deceased -- J ørgen Rischel 1934-2007

[Brian L Migliazza]

16 May 2007
FYI, our good friend and colleague in southeast Asian studies, Jørgen 
Rischel, died last week on May 10th (1934-2007). We had seen him many 
times over the past 20-plus years as he came through Asia attending 
conferences, researching the Mlabri in Thailand, and helping many of us 
with our linguistic work. We offer our heartfelt condolences to his family 
and colleagues in Denmark. 

Brian Migliazza
Asia Area Linguistics
-------------------------------------------

Deceased--
Jørgen Rischel 
1934-2007

Jørgen Rischel (August 10, 1934 - May 10, 2007), professor of linguistics 
in Copenhagen, Denmark passed away last week on Friday May 10th, 2007. 
Jørgen  was a Danish linguist who worked extensively in a variety of 
linguistic areas -- especially phonetics and phonology, lexicography and 
documentation of endangered languages. He is best known internationally 
for his descriptive work on Greenlandic, his grammar of Minor Mlabri of 
Thailand and his analyses of Danish phonology and morphology. He also 
contributed a considerable body of work on historical linguistics, the 
history of linguistics, linguistic fieldwork, phonology and links between 
linguistics and culture. 
He held a doctorate in linguistics. 
He was a professor of linguistics at the University of Copenhagen and 
later became professor Emeritus. 
He was a specialist in the Greenlandic language of which he has published 
the most comprehensive phonological study (1974) to date. 
He published extensively on topics in Danish, Faroese and Greenlandic -- 
particularly in phonetics and phonology. 
Recently he focused on Mon-Khmer languages and did extensive fieldwork in 
Thailand on an endangered and previously undescribed dialect of the Khmuic 
language Mlabri. 
In 1991 he was knighted into the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe 
II of Denmark. 
He was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of the Sciences. 
And he also served as a co-editor of the linguistic journal International 
Journal of American Linguistics.

In retirement, he became professor emeritus in general linguistics and 
phonetics, University of Copenhagen, and was then also a guest researcher 
at Mahidol University. Since 1982 he had been doing fieldwork in Thailand 
and Laos. Jørgen's major southeast Asia publication was on Minor Mlabri 
printed in 1995 by Museum Tusculanum Press -- entitled "Minor Mlabri. A 
Hunter-Gatherer Language of Northern Indochina". This monograph describes 
the language spoken by a small tribe of hunter-gatherers in Northern 
Indochina - the Mlabri. It contains a description of the linguistic 
scenario, a presentation of Mlabri phonology, morphology and syntax, and a 
lexicon with illustrative examples.

Selected publications --
1974. Topics in West Greenlandic Phonology. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. 
1972. Consonant Reduction in Faroese Noncompound Wordforms. In Firchow, E. 
S., Grimstad, K. Hasselmo, N. & W. A. O?Neil (eds.), Studies for Einar 
Haugen presented by Friends and Colleagues. 482-497. 
1995. Minor Mlabri. A Hunter-Gatherer Language of Northern Indochina. 
Museum Tusculanum Press. ISBN 87-7289-294-3. 
2000. The Dialect of Bernatzik?s (1938) ?Yumbri? refound?. Mon-Khmer 
Studies Journal 30:115-122.
2004. Pan-dialectal databases: Mlabri, an oral Mon-Khmer language. 
Lexicography Conference, Payap University, Chiangmai.
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