[Tlc] TLC-obituary

[justinm at ucr.edu]

16 May 2007
FYI, our good friend and colleague in southeast Asian studies,
Jørgen Rischel, died last week on May 10th (1934-2007). We had
seen him many times over the past 20-plus years as he came
through Asia attending conferences, researching the Mlabri in
Thailand, and helping many of us with our linguistic work. We
offer our heartfelt condolences to his family and colleagues
in Denmark.

Brian Migliazza
Asia Area Linguistics
-------------------------------------------

Deceased--
Jørgen Rischel
1934-2007

Jørgen Rischel (August 10, 1934 - May 10, 2007), professor of
linguistics in Copenhagen, Denmark passed away last week on
Friday May 10th, 2007. Jørgen  was a Danish linguist who
worked extensively in a variety of linguistic areas --
especially phonetics and phonology, lexicography and
documentation of endangered languages. He is best known
internationally for his descriptive work on Greenlandic, his
grammar of Minor Mlabri of Thailand and his analyses of Danish
phonology and morphology. He also contributed a considerable
body of work on historical linguistics, the history of
linguistics, linguistic fieldwork, phonology and links between
linguistics and culture.

    * He held a doctorate in linguistics.
    * He was a professor of linguistics at the University of
Copenhagen and later became professor Emeritus.
    * He was a specialist in the Greenlandic language of which
he has published the most comprehensive phonological study
(1974) to date.
    * He published extensively on topics in Danish, Faroese
and Greenlandic -- particularly in phonetics and phonology.
    * Recently he focused on Mon-Khmer languages and did
extensive fieldwork in Thailand on an endangered and
previously undescribed dialect of the Khmuic language Mlabri.
    * In 1991 he was knighted into the Order of the Dannebrog
by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.
    * He was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of the Sciences.
    * And he also served as a co-editor of the linguistic
journal International Journal of American Linguistics.


In retirement, he became professor emeritus in general
linguistics and phonetics, University of Copenhagen, and was
then also a guest researcher at Mahidol University. Since 1982
he had been doing fieldwork in Thailand and Laos. Jørgen‘s
major southeast Asia publication was on Minor Mlabri printed
in 1995 by Museum Tusculanum Press -- entitled "Minor Mlabri.
A Hunter-Gatherer Language of Northern Indochina". This
monograph describes the language spoken by a small tribe of
hunter-gatherers in Northern Indochina - the Mlabri. It
contains a description of the linguistic scenario, a
presentation of Mlabri phonology, morphology and syntax, and a
lexicon with illustrative examples.

Selected publications --

    * 1974. Topics in West Greenlandic Phonology. Copenhagen:
Akademisk Forlag.
    * 1972. Consonant Reduction in Faroese Noncompound
Wordforms. In Firchow, E. S., Grimstad, K. Hasselmo, N. & W.
A. O’Neil (eds.), Studies for Einar Haugen presented by
Friends and Colleagues. 482-497.
    * 1995. Minor Mlabri. A Hunter-Gatherer Language of
Northern Indochina. Museum Tusculanum Press. ISBN 87-7289-294-3.
    * 2000. The Dialect of Bernatzik’s (1938) “Yumbri”
refound?. Mon-Khmer Studies Journal 30:115-122.
    * 2004. Pan-dialectal databases: Mlabri, an oral Mon-Khmer
language. Lexicography Conference, Payap University, Chiangmai.

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu