Robert Allen Fowkes (April 7, 1913 – November 18, 1998) was anAmerican linguist, specializing in Indo-European historical linguistics and philology. Robert Fowkes was born in

Harrison, New York Harrison is a town in Westchester County, New York, United States, northeast of Manhattan. The population was 28,218 at the 2020 census. History Harrison was established in 1696 by a patent granted by the British government to John Harrison a ...

. He received his B.A. in 1934 from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

(NYU), with majors in German and Latin, and his M.A. from NYU a year later. He held a fellowship at the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...

(1936–37). He received his Ph.D. in 1947 from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. Fowkes began teaching at NYU in 1938 as an instructor in German. He later became head of the German Department (1957–1968). He retired from NYU in 1978, but continued as

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

, lecturing on

Avestan Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...

Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

, Hittite, and other languages, until the 1990s. He also held a

Guggenheim Fellowship 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 ar ...

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

. During World War II he supervised technical research in German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese. Later, at NYU he taught

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

, Gothic,

Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It i ...

, Frisian,

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

, Scandinavian,

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

as well as German. He was visiting professor of

Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...

at Columbia University in 1947. His major book was Gothic Etymological Studies (1949). His articles appeared in the Journals

WORD A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...

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 ...

, Germanic Review, Armenian Digest, and foreign Linguistics journals. Fowkes was president of the

Linguistic Circle of New York The International Linguistic Association (ILA) was founded in 1943 as the Linguistic Circle of New York. Its founding members were academic linguists in the New York area, including many members of the École Libre des Hautes Études in exile. The m ...

, where he was one of the first members, along with

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,Morris Swadesh Morris Swadesh (; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and mas ...

. The Circle later became the International Linguistic Association (ILA). He was a member of the advisory board of American Speech. He wrote "Welsh Naming Practices, with a Comparative Look at the Cornish" in the journal Names, in 1981. At the time of his death (he was struck by a car while crossing a street in Yonkers, New York) he was working on a 30-year-long project to compile the first etymological dictionary of Welsh. Robert Fowkes was given 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 ...

(April 1980). On October 14, 1978, ILA organized a colloquium in his honor. On April 25, 1999, NYU held a celebration in his memory.

Main publications

* Gothic etymological studies. New York, 1949. New York University. Ottendorfer series of Germanic Monographs.Graz Language Server
University of Graz, Austria. * The German lied and its poetry. (with Elaine Brody). New York, New York University Press, 1971. * Celtic linguistics. 1976. International Linguistic Association. London * Germanic Etymologies. 1945. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XLVI.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fowkes, Robert 1913 births 1998 deaths People from Harrison, New York Academics from New York (state) New York University alumni Linguists from the United States Road incident deaths in New York (state) 20th-century linguists