SWADESH, Morris. Holyoke, MA 22.1.1909 — México City 20.7.1967. U.S. Linguist. Son of Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. Studies of Linguistics (L. Bloomfield) and Anthropology (E. Sapir) at University of Chicago (B.A., M.A.), then followed his teacher Sapir to Yale (Ph.D. there 1933). In 1937-39 Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin in Madison. Early fieldwork on Amerindian, in 1939-41 in Mexico, then in war service (some time in North-East India). In 1946-48 Guggenheim Fellow, then Professor at City College of New York, but was fired in 1949 as a Communist. With his openly leftist opinions he had difficulties in the time of McCarthyism. After 1954 spent the rest of his life teaching in Mexico (National Autonomous University, 1956-67) and as visiting Professor Canada (University of Alberta, 1966-67). Died of heart attack. Married 1931 Mary Haas (1910–1996, a linguist, divorce 1937), then Frances Leon (divorce) and 1956 Evangelina Arana.
In his studies Swadesh mainly concentrated on American indigenous languages. He was a noted pioneer of glottochronology and lexicostatistics. During the war in India he studied Naga languages.
Publications: Much on American languages of the U.S.A., Canada (diss. on Nootka) and Mexico, on English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, etc., and on general linguistics (often in Spanish).
– Basic Vocabulary of Glottochronology. Denver 1951; The Origin and Diversification of Language. Chicago 1971 (on monogenesis).
– “Archeological and linguistic chronology of Indo-European groups”, Am. Anthropologist 55, 1953, 349-352; “Linguistics as an Instrument of Prehistory”, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15, 1959, 20-35; “The problem of consonantal doublets in Indo-European”, Word 26, 1970, 1-16.
Sources: *D.H. Hymes, Word 26, 1970, 119-138; St. Newman, Language 43, 1967, 948-951 & bibliography, 951-957; Wikipedia with photo.
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