Henry R. Kahane (2 November 1902 in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

– 11 September 1992 in

Urbana, Illinois Urbana ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Champaign County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 census, Urbana had a population of 38,336. As of the 2010 United States Census, Urbana is the List of municipalities in Illinois, 38th-most pop ...

) was a Romance philologist and linguist. His father was the

literary figure,

Arthur Kahane Arthur is a common male given name of Brythonic origin. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. The etymology is disputed. It may derive from the Celtic ''Artos'' meaning “Bear”. Another theory, more ...

, a close collaborator of

Max Reinhardt Max Reinhardt (; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born Theatre director, theatre and film director, theater manager, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his innovative stage productions, he i ...

. In 1931 he married Renée Toole, who he met when they were both PhD students in Berlin. She became his lifelong intellectual partner.

Career

Kahane studied Romance

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

in Germany under Ernst Gamillscheg (18801962) and

Gerhard Rohlfs Gerhard Rohlfs (July 14, 1892 – September 12, 1986) was a German linguist. He taught Romance languages and literature at the universities of Tübingen and Munich. He was described as an "archeologist of words". Biography Rohlfs was born in B ...

(18921986), receiving his PhD in 1930 under the supervision of Gamillscheg at the

Humboldt University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

. After obtaining their PhDs, Henry and Renée Kahane moved to

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

and spent several years collecting a large corpus of Venetian loanwords used in Greek dialects. Henry Kahane also served as a teacher and later principal of a school for the children of German refugees in Florence. Following Henry's brief imprisonment in Florence by

Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...

as part of a general round up of immigrant Jews, the Kahanes moved to

Cephalonia Kefalonia or Cephalonia ( el, Κεφαλονιά), formerly also known as Kefallinia or Kephallenia (), is the largest of the Ionian Islands in western Greece and the 6th largest island in Greece after Crete, Euboea, Lesbos, Rhodes and Chios. It i ...

, Greece, Renée Kahane's birthplace. They managed to emigrate to the US in 1939. From 1939 to 1941 Henry Kahane worked as a research assistant in comparative literature at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, Los Angeles. In 1941 he took up a position at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

in the department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. In 1965 he founded the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois and became the department's first head, a position he held until his retirement in 1971. A ''

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 ...

'' in honor of Henry R. and Renée Kahane was published by the

University of Illinois Press The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois system. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, plus 33 scholarly journals, and several electronic project ...

in 1973. Henry and Renée Kahane are estimated to have had a scholarly output of at least a dozen books and well over one hundred and fifty other publications dealing with various aspects of literary history and linguistics, such as

etymology Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...

, Romance and Mediterranean

lexicography Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoretica ...

stylistics Stylistics, a branch of applied linguistics, is the study and interpretation of texts of all types and/or spoken language in regard to their linguistic and tonal style, where style is the particular variety of language used by different individu ...

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

, and

dialectology Dialectology (from Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logia'') is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their assoc ...

. Beginning in the 1960s their particular focus became the investigation and recovery of the Hellenic heritage to the West, including a sociolinguistic study of the relations between

Byzantium Byzantium () or Byzantion ( grc, Βυζάντιον) was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name ''Byzantion'' and its Latinization ''Byzantium'' cont ...

and the West told through the reciprocal borrowings of words.

Honors

Henry Kahane was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1955 and in 1962 and served as

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 1984. Henry and Renee Kahane were awarded Bicentennial Gold Medals by the Georgetown University Linguistics Department in 1989 in recognition of their lifelong contributions to the field of Romance linguistics.

Selected works

*Kahane, Henry R.; Kahane, Renée. ''Animalia Pyrricha''. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck et Ruprecht, 1960. *Kahane, Henry R.; Kahane, Renée. ''Magic and Gnosticism in the "Chanson de Roland"''. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1959. *Kahane, Henry R.; Kahane, Renée. ''Mediterranean Words''. 1952. *Kahane, Henry R.; Kahane, Renée. ''The System of the Verb in the Western Languages''. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1957. *Sánchez Ruipérez, Martin.; Kahane, Henry R. (review). ''Estructura del sistema de aspectos y tiempos del verbo griego antiguo: análisis funcional sincrónico''. Salamanca: Colegio Trilingüe de la Universidad, 1954. *Kahane, Henry R. ''Principles of Comparative Syntax''. Louvain: International Agency for Dialectology General, 1954. *Kahane, Henry R.; Beym, Richard. ''Syntactical juncture in colloquial Mexican Spanish''.

Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

, Volume 24, Number 4, pp. 388396. United States: Linguistic Society of America, 1948. *Kahane, Henry R.; Kahane, Renée. ''The Augmentative Feminine in the Romance Languages''. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1949. *Kahane, Henry R.; Kahane, Renée. ''The Mediterranean Term Surgere "to Anchor"''. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1951. *Kahane, Henry R.; Kahane, Renée. ''The Position of the Actor Expression in Colloquial Mexican Spanish''. 1950. *Kahane, Henry R. ''The Verbal Categories of Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese''. United States: University of Illinois, 1953. *Kahane, Henry R.; Saporta, Sol. ''The Verbal Categories of Judeo-Spanish, Parts 12''.

Hispanic Review Published in Philadelphia, the ''Hispanic Review'' is the oldest peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to research in Hispanic, Catalan and Luso-Brazilian literature and culture published in North America. The journal has published continuou ...

. United States: University of Pennsylvania, 1953.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kahane, Henry R. 1902 births 1992 deaths American Hispanists Linguists from Germany Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States Linguists from the United States University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Romance philologists Comparative literature academics Linguistic Society of America presidents 20th-century linguists

Career

Honors

Selected works

Further reading

References