Fred Lukoff ( ko, 프레드 루코프) (November 12, 1920 – August 13, 2000) 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 ...
who specialized in the study of the
Korean language
Korean ( South Korean: , ''hangugeo''; North Korean: , ''chosŏnmal'') is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographic ...
and was the first president of the
International Association for Korean Language Education (IAKLE).
A student of
Zellig Harris
Zellig Sabbettai Harris (; October 23, 1909 – May 22, 1992) was an influential American linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science. Originally a Semiticist, he is best known for his work in structural linguistics and dis ...
, with whom he wrote "The phonemes of
Kingwana-
Swahili" in 1942, Lukoff received his bachelor's degree from 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 ...
in 1947, his master's from the same institution in 1948, and his doctorate, also from Penn, in 1954. After receiving his Ph.D., he joined the
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
Research Laboratory of Electronics the same year as
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
to work on
machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...
under
Victor Yngve, where, in 1956, he wrote a seminal paper on generative
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
, "On accent and juncture in English," with
Chomsky and
Morris Halle
Morris Halle (; July 23, 1923 – April 2, 2018) was a Latvian-born Jewish American linguist who was an Institute Professor, and later professor emeritus, of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The father of "modern phonolo ...
.
He taught at
Yonsei University
Yonsei University (; ) is a private research university in Seoul, South Korea. As a member of the " SKY" universities, Yonsei University is deemed one of the three most prestigious institutions in the country. It is particularly respected in th ...
in
Seoul
Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...
for the next seven years, and spent the rest of his career at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...
in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
until his retirement in 1989.
[LINGUIST List 11.1779: Obituary: Fred Lukoff, 1920-2000](_blank)
/ref>
Lukoff wrote several textbooks for non-native speakers learning Korean, including ''An Introductory Course in Korean'', ''Spoken Korean'', and ''A First Reader in Korean Writing in Mixed Script''.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lukoff, Fred
Linguists from the United States
1920 births
2000 deaths
Scientists from Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania alumni
Korean language
University of Washington faculty
Koreanists
20th-century linguists