Charles Albert Ferguson (July 6, 1921 – September 2, 1998) was an American linguist who taught at
Stanford University. He was one of the founders of
sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural Norm (sociology), norms, expectations, and context (language use), context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on languag ...
and is best known for his work on
diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia () is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled ...
. The
TOEFL
Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL ) is a standardized test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers wishing to enroll in English-speaking universities. The test is accepted by more than 11,000 universities a ...
test was created under his leadership at the
Center for Applied Linguistics
The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1959 and headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to promote language learning and cultural understanding. Its president and chief executive officer ...
in
Washington, DC
)
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, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...
. Ferguson was also the leader of a team of linguists in
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
under the
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
's Survey of Language Use and Language Teaching. One of the many publications that came out of this was his article proposing the
Ethiopian Language Area
The Ethiopian language area is a hypothesized linguistic area that was first proposed by Charles A. Ferguson (1970, 1976), who posited a number of phonological and morphosyntactic features that were found widely across Ethiopia and Eritrea, incl ...
(Ferguson 1976), an article that has become widely cited and an important milestone in the study of
contact linguistics.
Ferguson is also widely noted for his seminal article on diglossia, published in 1959 and (reprinted since then in other publications) and frequently cited by others, listed by
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...
as having been cited over 6,000 times.
Ferguson was also a major figure in the study of
child phonology and led the Stanford Child Phonology Project from 1967 until 1990.
He was honored with a two-volume collection of papers in a 1986
festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
, edited by
Joshua A. Fishman
Joshua Fishman (Yiddish: שיקל פֿישמאַן — Shikl Fishman; July 18, 1926 – March 1, 2015) was an American linguist who specialized in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity.
...
and others.
In 1952 he served on the Advisory Committee on Arabic and Persian Names, a committee established by the
United States Board on Geographic Names.
Life and education
Charles Albert Ferguson was born in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
, Pennsylvania in 1921. He had an early curiosity for language, system, and order which led him to explore foreign languages through Oriental Studies at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
(BA 1942, MA 1943 with a thesis on the Moroccan Arabic Verb; PhD 1945 with a dissertation on Standard Colloquial Bengali).
"Memorial resolution: Charles A. Ferguson (1921-1998)"
Stanford University news, Stanford Report, May 19, 1999
References
Further reading
* Ferguson, Charles A. 1959. Diglossia. ''Word'' 15: 325-340.
*Ferguson, Charles. 1976. The Ethiopian Language Area. ''Language In Ethiopia'', ed. by M. Lionel Bender
Marvin Lionel Bender (August 18, 1934 – February 19, 2008) was an American linguist.
Life
Bender was born August 18, 1934, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He travelled throughout the world, particularly in Northeast Africa, and was an accompli ...
, J. Donald Bowen, R.L. Cooper, Charles A. Ferguson, pp. 63–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Fishman, Joshua. 2000. "Obituary: Charles A. Ferguson, 1921-1998: An Appreciation," ''Journal of Sociolinguistics'' 4/1: 121-128.
* Fishman, Joshua, et al., eds. 1986. ''The Fergusonian impact: in honor of Charles A. Ferguson on the occasion of his 65th birthday''. (Contributions to the sociology of language, 42.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
* Huebner, Thom. 1999
"Obituary Charles Albert Ferguson"
''Language in Society'' 28: 431-437.
1921 births
1998 deaths
Stanford University Department of Linguistics faculty
Sociolinguists
Ethiopianists
Linguistic Society of America presidents
American expatriates in Ethiopia
Linguists from the United States
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