Harold C. Fleming is an
anthropologistAnthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....
and
historical linguistHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
. As an adherent of the Four Field School of American anthropology he stresses the integration of physical anthropology,
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
,
archaeologyArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
, and
cultural anthropologyCultural anthropology is one of four or five fields of anthropology . It is the branch of anthropology that examines culture as a meaningful scientific concept....
in solving anthropological problems.
Since 1965 Fleming has been affiliated with
Boston UniversityBoston University is a private nonsectarian university located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Although chartered by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1869, Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the Newbury Biblical Institute in Newbury, Vermont in 1839...
, continuing to the present as Research Fellow in the
African Studies CenterAfrican studies is the study of Africa, and can encompass such fields as social and economic development, politics, history, culture, sociology, anthropology or linguistics...
and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology. He has conducted extensive field work in the northeastern regions of
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
, mostly in
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
.
Early in his career Fleming published a paper (Fleming 1969) that outlined an important
taxonomicTaxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek , taxis and , nomos...
proposal, claiming that what had up to then been known as the "Western Cushitic" language family was not a part of Cushitic at all, but instead makes up a sixth primary branch of Afro-Asiatic, for which he coined the name Omotic.
Harold C. Fleming is an
anthropologistAnthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....
and
historical linguistHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
. As an adherent of the Four Field School of American anthropology he stresses the integration of physical anthropology,
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
,
archaeologyArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
, and
cultural anthropologyCultural anthropology is one of four or five fields of anthropology . It is the branch of anthropology that examines culture as a meaningful scientific concept....
in solving anthropological problems.
Biography
Since 1965 Fleming has been affiliated with
Boston UniversityBoston University is a private nonsectarian university located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Although chartered by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1869, Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the Newbury Biblical Institute in Newbury, Vermont in 1839...
, continuing to the present as Research Fellow in the
African Studies CenterAfrican studies is the study of Africa, and can encompass such fields as social and economic development, politics, history, culture, sociology, anthropology or linguistics...
and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology. He has conducted extensive field work in the northeastern regions of
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
, mostly in
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
.
Early in his career Fleming published a paper (Fleming 1969) that outlined an important
taxonomicTaxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek , taxis and , nomos...
proposal, claiming that what had up to then been known as the "Western Cushitic" language family was not a part of Cushitic at all, but instead makes up a sixth primary branch of Afro-Asiatic, for which he coined the name Omotic. The proposal has since been widely but not universally accepted. He has since continued in the vein of solving taxonomic problems involving African languages and worldwide (Fleming 1976, 1987, 1988, 1991, 2002, 2006, etc.).
Fleming has been a vocal advocate of, and practitioner in, the effort to extend the application of historical linguistic methods as far as possible into the past, and to integrate its results with those of physical anthropology,
geneticsGenetics, , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding...
, and archaeology, in order to produce a unified view of human
prehistoryPrehistory is a term used to describe the period before recorded history. Paul Tournal originally coined the term Pré-historique in describing the finds he had made in the caves of southern France...
. Fleming is a strong supporter of the sometimes controversial proposals of
Joseph GreenbergJoseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
, emphasizing the success of Greenberg's classification of "1500 [African] languages into four large taxa where almost all have stayed ever since" (Fleming 2000-2001).
In 1986 Fleming met the young members of the "
Moscow CircleThe Moscow linguistic circle was a group of important thinkers in semiotics, literary theory, and linguistics active in Moscow from 1915 to ca. 1924. Its members included Roman Jakobson, Grigory Vinokur, and Petr Bogatyrev. The group was a counterpart to the St...
" of historical linguists. Fleming was deeply impressed by the long-range linguistic probing of scholars in
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
who were trying to extend genetic taxonomy of human languages beyond the levels achieved in the 1950s and 1960s. In the fall of 1986 Fleming began circulating letters to linguists and anthropologists outside of
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. By the fourth issue (November 1987), the newsletter had acquired a more formal appearance and the name
Mother TongueMother Tongue is the yearly periodical of the Association for the Study of Languages in Prehistory , appearing since 1995. Its goal is to encourage international and interdisciplinary information sharing, discussion, and debate among geneticists, paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, and historical...
