Warren Cowgill
American linguist (1929–1985) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Warren Crawford Cowgill (/ˈkoʊɡɪl/ KOH-gill;[1] December 19, 1929 – June 20, 1985) was an American linguist. He was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica's authority on Indo-European linguistics.[2] Two separate Indo-European sound laws are named after him, both called Cowgill's law in Greek and Germanic respectively.
Warren Cowgill | |
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Born | (1929-12-19)December 19, 1929 Grangeville, Idaho, U.S. |
Died | June 20, 1985(1985-06-20) (aged 55) |
Cause of death | cancer |
Spouse | Sheila Blau Levitsky (1966-1970) Kathryn Louise Markhus (1970-1985) |
Children | 1 (b 1967) |
Parent(s) | George Dewey Cowgill, Ruby Eugenia Smith Cowgill |
Relatives | George Cowgill (twin brother) |
Academic background | |
Education | |
Thesis | The Indo-European Long-Vowel Preterits (1957) |
Doctoral advisor | Paul Tedesco and Konstantin Reichardt |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Yale University |
Main interests | Indo-European languages |
Cowgill was unusual among Indo-European linguists of his time in believing that Indo-European should be classified as a branch of Indo-Hittite, with Hittite as a sister language of the Indo-European languages, rather than a daughter language.
Warren Cowgill and his twin brother, anthropologist George Cowgill, were born near Grangeville, Idaho. Along with his brother, he graduated from Stanford University in 1952 and received a Ph.D. from Yale in 1957. He was a member of the Yale faculty in the Department of Linguistics until his death in 1985.[3][4]