Catherine "Cathy" Callaghan (October 31, 1931 – March 16, 2019) was Professor Emerita in the Department of Linguistics at the
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
in Columbus, Ohio.
She received a Ph.D. in linguistics from 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 ...
in 1963. Her doctoral dissertation was a grammar of Lake Miwok, written under the supervision of
Mary Haas
Mary Rosamond Haas (January 23, 1910 – May 17, 1996) was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. She was elected ...
. She then started work on the Lake Miwok Dictionary, which was published in 1965. She was appointed Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the Ohio State University in 1965 and remained there until her retirement. She was named a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
in 1969.
Throughout her career Callaghan's research focused on the
Penutian languages
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian st ...
of California, especially connections between
Yokuts
The Yokuts (previously known as MariposasPowell, 1891:90–91.) are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. ''Yokuts ...
and
Miwok
The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, who traditionally spoke one of the Miwok languages in the Utian family. The word ' ...
. She appeared briefly in the documentary, ''How Dead do I Look?'', which was filmed in 2014. Her papers on Miwok Languages are collected at the California Language Archive.
In 1973, Callaghan co-founded
Feminists for Life, an
anti-abortion feminist
Anti-abortion feminism or pro-life feminism is the opposition to abortion by some feminists. Anti-abortion feminists may believe that the principles behind women's rights also call them to oppose abortion on right to life grounds and that abortio ...
non-profit.
Callaghan died on March 16, 2019 in Columbus, Ohio.
Key publications
* Callaghan, Catherine A. 1965. ''Lake Miwok Dictionary''. University of California Press.
* Callaghan, Catherine A. 1970. ''Bodega Miwok Dictionary''. Publications in Linguistics 60. University of California Press.
* Callaghan, Catherine A. 1984. ''Plains Miwok Dictionary''. Publications in Linguistics 105. University of California Press.
* Callaghan, Catherine A. 1987. ''Northern Sierra Miwok Dictionary''. Publications in Linguistics 110. University of California Press.
* Callaghan, Catherine A. 2012. ''Proto-Utian Grammar and Dictionary with notes on Yokuts''. Trends in Linguistics Documentation 31. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
References
External links
Catherine A. Callahan Papers on Miwok Languages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Callaghan, Catherine
1931 births
2019 deaths
Women linguists
Ohio State University faculty
UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni
Paleolinguists
Linguists of Penutian languages
Linguists of Yokutsan languages
Linguists of Utian languages
American anti-abortion activists
American feminists
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science