GEDNEY, William John. Orchards, Wash. 4.4.1915 — Ann Arbor 14.11.1999. U.S. Linguist, interested in Sanskrit, Pāli and especially Thai. Professor in Ann Arbor. Son of John Marshall Gedney (d. 1918) and Lillian Viola Woster. Educated at Whitman College (A.B. 1935). Then high school teacher in Leavenworth, Wash., during summers studied linguistics. From 1942 in Army Language Unit in New York, now learned Thai and began doctoral studies at Yale. Ph.D. in Indic and Far Eastern Languages 1947 at Yale (Edgerton). Then some years in Thailand. In 1955 research associate in South East Asia program at Cornell University. In 1959-60 Professor of linguistics at University of Ceylon. From 1960 Professor of Linguistics at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, retired 1981. Married 1952 in Bangkok “Choy” Phatharapak Manacheep (d. 1981), four children. Gedney was an important pioneer of comparative Thai linguistics.
Publications: Diss. Indic loanwords in spoken Thai. Manuscript 1947.
– Mainly wrote on Thai, much was published by his student Th. J. Hudak.
Sources: Dir. Am. Sch. 8th ed. 3. 1982; Th.J. Hudak, Journal of Asian Studies 59, 2000, 223; faculty-history.dc.umich.edu/faculty/william-j-gedney/memoir; ancestors.familysearch.org; Wikipedia with photo.
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