Guy Somner Lowman Jr. (

Columbia, Missouri Columbia is a city in Missouri, United States. It was founded in 1821 as the county seat of Boone County, Missouri, Boone County and had a population of 126,254 as recorded in the 2020 United States census, making it the List of cities in Misso ...

, 1909–1941) was an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

who received a bachelor's degree from the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

in 1929 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

in 1931. From 1931 to 1933 he was a Sterling Fellow at

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

University. He worked as a chief field investigator for the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada from 1931 to 1941, interviewing more than a thousand informants along the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada. He also conducted field interviews in Southern England to find correspondences in English and American dialects. He was a member of the

Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "str ...

and served as chairman of the

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

section. After his death in 1941, the University of Wisconsin–Madison established the Guy S. Lowman Scholarship to further research in linguistics.

Literature

* Kurath, Hans, with Miles L. Hanley, Bernard Bloch, Guy S. Lowman Jr. and Marcus L. Hansen. 1939–1941. ''Linguistic Atlas of New England.'' 2 volumes, Providence, RI: Brown University. Reprint edition, 3 volumes, New York: AMS Press, 1972. * Kurath, Hans and Guy S. Lowman Jr. 1961. ''The Dialectal Structure of Southern England: Phonological Evidence.'' University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.(= Publications of the American Dialect Society 54) * Viereck, Wolfgang. 1975. ''Lexikalische und grammatische Ergebnisse des Lowman-Survey von Mittel- und Südengland.'' 2 volumes. München: Wilhelm Fink.

Sources

* Voices from the Days of Slavery - Interviewer Biographies (American Memory from the Library of Congress

1909 births 1941 deaths University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Alumni of the University of London Linguists from the United States {{US-linguist-stub