Alexandre Kimenyi, RIP

[Tom Givon]

                                           ALEXANDRE KIMENYI

It is with sad heart that I pass on, belatedly, the news of the sad 
departure of Prof. Alexandre Kimenyi. Out in the boonies,
news travel slow, so this is 2 months after the sad facts but it is 
still a shock. Alexandre was a gentle soul who lighted my
early years in linguistics, and his untimely  passing brings back faded 
old memories. I have last seen  him ca. 10  years ago
when he came to an Africanist conference at Oregon & hung out  with one 
of my last students there, Boniface Kawasha.
Otherwise, I had  lost touch with Alexandre almost the minute he 
finished his dissertation. So this takes me back to ancient days
at UCLA, when we were all just  beginning to learn what the heck we were 
doing. For me, Alexandre was part of that very
slow learning process. Tho I was technically his dissertation adviser, 
Ed Keenan was the real inspiration for that marvelous work.
In fact, it took me a few years before I realized why and how that  work 
was so important. In those days, I was still experimenting
(another detour...) with descriptions that had zero formal components. 
Only after moving to Oregon (1981) and supervising Noel
Rude's work on Nez Perce did I realize how important Alexandre's work 
had been and how central GR's were to the whole mechanism
of grammar. Larry Hyman may recall my  less-than-clement comments on a 
beautiful paper he and Annie Hawkinson  published in SAL.
True, I did accept it without modifications, but under  loud protest. I 
thought it was 'too formal'. I guess I  have always been a slow learner.

It is always a sad occasion to see a person much younger than oneself 
depart early, prematurely (well, is there really a timely departure?).
But from the obit Larry Hyman furnished, it appears Alexandre has left 
behind a  large family and many friends, students and colleagues who will
surely cherish the memory of this gentle, caring, beautiful man. The 
Ruanda Genocide was, of course a big part of the story. But Alexandre 
had great
difficulties with visas, permits and just plain survival long before 
that officially-designated horror. I watched him scurry around helplessly
in those pre-genocide days, trying to save as many of his  numerous 
relations. His (and our) utter helplessness about Ruanda, and  indeed
Africa and what still goes on there, is one of the  reason I have never 
gone back to that beautiful horror-plagued continent. Hard to keep
watching. But Alexandre didn't have a choice, so he struggled to do as 
much as could be done from afar. For those of you  who work
with native peoples of this continent, it is not that difficult  to just 
close your eyes and almost see how just as much of this horror  was 
happening
right here a century and a half ago. I live among some of  the 
survivors, indeed on their land. They are thriving by all official 
measures, but the
scars are still there. Will we ever learn?   May Alexandre's gentle soul 
rest in peace.

 
                                                        TG

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