Abraham "Abe" Meyer Halpern (February 20, 1914, Boston, Massachusetts – October 20, 1985, Santa Fe, New Mexico) was a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and anthropologist who specialized in

Native American Languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...

. In the wake of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

he initiated a second career focusing on

United States foreign policy The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America, including all the bureaus and offices in the United States Department of State, as mentioned in the ''Foreign Policy Agenda'' of the Department of State, are ...

, especially in regard to China. Late in life he resumed studying and publishing on the languages of California.

Early life and education

Halpern was born in Boston, where he attended Boston Latin School. He went on to receive his B.A. from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

, and to do graduate research at Harvard, the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

Work in linguistics

Quechan

At Berkeley Halpern studied under

Alfred L. Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...

. In 1935, in a project funded by the California State Emergency Relief Administration, he undertook to supervise the compilation of a dictionary of the

Quechan language Quechan or Kwtsaan (, Kwatsáan Iiyáa), also known as Yuma, is the native language of the Quechan people of southeastern California and southwestern Arizona in the Lower Colorado River Valley and Sonoran Desert. Despite its name, it is not rel ...

(also formerly known as Yuma) of southern California and

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

. (However, the dictionary was not completed as the funding organization was dismantled and replaced by the

Works Projects Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

.) At this point, on the suggestion of Kroeber, Halpern transferred to the University of Chicago to study under

Harry Hoijer Harry Hoijer (September 6, 1904 – March 11, 1976) was a linguist and anthropologist who worked on primarily Athabaskan languages and culture. He additionally documented the Tonkawa language, which is now extinct. Hoijer's few works make up the ...

. He would carry out extensive linguistic fieldwork on Quechan, resulting in his Ph.D. dissertation, the first published grammar of a

Yuman language Quechan or Kwtsaan (, Kwatsáan Iiyáa), also known as Yuma, is the native language of the Quechan people of southeastern California and southwestern Arizona in the Lower Colorado River Valley and Sonoran Desert. Despite its name, it is not rel ...

. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1947. ''Kar?úk: Native Accounts of the Quechan Mourning Ceremony'', a study of a traditional Quechan ceremony, was edited and published posthumously.

Pomoan

He first worked on the

Pomoan languages The Pomoan, or Pomo , languages are a small family of seven languages indigenous to northern California spoken by the Pomo people, whose ancestors lived in the valley of the Russian River and the Clear Lake basin. Four languages are extinct, an ...

of Northern California in 1936, and again in 1939 and 1940. Much later in life he returned to the study of the Pomoan languages: he made field recordings of three of the languages in the 1980s: Central, Southern, and

Southeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

languages. Among the speakers he worked with in the 1980s were

Pomo The Pomo are an Indigenous people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point. One small ...

basketweaver

Elsie Allen Elsie Comanche Allen (September 22, 1899 – December 31, 1990) was a Native American Pomo basket weaver from the Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California in Northern California, significant as for historically categorizing and teachi ...

Work in international relations

Halpern became involved in the teaching of the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

when he organized the teaching program in the Civil Affairs Training School in Chicago, together with his first wife Mary Fujii Halpern. This project became Halpern's entrée into the world of international relations, which became a second career. He went on to carry out work on international relations at several institutions, including the

Carnegie Institution The Carnegie Institution of Washington (the organization's legal name), known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. T ...

and the RAND Corporation, where he published extensively on China and

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

. Later he worked at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He assumed the position previously held by linguist Robert King Hall at the Civil Information and Education Section of

GHQ/SCAP was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the United States-led Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. It issued SCAP Directives (alias SCAPIN, SCAP Index Number) to the Japanese government, aiming to suppress its "mil ...

in Japan, where he promoted the adoption of the

phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

Kunrei-Shiki is the Cabinet-ordered romanization system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Its name is rendered ''Kunreisiki rômazi'' in the system itself. Kunrei-shiki is sometimes known as the Monbushō system in English bec ...

style of romanization of Japanese (''rōmaji''), and supervised studies on the feasibility of widening the use of romanization in Japan.

Archived work

Halpern's field recordings are archived at the Berkeley Language Center, and his documentary work is archived at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. His 1941 fieldnotes on the Potawatomi language are archived at the

National Anthropological Archives The National Anthropological Archives is a collection of historical and contemporary documents maintained by the Smithsonian Institution, which document the history of anthropology and the world's peoples and cultures. It is located in the Smi ...

in Suitland, Maryland.

Personal life

Halpern married twice. His first wife was Mary Fujii, daughter of Rutaro Fujii and Katsu Yokobori Fujii of Hayward, California; she died in 1967. They had two sons, Alexander and Paul. His second wife was anthropologist Katherine Spencer Halpern; they married in 1968. Halpern died in 1985, aged 71 years, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Halpern, Abraham M. 1914 births 1985 deaths Linguists from the United States Boston Latin School alumni Harvard College alumni People from Boston University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Chicago alumni Linguists of Pomoan languages Linguists of Quechan 20th-century American anthropologists 20th-century linguists