.
In 1989, what had been the "Long Range Comparison Club" was legally incorporated as the Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory (ASLIP).
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewitzel/aslip.html Fleming has served as President of ASLIP (1988-1996), Secretary-Treasurer (1996-98), and Vice President and Acting Treasurer (2004-present). ASLIP's mission is "to encourage international, interdisciplinary information sharing, discussion, and debate among biogeneticists, paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, and historical linguists on questions relating to the emerging synthesis on language origins and ancestral human spoken languages." Since 1995, ASLIP has published the journal
Mother Tongue.
A selection of works by Harold C. Fleming
- 1969. "The classification of West Cushitic within Hamito-Semitic." In Eastern African History, edited by Daniel McCall, Norman Bennett, and Jeffrey Butler, 3-27. Boston University Studies in African History 3.
- 1976. "Cushitic and Omotic." In Language in Ethiopia, edited by M. Lionel Bender et al., 34-53.
- 1978. "Microtaxonomy: Language and blood groups in the Horn of Africa." In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Session B, April 13-16, 1978, edited by Robert Hess, 25-49.
- 1982. "Kuliak external relations: Step one." In Nilotic Studies, from Proceedings of the International Symposium on Languages and History of the Nilotic Peoples, Cologne, January 4-6, 1982, Volume 2, 423-478.
- 1987. "Hadza and Sandawe genetic relations." In Proceedings of the International Symposium on African Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Franz Rottland, 157-189. Sprache und Geschichte in Africa, Volume 7.2.
- 1988. "Towards a definitive classification of human languages", review of A Guide to the World’s Languages by Merritt Ruhlen. Diachronica 4, 159-223.
- 1991. "A new taxonomic hypothesis: Borean or Boralean." Mother Tongue 14 (Newsletter of ASLIP), 16 pp.
- 2000. "Glottalization in Eastern Armenian." Journal of Indo-European Studies 28.1-2, 155-196.
- 2002. "Shabo: A new African phylum or a special relic of Old Nilo-Saharan?" Mother Tongue: The Journal 7, 1-38.
- 2000-2001. "Joseph H. Greenberg: A tribute and an appraisal." Mother Tongue: The Journal 6, 9-28.
- 2006. Ongota: A Decisive Language in African Prehistory. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
See also
- Afro-Asiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 350 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia, as well as parts of the Sahel, West Africa and East Africa. Arabic is the most widespread Afroasiatic...
- Cushitic languages
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in the Horn of Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Egypt. They are named after the Biblical figure Cush by analogy with Shem's being the eponym of Semitic...
- Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
- Kuliak languages
The Kuliak languages—Ik, Soo, and Nyang'i—are spoken by small relict communities in the mountains of northeastern Uganda. Bender had classified them within the Eastern Sudanic languages, but by Bender he had separated them out as an isolate within Nilo-Saharan...
- Monogenesis (linguistics)
In linguistics, monogenesis refers to the thesis that all spoken human languages are descended from a single ancestral language spoken many thousands of years ago in the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age....
- Mother Tongue
Mother Tongue is the yearly periodical of the Association for the Study of Languages in Prehistory , appearing since 1995. Its goal is to encourage international and interdisciplinary information sharing, discussion, and debate among geneticists, paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, and historical...
- Omotic languages
The Omotic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic family spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. The Ge'ez alphabet is used to write some Omotic languages, the Roman alphabet for some others...
- Ongota language
Ongota is a moribund language of southwest Ethiopia. In 2008, it was said to be in a state of decline with only 6 elderly native speakers, the rest of their small village on the west bank of the Weito River having adopted the Tsamai language instead. The grammar follows a Subject Object Verb word...
- Oropom language
Oropom is an almost certainly extinct African language, once spoken in northeastern Uganda and northwestern Kenya between the Turkwel River, Chemorongit Mountains, and Mount Elgon, by the Oropom ethnic group...
- Proto-Human language
- Shabo language
Shabo is an endangered language spoken by about 600 hunter-gatherers in southwestern Ethiopia, in the westernmost part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region. They live in three places in the Keficho Shekicho Zone: Anderaccha, Gecha, and Kaabo...
External links