BRIGHT, William Oliver (Bill). Oxnard, Calif. 13.8.1928 — Louisville, Color. 15.10.2006. U.S. Linguist and Indologist. Professor in Los Angeles. Son of a butcher. Graduated 1945 from Oxnard High School, where he showed an early interest in languages. Studies of medicine, soon of Spanish and linguistics at University of California in Berkeley (1949 A.B., the first in Linguistics at Berkeley, 1955 Ph.D.). In 1952-54 military service in Germany. In 1955-57 Junior Scholar at the Deccan College, studied Kannaḍa in Mysore. In 1957-58 Linguist for Hindi and Urdu in the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C., 1958 briefly Assistant Professor at Berkeley, 1959-66 Assistant Professor of Speech at the University of California in Los Angeles. From 1966 Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology there, retired in 1988. Now moved to Boulder, where he taught as Professor adjoint at University of Colorado until his death. Twice widowed, twice divorced: First 1952 Elizabeth Halloran Bright (a feminist author, divorce 1961, one daughter), second Jane Orstan Bright (died soon in traffic accident), third 1964 Marcia Kinnamon (died of cancer 1971), fourth 1975 Debra Levy (divorce). Died
of brain tumor before his fifth wife (Lise Menn, née Waldman, 1941–, married 1986, also a linguist, Professor), one daughter from the first marriage.
Bright was a scholar of Dravidian, of Amerindian languages and toponymy, and of general linguistics. His first speciality was Nahuatl. In the early 1950s he studied the almost extinct Karuk language of California. In India he studied Kannaḍa, Tulu and Tamil. As Emeneau’s student he also knew Sanskrit.
Publications: Articles and books on American Indian languages and linguistics (diss. on Californian Karuk language).
– An Outline of Colloquial Kannada. 7+75 p. Deccan Coll. Monogr. Series 22. Poona 1958.
– With Sh. Rau and M. Narvekar: Spoken Kannada. Lessons 1-12. Berkeley 1960.
– “Dravidian Metaphony”, Language 42, 1966, 311-322; “The Dravidian rnuncitive vowel”, H. Schiffman & C. E. Eastman (eds.), Dravidian Phonological Systems. Seattle 1975, 11-46; “The Dravidian Scripts”, S. Steever, The Dravidian Languages. L. 1998, 40-71.
– “Hindi numerals”, Studies in Ling. in honor of G. L. Trager. the Hague 1972, 222-230.
– Variation and change in language. 14+169 p. Stanford 1976.
– With S. A. Khan: The Urdu Writing System. 2nd ed. 48 p. N.Y. 1976.
– Language Variation in South Asia. 169 p. N.Y. 1990.
– Edited International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. 1-4. N.Y. 1992.
Sources: Dir. Am. Sch. 8th edition, vol. 3, 1982; Jane Hill, Language83, 2007, 628-641; T. Johnson, obituary in UCLA homepage *J.P. Hill, P.J. Mistry & L. Campbell (eds.), The Life of Language. Papers in Linguistics in honor of W.B. B. 1998; Wikipedia.