Joseph H. Greenberg (original) (raw)

Joseph H. Greenberg (May 28, 1915-May 7, 2001) was a prominent linguist, considered a master of the art and science of genetic language classification; also made important contributions to linguistic typology.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York.

His most important contribution to his field was the development of a new classification system for African Languages, which he finally published in 1963. While the languages of Eurasia and the Pacific Ocean islands have proven largely susceptible to classification, a major embarrassment to historical linguistics was the inability to do the same for the Americas, Australia, and Africa. Greenberg's cracking of the latter is rightly considered a major step forward (after some initial criticism).

He later worked on the classification of South American languages and of the languages of New Guinea, and more recently made a controversial attempt to marry several major language families in the manner of the old Nostratic language hypothesis. He also conducted research on universally used grammar principles (s. Greenberg Universals).