Theodora Bynon (born 1936) is a British linguist and Emeritus Professor of Historical Linguistics at

SOAS University of London SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury a ...

. She was a student of the German linguist

Hans Krahe Hans Krahe (7 February 1898 – 25 June 1965) was a German philologist and linguist, specializing over many decades in the Illyrian languages. He was born in Gelsenkirchen. Work Between 1936 and 1946 he was a professor at the University of W ...

and studied the

ergative case In grammar, the ergative case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that identifies the noun as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages. Characteristics In such languages, the ergative case is typically marked (most ...

in languages such as Kurdish. She is known for her works on

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

and wrote what is considered a seminal text in 1977.

Books

*''Historical Linguistics'', Cambridge University Press, 1977 *James and Theodora Bynon (eds.), ''Hamito-Semitica'', London 1975 *Masayoshi Shibatani & Theodora Bynon, ''Approaches to language typology'', Clarendon Press, 1995.

References

1936 births Living people Linguists of English Academics of SOAS University of London Linguists from the United Kingdom {{UK-linguist-stub