Aert Hendrik Kuipers (10 November 1919,

Oostkapelle Oostkapelle is a village in the Dutch province of Zeeland. It is a part of the municipality of Veere, and lies about 9 km north of Middelburg. Oostkapelle was a separate municipality until 1966, when it was merged with Domburg. History The ...

Middelburg Middelburg may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Europe * Middelburg, Zeeland, the capital city of the province of Zeeland, southwestern Netherlands ** Roman Catholic Diocese of Middelburg, a former Catholic diocese with its see in the Zeeland ...

– 1 December 2012) was a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

linguistics professor who, from his pioneering fieldwork among

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

people of

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

during the 1950s, compiled the first detailed reference grammars of Squamish and Shuswap, two almost extinct

Salishan languages The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by ag ...

. He also advised Jan van Eijk in his work on

Lillooet Lillooet () is a district municipality in the Squamish-Lillooet region of southwestern British Columbia. The town is on the west shore of the Fraser River immediately north of the Seton River mouth. On BC Highway 99, the locality is by road abou ...

and Hank Nater in his work on

Nuxalk The Nuxalk people (Nuxalk: ''Nuxalkmc''; pronounced )'','' also referred to as the Bella Coola, Bellacoola or Bilchula, are an Indigenous First Nation of the Pacific Northwest Coast, centred in the area in and around Bella Coola, British Columb ...

and did import work on comparative Salishan. After obtaining his PhD at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1951 with the study ''A contribution to the analysis of the Qabardian language'', Kuipers was on the faculty of the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

from 1951 to 1954. During those years, as well as in the course of a 1956 field trip, he collected extensive material on the

Squamish language Squamish (; ', ''sníchim'' meaning "language") is a Coast Salish language spoken by the Squamish people of the Pacific Northwest. It is spoken in the area that is now called southwestern British Columbia, Canada, centred on their reserve commun ...

. From 1960 to 1983 Kuipers taught

linguistics 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 ...

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

; after 1971 he was a professor in the department of

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...

and culture, specializing in

Caucasian languages The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Linguistic comparison allows th ...

.Hoogleraren, Slavische talen en kulturen
(Professors, Slavic languages and culture), Leiden University, 23 May 2013. Accessed 30 July 2013. Kuipers has a strong commitment to helping to preserve a record of threatened and endangered languages. As a 1998 article in ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...

'' put it: "Aert Kuipers ... went to Canada recently with the intention of locating and preserving American Indian languages. He came across dozens, some limited to a single valley, others spoken by only a few dozen people. He settled on one, learnt it and put together a dictionary and a primer. But by the time he had finished there was only one other speaker of the language left."Dying languages: English kills
, 4 June 1998 in ''

''. Accessed 30 July 2013. Kuipers responded to this in a letter that his arrival in Canada (nearly half a century earlier) hardly was "recently" and that the Economist may have conflated Squamish and Shuswap with regard to the "one speaker left" statement.Re: Dying languages
, 25 June 1998 in ''The Economist''. Accessed 17 March 2016.

Works

As co-editor

* 1956: Bernard Geiger, Aert Kuipers, Tibor Halasi-Kun, and

Karl H. Menges Karl Heinrich Menges (April 22, 1908 – September 20, 1999) was a German linguist known for his advocacy of the Altaic hypothesis. He was a faculty member at Columbia University in New York and subsequently at the University of Vienna. Meng ...

(eds.). ''The Caucasus'' (2 volumes). Human Relations Area File. New York: Columbia University, Language and Communication Research Center. * 1959: Bernard Geiger, Aert H. Kuipers, Tibor Halasi-Kun, and Karl H. Menges (eds.).
Peoples and Languages of the Caucasus: A synopsis
'. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 78pp. Accessed 30 July 2013. (This is a 17.3 MB PDF file which provides a brief index to the various Caucasian languages treated in detail in the 1956 work.) * 1989: Aert H. Kuipers, Gabrielle Rainich (eds.). ''Russian-English Vocabulary with Grammatical Sketch''. American Mathematical Society, 66pp. (This book is intended to help non-Russian-speakers to understand Russian-language mathematical texts.)

As author

* 1960: ''Phoneme and Morpheme in Kabardian (Eastern Adyghe).'' The Hague: Mouton & Co., 124pp. * 1967: ''The Squamish Language: Grammar, Texts, Dictionary.'' The Hague: Mouton & Co., 407pp. (This work received a generally favourable review by Laurence C. Thompson in ''

American Anthropologist ''American Anthropologist'' is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), published quarterly by Wiley. The "New Series" began in 1899 under an editorial board that included Franz Boas, Daniel G. Brinton, and John W ...

'', 1, 1969pp. 138–139.) * 1974: ''The Shuswap Language: Grammar, Texts, Dictionary.'' The Hague: Mouton & Co., 297pp. * 1975: ''A classified English-Shuswap word-list.'' Peter de Ridder Press, 35pp. * 1975: ''A Dictionary of Proto-Circassian Roots''. John Benjamins Pub. Co., 93pp. * 1976: ''Typologically Salient Features of Some North-West Caucasian Languages''. Peter de Ridder Press, 29pp. * 1989: ''A Report on Shuswap with a Squamish Lexical Appendix.'' Peeters, 250pp. * 2002: ''Salish Etymological Dictionary.'' Missoula, Montana: Univ. Montana., Linguistics Laboratory, 240pp. update 1.6.5 2015

Sources

* ''De leden van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Een demografisch perspectief: 1808 tot 2008,'' Deel/Blz.: 304, annex I * ''Album Scholasticum academiae Lugduno-Batavae MCMLXXV-MCMLXXXIX'' (1975-1989).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuipers, Aert H. 1919 births 2012 deaths Anthropological linguists Linguists from the Netherlands Phoneticians Leiden University faculty University of British Columbia faculty Columbia University alumni Salishan languages Languages of the Caucasus Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences People from Veere Linguists of Salishan languages