George "Sjors" van Driem (born 1957) is a Dutch linguist associated with the

University of Bern The University of Bern (german: Universität Bern, french: Université de Berne, la, Universitas Bernensis) is a university in the Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It is a compreh ...

, where he is the chair of Historical Linguistics and directs the Linguistics Institute.

Education

* Leiden University, 1983–1987 (PhD, ''A Grammar of

Limbu Limbu may refer to: * Limbu people, an indigenous tribe living in Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan ** Rambahadur Limbu (born 1939), Nepalese Gurkha recipient of the Victoria Cross * Limbu language * Limbu script ** Limbu (Unicode block) Limbu is a Unicod ...

'') * Leiden University, 1981–1983 (MA Slavic, BA English, MA General Linguistics) * Leiden University, 1979–1981 (BA Slavic) *

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with College admission ...

at Charlottesville, 1975–1979 (BA Biology) * Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 1978–1979 * Watling Island Marine Biological Station on

San Salvador Island San Salvador Island (known as Watling's Island from the 1680s until 1925) is an island and district of The Bahamas. It is widely believed that during Christopher Columbus's first expedition to the New World, this island was the first land he s ...

in the Bahamas, 1977 * Duke University at Durham, North Carolina, 1976

Research

George van Driem has conducted field research in the Himalayas since 1983. He was commissioned by the Royal Government of

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountai ...

to codify a grammar of Dzongkha, the national language, design a phonological romanisation for the language known as Roman Dzongkha, and complete a survey of the language communities of the kingdom. He and native Dzongkha speaker Karma Tshering co-authored the authoritative textbook on Dzongkha. Van Driem wrote grammars of

and

Dumi Dumi (also Duni) is a village in the Chaurpati Rural Municipality of Achham District in the Sudurpashchim Province of western Nepal. At the time of the 1991 Nepal census, the village had a population of 1517 living in 332 houses. At the time of th ...

, Kiranti languages spoken in eastern Nepal, and the Bumthang language of central Bhutan. He authored ''Languages of the Himalayas,'' a two-volume ethnolinguistic handbook of the greater Himalayan region. Under a programme named ''Languages and Genes of the Greater Himalayan Region'', conducted in collaboration with the Government of Nepal and the Royal Government of Bhutan, he collected DNA from many indigenous peoples of the Himalayas. In Bern, George van Driem currently runs the research programme Strategische Zielsetzungen im Subkontinent (Strategic Objectives in the Subcontinent), which aims to analyse and describe endangered and poorly documented languages in South Asia. This programme of research is effectively a diversification of the

Himalayan Languages Project The Himalayan Languages Project, launched in 1993, is a research collective based at Leiden University and comprising much of the world's authoritative research on the lesser-known and endangered languages of the Himalayas, in Nepal, China, Bhuta ...

, which he directed at Leiden University, where he held the chair of Descriptive Linguistics until 2009. He and his research team have documented over a dozen endangered languages of the greater Himalayan region, producing analytical grammars and lexica and recording morphologically analysed native texts. His interdisciplinary research in collaboration with geneticists has led to advances in the reconstruction of Asian ethnolinguistic prehistory. Based on linguistic palaeontology, ethnolinguistic phylogeography, rice genetics and the Holocene distribution of faunal species, he identified the ancient Hmong-Mien and Austroasiatics as the first domesticators of Asian rice and published a theory on the homelands and prehistoric dispersal of the Hmong-Mien,

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...

and

Trans-Himalayan The Transhimalaya (also spelled Trans-Himalaya), or "Gangdise – Nyenchen Tanglha range" ( zh, s=冈底斯-念青唐古拉山脉, p=Gāngdǐsī-Niànqīngtánggǔlā Shānmài), is a mountain range in China, India and Nepal, extending in a we ...

linguistic phyla. His historical linguistic work on linguistic phylogeny has replaced the unsupported Sino-Tibetan hypothesis with the older, more agnostic Tibeto-Burman phylogenetic model, for which he proposed the neutral geographical name Trans-Himalayan in 2004. He developed the Darwinian theory of language known as

Symbiosism Symbiosism is a philosophy about the mind and man's place in nature. It is a Darwinian theory, which considers language an organism residing in the human brain and claims that language is a memetic life form. Symbiosism is defined by the Leiden ...

, and he is author of the philosophy of Symbiomism.

Selected publications

* * * * * * * * *

Awards and honours

* 1996 Rolex Awards for Enterprise for setting up the

* 1998 Elected Honorary Member of the

Kirat Yakthung Chumlung Kirat Yakthung Chumlung (Nepali: किरात याक्थुङ चुम्लुङ) (1989) is a social organization of the Limbu indigenous ethnic group of Nepal. See also * Kirat The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kira ...

Kathmandu , pushpin_map = Nepal Bagmati Province#Nepal#Asia , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = Provinces of Nepal, Province , subdivision_name1 ...

References

External links

George Van Driem's home page at Himalayan Languages ProjectPublication list
{{DEFAULTSORT:Driem, George van Linguists from the Netherlands Linguists of Himalayan languages Linguists of Southeast Asian languages Leiden University alumni Leiden University faculty Dzongkha language 1957 births Living people People from Northampton County, Virginia Paleolinguists Linguists of Sino-Tibetan languages University of Bern faculty 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists