Sarah Thomason

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For the Swedish alpine skier, see Sarah Thomasson.
Sarah Grey Thomason
Thomason in July 2012
Born1939 (age 84–85)
Evanston, Illinois, U.S.
ParentMarion Griswold Grey (mother)
AwardsWilbur Cross Medal
Academic background
Alma mater
Linguist
Institutions
Websitewww-personal.umich.edu/~thomason/

Sarah Grey Thomason (known as "Sally") is an American scholar of

Native American languages and typological universals. She also has an interest in debunking linguistic pseudoscience, and has collaborated with publications such as the Skeptical Inquirer, The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal and American Speech, in regard to claims of xenoglossy.[2]

Career

Early career

Sarah Thomason received a

Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation program. She would later turn down this fellowship. Thomason decided to dedicate herself to linguistics and, after spending a year in Germany mastering the language, she was re-awarded the Fellowship and was admitted into Yale University, where she completed both an M.A. in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1968 in linguistics.[2][3] She taught Slavic Linguistics at Yale from 1968 to 1971, before moving to the University of Pittsburgh in 1972.[2] She was named the William J. Gedney Collegiate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan in 1999, and received the highest honor granted by the University of Michigan to its faculty by being named the Bernard Bloch Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics in 2016. She was also Chair of the Department of Linguistics from 2010 to 2013.[4]

Thomason had a great interest on learning how to do fieldwork about

Western European languages had been already thoroughly studied and the literature was vast. She traveled to the former Yugoslavia and started preparing her project on Serbo-Croatian, with the intention of focusing her career on Slavic studies. Thomason would spend a year in this region writing her dissertation project on noun suffixation in Serbo-Croatian dialectology. Thomason would not, however, continue focusing on either Slavic or on Indo-European languages.[3] Instead, Thomason's career's focus shifted in 1974, when she encountered literature about pidgins and creoles. She realized that language contact was crucial for an understanding of language change. Since then, Thomason has dedicated the vast majority of her work to language contact phenomena.[3]

Current Work

Sarah Thomason is also known for her contributions to the study of

Montana Salish, or Salish-Pend d'Oreille language, talking with its last fluent speakers with the objective of documenting the language, as well as creating a dictionary for the Salish and Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee language program,[2][3] compiling a dictionary and materials for the Salish-Pend d'Oreille language program.[5][2]

Sarah Thomason believes language change could be a product of deliberate action driven by its speakers, who may consciously create dramatic changes in their language, if strong motivation is present.[3] This view challenges the current assumption in historical linguistics that, on one hand, deliberate language change can only produce minor changes to a language, and, on the other, that an individual on his or her own is not able to produce language change. While she admits that the permanence of the change is dependent on social and linguistic probability, she emphasizes these factors do not invalidate the possibility of permanent change occurring. Thomason argues that under a situation of language contact bilingual speakers can adapt loanwords to their language structure, and that speakers are also capable of rejecting changes to the structure of their language. Both of these cases show conscious and deliberate actions from the part of the speakers to change their language.[6]

Sarah Thomason has also criticized alleged cases of

cognates, and guesses, amongst other resources.[8]

She is one of the Language Log bloggers.[9]

Honors

Thomason is a prolific contributor to academic journals and publications specializing in the field of linguistics, as well as a guest lecturer at different universities around the world and a speaker at international conferences.[7]

From 1988 to 1994 she was the editor of

President of the LSA.[11] In 2000 she was President of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas.[2] She was also Chair of the Linguistics and Language Sciences section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1996, and Secretary of the section from 2001 to 2005.[2]

She is currently an associate editor for the Journal of Historical Linguistics,[12] as well as part of the advisory board of the Journal of Language Contact.[13]

Personal

She is married to philosopher/computer scientist Richmond Thomason and is the mother of linguist Lucy Thomason. Her mother was the ichthyologist Marion Griswold Grey.

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ "Sarah Thomason | U-M LSA Linguistics". lsa.umich.edu. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h "Sarah Thomason's Brief CV" (PDF). Retrieved 3 October 2014.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan". The Linguist List. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
  4. ^ University of Michigan faculty directory
  5. ISSN 2333-9683
    .
  6. ^ "Language Contact and Deliberate Change" (PDF). Retrieved 12 October 2014.
  7. ^ a b "Curriculum Vitae of Sarah G. Thomason" (PDF). Retrieved 13 October 2014.
  8. ^ "Xenoglossy" (PDF). Retrieved 12 October 2014.
  9. ^ "About". Language Log. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
  10. ^ "LSA Fellows By Name | Linguistic Society of America". www.linguisticsociety.org. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  11. ^ "Presidents | Linguistic Society of America". www.linguisticsociety.org. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  12. ^ "Journal of Historical Linguistics". John Benjamins Publishing Company. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
  13. ^ "Journal of Language Contact". Brill. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
  14. ISBN 0-87840-854-1
  15. ISBN 9780521865739

External links
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