Charles Frederick "Carl" Voegelin (January 14, 1906 – May 22, 1986), often cited as C. F. Voegelin, was an American

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. He was one of the leading authorities on

Indigenous languages of North America 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 ...

, specifically the Algonquian and Uto-Aztecan languages. He published many influential works on

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

, Hopi and the

Tübatulabal language Tübatulabal is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language, traditionally spoken in Kern County, California, United States. It is the traditional language of the Tübatulabal, who have now shifted to English. The language originally had three main dialect ...

Early life and education

Voegelin was born in New York City on January 14, 1906, and christened Charles Frederick Voegelin, but he became known as Carl. He entered Stanford University and earned a BA in Psychology, after which he traveled to New Zealand to study Maori music. Then he decided to study anthropology at

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 ...

where he was trained by

Alfred 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 ...

Robert Lowie Robert Harry Lowie (born '; June 12, 1883 – September 21, 1957) was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described as ...

and

Melville Jacobs Melville Jacobs (July 3, 1902 – July 31, 1971) was an American anthropologist known for his extensive fieldwork on cultures of the Pacific Northwest. He was born in New York City. After studying with Franz Boas he became a member of the faculty ...

, writing his dissertation as a grammar of Tübatulabal. At first he had great difficulties hearing the

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

distinctions of the language, but in 1931 he went to the field with Danish linguist

Hans Jørgen Uldall Hans Jørgen Uldall (; 25 May 1907 Silkeborg, Denmark29 October 1957 Ibadan, Nigeria) was a Danish linguist known for developing the linguistic theory of glossematics with Louis Hjelmslev. Early life Having studied English with Danish linguist ...

who taught him to recognize all the phonetic contrasts. His proficiency in Indigenous languages became so good that he was able to correspond with

Leonard Bloomfield Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalis ...

Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...

, letters later published in the journal '' Anthropological Linguistics''.

Career

Vogelin went on to do postdoctoral work in linguistics at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

with

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sap ...

, and then he taught at

DePauw University DePauw University is a private liberal arts university in Greencastle, Indiana. It has an enrollment of 1,972 students. The school has a Methodist heritage and was originally known as Indiana Asbury University. DePauw is a member of both the ...

, before joining

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship campus of Indiana University and, with over 40,000 students, its largest ca ...

in 1941 as that university's first professor of anthropology. During his tenure at Indiana he managed the United States' largest Army Specialized Training Program in foreign languages. In 1944, he persuaded Indiana University to host the ''

International Journal of American Linguistics The ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' (''IJAL'') is an academic journal devoted to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas. ''IJAL'' focuses on the investigation of linguistic data and the presentation of grammatical ...

'' (''IJAL''), which had stopped being published in 1939, shortly before the death of its first editor Franz Boas. Voegelin served as editor of ''IJAL'' for many years. Among his graduate students at Indiana were Ken Hale and Dell Hymes. Later he held an appointment at the

University of Hawaiʻi The University of Hawaiʻi System, formally the University of Hawaiʻi and popularly known as UH, is a public college and university system that confers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees through three universities, seven com ...

, before returning to Indiana as an emeritus professor.

Personal life

Voegelin was first married to ethnologist

Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin (April 2, 1903 – July 10, 1988) was an award-winning anthropologist, folklorist, and ethnohistorian. Her research and directorship of the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Research Project at Indiana University has been used ...

, with whom he conducted fieldwork. Later he married linguist Florence M. Voegelin, an accomplished linguist in her own right. Together they co-authored numerous publications. He died on May 22, 1986.

Honors

In 1947 Voegelin was

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the a ...

at Indiana University Bloomington's Department of Anthropology. He became a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 1951. He was

president of the Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for linguistics founded in December 1924. At the first meeting, the LSA membership elected Hermann Collitz as their first president. Since then, there have been presidencies, with dif ...

in 1954. In 1975, several of Voegelin's colleagues and former students collaborated on the

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 ...

''Linguistics and Anthropology: In Honor of C. F. Voegelin''. In 1983 he was awarded an

Honorary Doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

(Doctor of Humane Letters) by the University of Indiana at Bloomington, as well as a Distinguished Service Award of the American Anthropological Association. Voegelin's collected papers are held by the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

. M. Dale Kinkade. 1989 Charles Frederick Voegelin (1906-1986) American Anthropologist , New Series, Volume 91, Number 3 (September 1989), pages 727-729

Selected publications

* * * *''Map of North American Indian Languages''. American Ethnological Society. 1941. With Florence M. Voegelin. *''Shawnee Phonemes''. Language 11: pages 23-37. 1935. *, in: *''Shawnee Stems and the Jacob P. Dunn Miami Dictionary''. Indiana Historical Society Prehistory Research Series 1: pages 63-108, 135-167, 289-323, 345-406, 409-478, 1938–1940. *Hopi domains: A lexical approach to the problem of selection. Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics: Memoir 14. With Florence M. Voegelin. 1957. *1959. Guide to transcribing unwritten languages in field work. Anthropological Linguistics 1: pages 1-28. With Florence M. Voegelin. 1962. *Typological and Comparative Grammar of Uto-Aztecan; I, Phonology. '' IJAL'' Memoir no. 17. With Florence M. Voegelin and Ken Hale. 1962. *Typological and comparative grammar of Uto-Aztecan. ''IJAL'' 28(1):210-213. With Florence M. Voegelin. * *Passive transformations form non-transitive bases in Hopi. ''IJAL'' 33: pages 276-281. With Florence M. Voegelin. 1967. *Classification and index of the world's languages. (Foundations of Linguistics series). New York: Elsevier. With Florence M. Voegelin. 1977.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Voegelin, Charles Frederick 1906 births 1986 deaths 20th-century linguists Linguists from the United States Linguists of Siouan languages Linguists of Iroquoian languages Linguists of Uto-Aztecan languages Linguists of Algic languages Linguistic Society of America presidents Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences