Marvin Lionel Bender (August 18, 1934 – February 19, 2008) was an American linguist.

Life

Bender was born August 18, 1934, in

Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania Mechanicsburg is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The borough is west of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Harrisburg. It is part of the Harrisburg–Carlisle metropolitan statistical area. As of the ...

. He travelled throughout the world, particularly in

Northeast Africa Northeast Africa, or Northeastern Africa, or Northern East Africa as it was known in the past, encompasses the countries of Africa situated in and around the Red Sea. The region is intermediate between North Africa and East Africa, and encompasses ...

, and was an accomplished

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

player. Dr. Bender died of complications from a

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

and

brain hemorrhage The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for ...

on February 19, 2008, in

Cape Girardeau Cape Girardeau ( , ; colloquially referred to as "Cape") is a city in Cape Girardeau and Scott Counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. At the 2020 census, the population was 39,540, making it the 17th-largest in the state. The city is one o ...

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

Career

Bender wrote and co-wrote several books, publications and essays on the

languages of Africa The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

, particularly those spoken in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

and

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

, and was a major contributor to Ethiopian Studies. He did extensive work on the

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of th ...

and

Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributari ...

languages spoken locally. Together with J. Donald Bowen, Robert L. Cooper, and

Charles A. Ferguson 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 and is best known for his work on diglossia. The TOEFL test was created under ...

, Bender carried out the Survey of Language Use and Language Teaching in East Africa, funded by 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 $25,000 (about $550,000 in 2023) gift from Edsel Ford. ...

in 1968-1970. He later conducted other research sponsored by the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

. Among other works, his books include ''Amharic Verb Morphology'' (his PhD dissertation - a generative study of

Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...

verbal morphology A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic fo ...

), ''Language in Ethiopia'' (co-edited with C. Ferguson, C. Bowen, R. Cooper), ''Nilo-Saharan Language Studies'', ''The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia'', ''Preliminary Gaam-English-Gaam Dictionary'', ''Omotic Verb Morphology'', and the ''Berta Lexicon''. For many years, he was closely involved with NACAL, the annual

North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL) is a yearly academic conference addressing the Afroasiatic languages, which was initiated by Robert Hetzron. The conference has been held since 1973. Prominent participants have included ...

. Bender retired from

Southern Illinois University Carbondale Southern Illinois University (SIU) is a public research university in Carbondale, Illinois, United States. Chartered in 1869, SIU is the oldest and flagship campus of the Southern Illinois University system. SIU enrolls students from all 50 sta ...

Works

* 1968: ''Amharic Verb Morphology: A Generative Approach''.

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2 ...

. * 1975: ''Omotic: a new Afroasiatic language family''. (University Museum Series, 3.) Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University. * 1976: (et al.) ''Language in Ethiopia''. London: Oxford University Press. * 1976: (ed.) ''The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia''. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. * 1980: (with: Malik Agaar Ayre) ''Preliminary Gaam-English-Gaam Dictionary''. Carbondale, IL: Dept. of Linguistics, Southern Illinois University. * 1981: (ed.) ''Peoples and Cultures of the Ethio-Sudan Borderlands''. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. * 1981: (with: Thilo C. Schadeberg, eds.) ''Nilo-Saharan''. Dordrecht, Holland & Cinnaminson, NJ: Foris. * 1983: (ed.) ''Nilo-Saharan Language Studies''. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. * 2000: ''Comparative Morphology of the Omotic Languages.'' Munich: LINCOM. * 2003: ''Omotic Lexicon and Phonology.'' Self publication. * 2005: ''The East Sudanic Languages: Lexicon and Phonology''. Carbondale, IL: SIU Printing (self-published). * 2020: (ed. by

Grover Hudson Grover M. Hudson (June 8, 1940 – June 13, 2022) was an American linguist and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages at Michigan State University. He was known for his works on the Amharic language ...

) ''Cushitic Lexicon and Phonology''. (Schriften zur Afrikanistik / Research in African Studies 28.) Berlin: Peter Lang.

Notes

Obituary by Grover Hudson
at the LINGUIST List web resource. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bender, Lionel Semiticists Ethiopianists American Africanists 2008 deaths 1934 births People from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania Historical linguists Linguists of Nilo-Saharan languages Linguists of Afroasiatic languages 20th-century American linguists