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 in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. The borough is eight miles (13 km) west of Harrisburg. It is part of the Harrisburg–Carlisle metropolitan statistical area. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 8,981. ...

. 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, is a geographic regional term used to refer to the countries of Africa situated in and around the Red Sea. The region is intermediate between North ...

, and was an accomplished

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

player. Dr. Bender died of complications from a

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

and

brain hemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...

on February 19, 2008 in Cape Girardeau,

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

Career

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

languages of Africa The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Southe ...

, particularly those spoken in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

and

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

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

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic s ...

and

Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. ...

languages spoken locally. Together with

J. Donald Bowen ''J. The Jewish News of Northern California'', formerly known as ''Jweekly'', is a weekly print newspaper in Northern California, with its online edition updated daily. It is owned and operated by San Francisco Jewish Community Publications In ...

, Robert L. Cooper, and Charles A. Ferguson, 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 US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

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

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

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

generative Generative may refer to: * Generative actor, a person who instigates social change * Generative art, art that has been created using an autonomous system that is frequently, but not necessarily, implemented using a computer * Generative music, mus ...

study of

Amharic Amharic ( or ; (Amharic: ), ', ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all oth ...

verbal morphology), ''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. Bender retired from

Southern Illinois University Carbondale Southern Illinois University (SIU or SIUC) is a public research university in Carbondale, Illinois. Founded in 1869, SIU is the oldest and flagship campus of the Southern Illinois University system. The university enrolls students from all 50 st ...

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. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. * 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 Thilo Christian Schadeberg (born 1942 in Dresden, Germany) is an Emeritus Professor of Bantu Linguistics at the Centre for Linguistics of Leiden University. Education and research Schadeberg obtained his PhD at the University of Marburg in 1 ...

, 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) ''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 Linguists from the United States Semiticists Ethiopianists American Africanists 2008 deaths 1934 births People from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania Paleolinguists Linguists of Nilo-Saharan languages Linguists of Afroasiatic languages 20th-century linguists