Greenberg, Joseph Harold

Joseph Harold Greenberg, 1915–, American anthropologist and linguist, b. New York City, grad. Columbia (A.B., 1936) and Northwestern Univ. (Ph.D., 1940). He was a professor of anthropology at Columbia (1948–62), afterward joining (1962) the faculty of Stanford Univ. His first major area of research was the classification of African languages, which he divided into four families: Niger-Kordofanian, Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan. He later became interested in language universals. Among his writings are The Languages of Africa (1963), Anthropological Linguistics (1968), Language, Culture, and Communication (1971), and Universals of Human Language (1978).

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Greenberg, Joseph Harold. Encyclopedia title: The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. © 2012 The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. Used with the permission of Columbia University Press. All Rights Reserved. Publisher: The Columbia University Press. Place of publication: Not available. Publication year: 2013.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.