GREENBERG, Joseph (Joe) Harold. Brooklyn, New York 28.5.1915 — Stanford, Calif. 7.5.2001. U.S. Linguist. Born in a Jewish family, father of Polish (original surname Zyto) and mother of German origin. After Hebrew elementary school studied Latin and German at James Madison High School. From 1932 college studies at Columbia (B.A. 1936), mainly Latin, Greek and Arabic, soon also Amerindian languages, Hausa and anthropology, in 1937-38 comparative Indo-European at Yale. Ph.D. 1940 Northwestern University. From 1940-45 in army, served in North Africa and Italy, after war back to Yale as postdoctoral fellow. In 1946-48 at University of Minnesota, then at Columbia Department of Anthropology, from 1962 at Stanford. His wide linguistic interests also included South American, Australian and Papua languages and Eskimo-Aleut. A pianist. Married 1943 Selma Berkowitz.
Publications: “The Indo-Pacific hypothesis”, Th. A. Sebeok (ed.), Current trends in linguistics. 8. The Hague 1971, 808-871.
– Much on African languages, on other groups and on general linguistics, some collected in Language, culture and communication. Ed. by A. S. Dil. Stanford 1971, and On Language: Selected writings of J.H.Gr. Ed. by Keith Denning and Suzanne Kemmer. Stanford 1990.
– Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. 1. Grammar. 2. Lexicon. 14+326, 12+216 p. Stanford 2000-02.
Sources: W. Croft, Language 77, 2001, 815-830 with bibliography; Wikipedia with photo and bibliography.
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