Mary Rosamund Haas (January 12 1910,
Richmond, IndianaRichmond is a city largely within Wayne Township, Wayne County, in east central Indiana, which borders Ohio. The city also includes the Richmond Municipal Airport in Boston Township which is separated from the rest of the city...
- d. May 17 1996) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
linguistLinguistics 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...
who specialized in
North American IndianNative Americans in the United States is the phrase that describes indigenous peoples from North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of...
languages,
ThaiThai is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Kradai language family. The Kradai languages are thought to have originated in what is now southern China, and are linked to...
, and
historical linguisticsHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
.
Haas attended high school in
Richmond, IndianaRichmond is a city largely within Wayne Township, Wayne County, in east central Indiana, which borders Ohio. The city also includes the Richmond Municipal Airport in Boston Township which is separated from the rest of the city...
, and later
Earlham CollegeEarlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It was founded in 1847 by the Quakers and has approximately 1,200 students.The current president is Douglas C. Bennett...
.
At the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private, coeducational research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by oil magnate and benefactor John D...
she undertook graduate work on comparative philology. It was at Chicago that Haas began to study under
Edward SapirEdward Sapir , was a German-born American anthropologist-linguist and a leader in American structural linguistics. He was one of the creators of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis...
, whom she would follow to
YaleYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
. She began a long career in linguistic fieldwork at that time, studying various languages during the summer months.
Mary Rosamund Haas (January 12 1910,
Richmond, IndianaRichmond is a city largely within Wayne Township, Wayne County, in east central Indiana, which borders Ohio. The city also includes the Richmond Municipal Airport in Boston Township which is separated from the rest of the city...
- d. May 17 1996) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
linguistLinguistics 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...
who specialized in
North American IndianNative Americans in the United States is the phrase that describes indigenous peoples from North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of...
languages,
ThaiThai is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Kradai language family. The Kradai languages are thought to have originated in what is now southern China, and are linked to...
, and
historical linguisticsHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
.
Haas attended high school in
Richmond, IndianaRichmond is a city largely within Wayne Township, Wayne County, in east central Indiana, which borders Ohio. The city also includes the Richmond Municipal Airport in Boston Township which is separated from the rest of the city...
, and later
Earlham CollegeEarlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It was founded in 1847 by the Quakers and has approximately 1,200 students.The current president is Douglas C. Bennett...
.
At the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private, coeducational research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by oil magnate and benefactor John D...
she undertook graduate work on comparative philology. It was at Chicago that Haas began to study under
Edward SapirEdward Sapir , was a German-born American anthropologist-linguist and a leader in American structural linguistics. He was one of the creators of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis...
, whom she would follow to
YaleYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
. She began a long career in linguistic fieldwork at that time, studying various languages during the summer months. The languagse that she studied over the ten-year period from 1931 to 1941 included Nitinat,
TunicaThe Tunica language was a language isolate spoken in what is now Louisiana in the United States by Native American Tunica peoples....
, Natchez,
CreekThe Creek language, also known as Muskogee or Muscogee , is a Muskogean language spoken by the Muscogee Nation, Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, Kialegee Tribal Town, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and other Muskogean peoples.-Phonology:The phonology of Creek consists of...
,
KoasatiKoasati is a Native American language of Muskogean origin. The language is spoken by the Coushatta people, most of whom live in Allen Parish north of the town of Elton, Louisiana, though a smaller number share a reservation near Livingston, Texas with the Alabama people...
,
ChoctawThe Choctaw language, traditionally spoken by the Native American Choctaw people of the southeastern United States, is a member of the Muskogean family. The Choctaw language was well known as a lingua franca of the frontiersmen of the early 19th century, including eventual American Presidents...
,
AlabamaAlabama is a Native American language, spoken by the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Texas. It was once spoken by the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town of Oklahoma, but there are no more Alabama speakers in Oklahoma. It is a Muskogean language, and is believed to have been related to the Muklasa and...
, and Hichiti. Her first published paper,
A Visit to the Other World, a Nitinat Text, a collaboration with
Morris SwadeshMorris Swadesh was an influential and controversial American linguist. He was known for extensive work on Chitimacha, a now-extinct language, and historical linguistics. In the post-World War II years as the Cold War heightened tensions, he was fired from City College of New York in 1949 due to...
(to whom she would later be married for a time), was published in 1933.
She went on to complete her
Ph.D.Ph.D. or PHD may stand for:* Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group* Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip* PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian organization...
in
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...
from
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
in 1935 with a dissertation entitled
A Grammar of the Tunica Language. (Tunica was a language once spoken in what is now
LouisianaThe State of Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state divided into parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
.) Haas worked with the last fluent speaker of Tunica,
Sesostrie YouchigantSesostrie Youchigant was the last native speaker of the Tunica language. He worked with linguist Mary Haas to describe what he remembered of the language, and the description was published in A Grammar of the Tunica Language in 1939....
, producing extensive texts and vocabularies.
Shortly afterwards, she conducted fieldwork with the last two speakers of the Natchez language in
OklahomaOklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,617,316 residents in 2007 and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
, Watt Sam and Nancy Raven, resulting in extensive unpublished field notes that constitute the most reliable source of information on the language. Shortly after this, she conducted extensive fieldwork on the
Creek languageThe Creek language, also known as Muskogee or Muscogee , is a Muskogean language spoken by the Muscogee Nation, Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, Kialegee Tribal Town, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and other Muskogean peoples.-Phonology:The phonology of Creek consists of...
as well, and was the first modern linguist to collect extensive texts in the language. Most of her notes on Creek and Natchez remain unpublished, though they have begun to be used by contemporary linguists.
Haas was noted for her dedication to teaching linguistics, and to the role of the linguist in language instruction. Her student
Karl V. TeeterKarl van Duyn Teeter was an American linguist known especially for his work on the Algic languages.Raised in Lexington, Massachusetts, he dropped out of high school and joined the United States Army, where he served as a Supply Sergeant from 1951-1954...
pointed out in his obituary of Haas that she trained more
AmericanistAmericanist may refer to:* Americanist phonetic notation* International Congress of Americanists* Society of Early Americanists...
linguists than her former instructors
Edward SapirEdward Sapir , was a German-born American anthropologist-linguist and a leader in American structural linguistics. He was one of the creators of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis...
and
Franz BoasFranz Boas was a German American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did post-doctoral work in geography...
combined: she supervised fieldwork in Americanist linguistics by more than 100 Ph.D. students.
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the study and teaching of Southeast Asian languages was considered by the Allies to be important to the war effort, so under the auspices of the
Army Specialized Training ProgramThe Army Specialized Training Program was a military training program instituted by the United States Army during World War II at a number of American universities to meet wartime demands for junior officers and soldiers with technical skills...
at the University of California at Berkeley, Haas developed a program to teach the
Thai languageThai is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Kradai language family. The Kradai languages are thought to have originated in what is now southern China, and are linked to...
. Her authoritative
Thai-English Students' Dictionary, published in 1964, is still in use.
She served as President of the
Linguistic Society of AmericaThe Linguistic Society of America is a professional society for linguists. It was founded in 1924 to advance linguistics, the scientific study of human language. The LSA has over 5,000 individual members and welcomes linguists of all kinds. It works to advance the discipline and to communicate...
in 1963.
She died on May 17, 1996 in
Alameda County, CaliforniaAlameda County is a county in the U.S. state of California. It occupies most of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2000 census it had a population of 1,443,741, making it the 7th largest county in the state, and by 2006 it was estimated 1,457,426...
, aged 86.
External links