Raimo Aulis Anttila (1935–2023)Michael Shapiro
Raimo Aulis Anttila (1935–2023)
Language Lore by Michael Shapiro. was a Finnish linguist and professor of

Indo-European Linguistics Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...

at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

Biography

Raimo Aulis Anttila was born in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

in 1935. He was Professor of Comparative Linguistics at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

from 1971 to 1976. He was appointed Professor of

at the

(UCLA) in 1976. Anttila is also an authority on

Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ...

. Along with

Marija Gimbutas Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis ...

and

Edgar C. Polomé Edgar Ghislain Charles Polomé (July 31, 1920March 11, 2000) was a Belgian-born American philologist and religious studies scholar. He specialized in Germanic and Indo-European studies and was active at the University of Texas at Austin for mu ...

and Roger Pearson, Anttila was a co-founder of the ''

Journal of Indo-European Studies The ''Journal of Indo-European Studies'' (JIES) is a peer-reviewed academic journal of Indo-European studies. The journal publishes papers in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, mythology and linguistics relating to the cultural history of ...

'', and was a member of its Editorial Committee in the 1970s. Anttila was elected a Corresponding Member of the

Finnish Academy of Science and Letters The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (Finnish ''Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia''; Latin ''Academia Scientiarum Fennica'') is a Finnish learned society. It was founded in 1908 and is thus the second oldest academy in Finland. The oldest is the Fi ...

in 1995. Anttila retired from UCLA as Professor Emeritus.

Selected works

* ''Field theory of meaning and semantic change'', 1992 * ''Change and metatheory at the beginning of the 1990s: the primacy of history'', 1993 * ''Pattern explanation and etymology: collateral evidence and Estonian kolle ‘hearth’, and related words'', 1995

Sources

* 1935 births 2023 deaths Finnish editors Finnish writers Linguists from Finland Indo-Europeanists Academic staff of the University of Helsinki University of California, Los Angeles faculty {{Finland-linguist-stub