Uriel Weinreich
Uriel Weinreich (1926 – 1967) was a world famous linguist at Columbia University. Born in Vilnius (then part of Poland and now capital of Lithuania), he earned his Ph.D. from Columbia, he went on to teach there, specializing in Yiddish studies, sociolinguistics, dialectology, and advocated the increased acceptance of semantics. He edited one of the most influential Yiddish-English dictionaries. He was the son of Max Weinreich, also a notable linguist; and the mentor of both Marvin Herzog, with whom he laid the ground work for LCAAJ, and William Labov. He is also credited with being the first linguist to recognize the phenomenon of interlanguage 19 years before Larry Selinker coined the term in his 1972 article "Interlanguage." In his benchmark book Languages in Contact, Weinreich first noted that learners of second languages consider linguistic forms from their first language equal to forms in the target language; however, the essential inequality of these forms lead to speech which the native speakers of the target language consider inequal. He died of cancer prior to the publication of his Yiddish-English dictionary.
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Publications
- Uriel Weinreich: Modern english-yidish yidish-english verterbukh. Modern English-Yiddish English-Yiddish Dictionary (Schocken, new paperback edition 1987), ISBN 0-8052-0575-6.
- Uriel Weinreich: College Yiddish. An Introduction to the Yiddish Language and to Jewish Life and Culture (YIVO, 6th edition 1999), ISBN 0-914512-26-9.
- Uriel Weinreich: Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. 1964.
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Categories
1926 births | 1967 deaths | American linguists | Linguists of Yiddish | Polish linguists | Lithuanian linguists | Columbia University alumni | Columbia University faculty