PENZL, Herbert. Neufelden 2.9.1910 — Oakland 1.9.1995. Austrian Linguist in the U.S.A., naturalised 1944. Professor in Berkeley. After gymnasium in Ottakring studied English philology at Vienna. With a scholarship went to the U.S.A. and was in 1932-34 Editorial Assistant in the Linguistic Atlas of the U.S.A. and Canada at Brown University. Ph.D. 1936 Vienna. In 1936-38 Assistant Professor of German at Rockford College, Illinois. In 1938-39 Associate and 1939-49 Assistant Professor at University of Illinois. During war served 1943-45 in U.S. Army. In 1950-53 Associate and 1953-63 full Professor at University of Michigan. From 1963 Professor of German Philology at University of California in Berkeley. Retired in 19??. In 1958-59 Visiting Professor at Kabul, 1980 at Vienna and 1981 at Regensburg. Hon. Ph.D. 1986 Vienna. Married in 1950 with Vera Penzl.
After the war HP met Afghan students and in 1948-49 carried out linguistic fieldwork on Pashto in Kandahar area. From a start as European philologist he had turned into a structuralist, without forgetting historical and literary aspect.
Publications: A Grammar of Pashto. A descriptive study of the dialect of Kandahar, Afghanistan. 1955; A Reader of Pashto. 2nd ed. 1965; articles on Pashto in ZDMG 1952 and JAOS 1951, 1954, 1961.
– much on German and English linguistics (altogether he published about 250 research articles).
Sources: Dir. of Am. Sch. 8th ed. 3; obituary on Berkeley Univ. Web page; Wikipedia.
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