William Bright obituary in NY Times

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_http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/books/23bright.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&ore
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(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/books/23bright.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin) 
...
William Bright, 78, Expert in Indigenous Languages, Is Dead 
 
By _MARGALIT FOX_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/margalit_fox/index.html?inline=nyt-per) 
Published: October 23, 2006

 
William Bright, an internationally renowned linguist who spent more than half 
 a century inventorying the vanishing riches of the indigenous languages of 
the  United States, died on Oct. 15 in Louisville, Colo. He was 78 and lived in 
 Boulder, Colo. 
The cause was a brain tumor, said his daughter, Susie Bright, the well-known  
writer of erotica. 
At his death, Mr. Bright was professor adjoint of linguistics at the 
_University of Colorado_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_colorado/index.html?inline=nyt-org) , Boulder. He was 
also emeritus  professor of linguistics and anthropology at the _University of 
California_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org) , Los Angeles, where he 
taught  from 1959 to 1988. 
An authority on the native languages and cultures of California, Mr. Bright  
was known in particular for his work on Karuk (also spelled Karok), an 
American  Indian language from the northwest part of the state. Shortly before his 
death,  in recognition of his efforts to document and preserve the language, he 
was made  an honorary member of the Karuk tribe, the first outsider to be so 
honored. 
His books include “American Indian Linguistics and Literature” (Mouton,  
1984); “A Coyote Reader” (University of California, 1993); “1,500 California  
Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning” (University of California, 1998); and  “
Native American Placenames of the United States” (_University of Oklahoma_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of
_oklahoma/index.html?inline=nyt-org) , 2004). 
Mr. Bright’s approach to the study of language was one seldom seen nowadays.  
With the ascendance of _Noam Chomsky_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/noam_chomsky/index.html?inline=nyt-per)  in the late 
1950’s, linguistics shifted  its focus from documenting language as an artifact 
of human culture to analyzing  it as a window onto human cognition. 
But to Mr. Bright, language was inseparable from its cultural context, which  
might include songs, poetry, stories and everyday conversation. And so, 
lugging  unwieldy recording devices, he continued to make forays into traditional  
communities around the world, sitting down with native speakers and eliciting  
words, phrases and sentences. 
Among the languages on which he worked were Nahuatl, an Aztec language of  
Mexico; Cakchiquel, of Guatemala; Luiseño, Ute, Wishram and Yurok, languages of  
the Western United States; and Lushai, Kannada, Tamil and Tulu, languages of 
the  Indian subcontinent. 
William Oliver Bright was born on Aug. 13, 1928, in Oxnard, Calif. He  
received a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of California,  
Berkeley, in 1949. After a stint in Army intelligence, he earned a doctorate in  
linguistics from Berkeley in 1955. 
He began his fieldwork among the Karuk in 1949. At the time, their language  
was a tattered remnant of its former splendor, spoken by just a handful of  
elders. Since encounters with Europeans had rarely ended well for the Karuk, the 
 community had little reason to welcome an outsider. 
But Bill Bright was deferential, curious and, at 21, scarcely more than a  
boy. He was also visibly homesick. The Karuk grandmothers took him in, baking  
him cookies and cakes and sharing their language. They named him  
Uhyanapatanvaanich, “little word-asker.” 
In 1957, Mr. Bright published “The Karok Language” (University of  
California), a detailed description of the language and its structure. Last  year, the 
tribe published a Karuk dictionary, compiled by Mr. Bright and Susan  Gehr. 
Today, Karuk children learn the language in tribal schools. 
Mr. Bright was divorced twice and widowed twice. From his first marriage, he  
is survived by his daughter, Susannah (known as Susie), of Santa Cruz, Calif. 
 Also surviving are his wife, Lise Menn, a professor of linguistics at the  
University of Colorado; two stepsons, Stephen Menn of Montreal and Joseph Menn  
of Los Angeles; one grandchild; and two step-grandchildren. 
His other books include “The World’s Writing Systems” (_Oxford University_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/oxford_univ
ersity/index.html?inline=nyt-org) , 1996), which he edited with Peter T.  
Daniels; and the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (Oxford University,  
1992), of which he was editor in chief. From 1966 to 1987, Mr. Bright was the  
editor of Language, the field’s flagship journal. 
The professor was also a meticulous reader of all his daughter’s manuscripts. 
 He displayed the finished products — among them “Susie Bright’s Sexual 
State of  the Union” (Simon & Schuster, 1997) and “Mommy’s Little Girl: On Sex,  
Motherhood, Porn and Cherry Pie” (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003) — proudly on 
his  shelves at home.

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