: Jacques Arends

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1)
Date: 19-Aug-2005
From: Marlyse Baptista < baptista at uga.edu >
Subject: Obituary: Jacques Arends 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 10:21:46
From: Marlyse Baptista < baptista at uga.edu >
Subject: Obituary: Jacques Arends 
 

Obituary for Jacques Arends by Armin Schwegler

Jacques Arends died on the 16th of August due to complications 
arising from his treatment for leukemia. To many of us, Jacques was 
both a colleague and a dear friend. 

Meticulous, modest, fair, patient, enthusiastic, and always curious, 
Jacques was an outstanding researcher and excellent teacher. Before 
joining the University of Amsterdam he had been a secondary school 
teacher, which may explain why his classes were always planned with 
such detail and so far in advance. It is, however, his research that left 
the biggest mark on our field of creolistics. He pioneered the use of 
demographic information in the study of creole languages, especially 
those of Suriname. Quick to realize the importance of demographic 
records for reconstructing early creole history, Jacques had launched 
a long-term project on the subject, and continued working on it until 
the time of his death.

Jacques is probably best known for his publications of (and on) 18th- 
and 19th- creole texts from Suriname. His 1989 doctoral dissertation 
concerned itself with syntactic change in Sranan over a two-hundred 
year period. Some of these materials made their way into his Pidgins 
and Creoles: An Introduction (1994), which he co-edited with Pieter 
Muysken and Norval Smith. Following up on his Early Suriname 
Creole Documents (J. Arends & M. Perl, 1994), he spent the last 
period of his life planning a large series of editions of older creole 
texts and relevant sources.
 
But let me return to Jacques the person: Jacques was, above all, a 
good guy, the sort of congenial and giving individual one wishes to 
have as friend. And a great friend he was, to so many of us. We will 
miss him sorely.
 
Armin Schwegler
President, Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL)





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