Bernard Sterling Comrie, (; born 23 May 1947) is a British-born linguist. Comrie is a specialist in

linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

, linguistic universals and on Caucasian languages.

Early life and education

Comrie was born in

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

on 23 May 1947. He earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics from the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, where he also taught Russian and Linguistics until he moved to the Linguistics Department of the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

Academic career

For 17 years he was professor at and director of the former Department of Linguistics at the

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (german: Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, shortened to MPI EVA) is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, that was founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Plan ...

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, combined with a post as

Distinguished Professor Distinguished Professor is an academic title given to some top tenured professors in a university, school, or department. Some distinguished professors may have endowed chairs. In the United States Often specific to one institution, titles such ...

of Linguistics at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

, where he returned full-time from 1 June 2015. He has also taught at the

and the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the Californ ...

Personal life

He married linguistics professor Akiko Kumahira in 1985.

Honours

Comrie was elected a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # ...

(FBA), the United Kingdom's

national academy A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, most frequently in the sciences but also the hu ...

for the humanities and social sciences. He became a foreign member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

in 2000. In September 2017, he was awarded the

Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics The British Academy presents 18 awards and medals to recognise achievement in the humanities and social sciences. Overview The British Academy currently awards 18 prizes and medals: General awards: * British Academy Medal (for academic research ...

by the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars s ...

Selected works

Books

* ''The World's Major Languages'' (ed.), 1987, New York: Oxford University Press, . Second edition: 2009, Routledge . * ''Tense'', 1985, Cambridge University Press. . * ''The Languages of the Soviet Union'', 1981, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Language Surveys), (hard covers) and (paperback) * ''Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology'', 1981, The University of Chicago Press. * ''Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems'', 1976, Cambridge University Press.

Articles

* Comrie, Bernard. 1975. Causatives and universal grammar. Transactions of the Philological Society 1974. 1–32. * Comrie, Bernard. 1976. The syntax of causative constructions: Cross-language similarities and divergences. In Shibatani, Masayoshi (ed.), ''Syntax and Semantics 6: The Grammar of Causative Constructions'', 261–312. New York: Academic Press. * Comrie, Bernard. 1978
Ergativity
In Lehmann, Winfred P. (ed.), ''Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language'', 329–394. Austin: University of Texas Press. * Comrie, Bernard. 1986. Markedness, grammar, people, and the world. In Eckman, Fred R. & Moravcsik, Edith A. & Wirth, Jessica R. (eds.), ''Markedness'', 85–106. New York: Plenum. * Comrie, Bernard. 1999
Reference-tracking: Description and explanation
''Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung'' 52(3–4). 335–346. * Comrie, Bernard. 2005. Alignment of case marking. In Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), ''The world atlas of language structures'', 398–405. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ((http://wals.info/chapter/98)) * Keenan, Edward L. & Comrie, Bernard. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. ''Linguistic Inquiry'' 8. 63–99.

References

External links

Homepage at the Max Planck Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Comrie, Bernard 1947 births Living people Linguists from the United Kingdom University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Alumni of the University of Cambridge People from Sunderland Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Paleolinguists Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Recipients of the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy Linguists of Papuan languages Linguists of Piawi languages Linguists of Caucasian languages 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Max Planck Institute directors Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America