32.544, All: Prof. Em. Robbins Burling, 1926-2021

Fri Feb 12 13:35:57 UTC 2021

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-544. Fri Feb 12 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.544, All: Prof. Em. Robbins Burling, 1926-2021

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Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2021 08:34:27
From: Mark Post [mark.post at sydney.edu.au]
Subject: Prof. Em. Robbins Burling, 1926-2021

Robbins Burling, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Linguistics at the
University of Michigan, passed away peacefully on January 2, 2021, at the age
of 94. A giant in the fields of anthropological linguistics, language
evolution and language pedagogy, Burling was particularly known for his
pioneering work in ethnography and linguistics of northeastern India, where he
conducted his doctoral fieldwork and to where he returned for research visits
until the latter years of his life. Burling’s work has played a seminal role
in the development of Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) linguistics, inspiring
generations of scholars and producing some of the field’s formative works.

Rob’s early career saw the publication of several groundbreaking works in
linguistics and anthropology, including A Garo Grammar (1961) – the first
modern grammar of a northeast Indian language – a reconstruction of Proto-Bodo
(in Language, 1959) – the first reconstruction of a Trans-Himalayan language
at the subgroup level – a pioneering study of early child language acquisition
in a minority language setting (in Word, 1959), an ethnographic monograph
Rengsanggri: Family and Kinship in a Garo Village (1963), a popular textbook
Hill Farms and Padi Fields: Life in Mainland Southeast Asia (1965, re-issued
in 1992), and an influential reconstruction of Proto-Lolo-Burmese in 1967.
Over the following five decades, Burling published more than 130 articles,
chapters and reviews across the fields of social and cultural anthropology,
descriptive and historical linguistics, language pedagogy and linguistic
theory. In many of these works, he engaged in some of the major debates of his
era, especially regarding the nature and origin of human language.

Throughout his career, Rob Burling’s work was marked by scholarly excellence,
a solid empirical grounding in first-hand field data, and uncompromising
methodological rigor. Yet all who knew Rob could not fail to also be impressed
by the love he felt for the northeast Indian region, its people, and their
languages, and this sense of love and joyful intimacy pervaded his work. His
lifelong fascination with the Garo language culminated with a 2004
three-volume study The Language of the Modhupur Mandi (Garo), which uniquely
presented a modern, comprehensive analysis of Garo grammar and lexicon in a
highly accessible prose style. His fascination with language evolution
culminated around the same time in a popular volume The Talking Ape: How
Language Evolved (2005). And Rob’s skill as a teacher is nowhere better
epitomized than by his 1992 introductory linguistics textbook Patterns of
Language. 

After retirement, Rob continued to travel and write (he made it to all seven
continents). In 2016, he was honored with a Festschrift on the occasion of his
90th birthday at the 8th International conference of the North East Indian
Linguistics Society (NEILS) – a conference Rob had attended faithfully since
its inception in 2005. That same year he published a treatise on spelling,
Spellbound, written from his lifetime perspective of being both a passionate
and prolific writer, and yet a terrible speller. 

Rob will be deeply missed by his family and friends around the world and
across all walks of life, by the many students that he mentored, and by his
many colleagues around the world.

Further reading: Language and Culture in Northeast India and Beyond: In Honor
of Robbins Burling (available for free download at
http://hdl.handle.net/1885/38458) contains an Introduction which provides more
information about Rob Burling’s life and work, as well as a chapter by James
A. Matisoff which offers a detailed critical assessment of several of Rob’s
contributions to Trans-Himalayan linguistics from a specialist’s perspective.
It also contains several photographs, and a comprehensive bibliography of
Burling’s work up to 2015.  

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     Historical Linguistics
                     Language Documentation

Subject Language(s): Bodo (boy)
                     Garo (grt)

Language Family(ies): Tibeto-Burman

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