Graham Thurgood () is a retired professor of

linguistics 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 ...

California State University, Chico California State University, Chico, or commonly, Chico State, is a public university in Chico, California. Founded in 1887, it is the second oldest campus in the California State University system. As of the fall 2020 semester, the university had ...

. Thurgood graduated with a Ph.D. in linguistics from

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 studied under

James Matisoff James Alan Matisoff ( zh, , t=馬蒂索夫, s=马蒂索夫, p=Mǎdìsuǒfū or zh, , t=馬提索夫, s=马提索夫, p=Mǎtísuǒfū; born July 14, 1937) is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a no ...

. Thurgood's areas of specialization include

tonogenesis Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

, historical

, language contact, and second

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...

. Thurgood has reconstructed

Chamic The Chamic languages, also known as Aceh–Chamic and Achinese–Chamic, are a group of ten languages spoken in Aceh (Sumatra, Indonesia) and in parts of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hainan, China. The Chamic languages are a subgroup of Malay ...

( Austronesian), the

Hlai languages The Hlai languages () are a primary branch of the Kra–Dai language family spoken in the mountains of central and south-central Hainan in China by the Hlai people, not to be confused with the colloquial name for the Leizhou branch of Min Chines ...

( Kra-Dai and Kam-Sui), and parts of

Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spea ...

(Sino-Tibetan). Thurgood's tone work includes the reconstruction of tone in Chamic, internal reconstruction of tone in

Jiamao Jiamao (, ''Jiamao''; also ''Tái'' or ''Sāi'') is a possible language isolate spoken in southern Hainan, China. Jiamao speakers' autonym is ''1''.See Proto-Tai_language#Tones for an explanation of the tone codes. Classification Jiamao was ...

, and a substantial article on tonogenesis in general.

Publications

* * Graham Thurgood. (1999).
From Ancient Cham to Modern Dialects: Two Thousand Years of Language Contact and Change: With an Appendix of Chamic Reconstructions and Loanwords
'. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications, No. 28, pp. i, iii-vii, ix-xiii, xv-xvii, 1-259, 261-275, 277-397, 399-407. * Graham Thurgood. (1992). The aberrancy of the Jiamao dialect of Hlai: speculation on its origins and history. ''Southeast Asian Linguistics Society'' I, Edited by Martha Ratliff and Eric Schiller. Tempe: Arizona State University Southeast Asian Studies Publication Program. pp. 417–433.

References

Linguists from the United States Historical linguists Linguists of Southeast Asian languages Year of birth missing (living people) Living people California State University, Chico faculty Linguists of Kra–Dai languages University of California, Berkeley alumni Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America {{US-linguist-stub