William Cornyn
{{Short description|Canadian-American linguist}}
{{Use American English|date=May 2022}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2022}}
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| name = William Cornyn
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| image = William Stewart Cornyn (1906–1971).jpg
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| caption = {{small|Cornyn and Maung Shwe Waing teaching Burmese to officers from OSS Detachment 101.}}
| birth_name =
| birth_date = 1906
| birth_place = Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
| death_date = {{Death date and given age|1971|3|15|64}}{{r|slavicreview}}
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| discipline = Linguist
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| education = {{ubl|University of California, Los Angeles {{small|(B.A.)}}|Yale University {{small|(A.M., Ph.D.)}}}}
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| main_interests = Russian, Burmese
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William Stewart Cornyn (1906–1971) was a Canadian-born American linguist and author, noted for his expertise in Burmese and Russian language studies, as well as for his research on Athabaskan and Burman etymology.
Life
Cornyn was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1922, he moved to Los Angeles where he first found work as a stock clerk, hall boy, and bookkeeper. He lived in San Francisco from 1924 to 1928, working as an insurance clerk, eventually returning to Los Angeles. He married twice: first to Sara Ellen Fetterman on 24 September 1928 (by whom he had son William Jr.), then to Catherine McKee on 29 January 1937 (by whom he had two sons and a daughter).
He graduated from University of California, Los Angeles (BA with highest honors, 1940), and did graduate work at Yale (AM 1942, PhD 1944),{{r|whoswho}} where he served as a professor of Slavic and South East Asian Linguistics and chair of both the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Russian Area Program.{{r|slavicreview}}
Cornyn's research focused on the description of and preparation of pedagogical materials for Burmese and Russian. William Cornyn became a member of the Linguistic Society of America in 1941 while working as an Assistant in Germanic Languages at UCLA.{{r|language}} In 1962, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Linguistics.{{r|jsgf}}
He died at the age of sixty-four.{{r|slavicreview}}
Publications
=On Russian=
- {{cite journal|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|date=1948|title=On the Classification of Russian Verbs|journal=Language|volume=24|issue=1|pages=64–75|doi=10.2307/410288 |jstor=410288}}
- {{cite book|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|title=Beginning Russian|date=1950|location=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press}}{{efn|A "temporary revised edition" was published in 1959, and a "revised edition" was published in 1961.}}
=On Burmese=
- {{cite journal|last1=Cornyn|first1=W. S.|last2=McDavid|first2=Raven I.|date=1943|title=Causatives in Burmese|journal=Studies in Linguistics|volume=1|issue=18|pages=1–6}}
- {{cite journal|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|date=1944|title=Outline of Burmese Grammar: Language Dissertation No. 38|journal=Language|type=supplement|volume=20|issue=4|doi=10.2307/522027 |jstor=i222648}}
- {{cite book|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|title=Spoken Burmese: Book One|date=1945|location=New York|publisher=American Council of Learned Societies}}
- {{cite book|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|title=Spoken Burmese: Book Two|date=1946|location=New York|publisher=American Council of Learned Societies}}
- {{cite journal|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|date=1950|title=Review: J. A. Stewart and C. W. Dunn, A Burmese-English Dictionary|journal=Journal of the American Oriental Society|volume=70|issue=2|pages=133–134|doi=10.2307/595555 |jstor=595555}}
- {{cite journal|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|date=1953|title=A Burmese Jātaka Commentary|journal=Language|volume=29|issue=3|pages=354–358|doi=10.2307/410031 |jstor=410031}}
- {{cite book|editor-last=Cornyn|editor-first=W. S.|title=Burmese Chrestomathy|date=1957|location=Washington, D.C.|publisher=American Council of Learned Societies}}
- {{cite book|last1=Cornyn|first1=W. S.|last2=Musgrave|first2=John K.|date=1958|title=Burmese Glossary|location=New York|publisher=American Council of Learned Societies}}
- {{cite book|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|date=1967|chapter=Burma|editor-last=Sebeok|editor-first=Thomas A.|editor-link=Thomas Sebeok|title=Current Trends in Linguistics: Volume 2: Linguistics in East Asia and South East Asia|location=The Hague|publisher=Mouton|pages=777–781}}
- {{cite book|contributor-last=Cornyn|contributor-first=W. S.|date=1968|contribution=Foreword|title=Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution, 1939–1946|url=http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs19/Ba_Maw-1968-Breakthrough_in_Burma-en-ocr.pdf|author=Ba Maw|author-link=Ba Maw|location=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=ix–x}}
- {{cite book|last1=Cornyn|first1=W. S.|last2=Roop|first2=D. Haigh|date=1968|title=Beginning Burmese|location=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press}}
- {{cite journal|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|date=1970|title=Aspect in the Burmese Verb Expression|journal=Actes du Congrès International des Linguistes|volume=10|issue=4|pages=303–304}}
=Other publications=
- {{cite journal|last=Cornyn|first=W. S.|date=1939|title=Hotel Slang|journal=American Speech|volume=14|issue=3|pages=239–240|doi=10.2307/451436 |jstor=451436}}
Notes
{{notelist}}
References
{{Wikisource author}}
{{reflist|refs=
{{refn|name="slavicreview"|{{cite journal|last=Schenker|first=Alexander M.|author-link=Alexander M. Schenker|date=1971|title=William Stewart Cornyn, 1906–1971|journal=Slavic Review|volume=30|issue=3|pages=718–719|jstor=2493612}}}}
{{refn|name="whoswho"|{{cite book|title=Who's Who in the East|date=1959|publisher=Larkin, Roosevelt & Larkin|edition=7th|page=196}}}}
{{refn|name="language"|{{cite journal|editor-last1=Bloch|editor-first1=Bernard|editor-link1=Bernard Bloch (linguist)|editor-last2=Kurath|editor-first2=Hans|editor-link2=Hans Kurath|editor-last3=Emeneau|editor-first3=M. B.|editor-link3=Murray Barnson Emeneau|editor-last4=Holmes|editor-first4=Urban T. Jr.|editor-link4=Urban T. Holmes Jr.|date=1941|title=Notes|journal=Language|volume=17|issue=3|pages=278–279|jstor=409216}}}}
{{refn|name="jsgf"|{{cite web|title=William Stewart Cornyn|url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/william-stewart-cornyn/|publisher=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161220121455/http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/william-stewart-cornyn/|archive-date=December 20, 2016|url-status=live}}}}
}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cornyn, William Stewart}}
Category:20th-century linguists
Category:American orientalists
Category:Burmese studies scholars
Category:Canadian emigrants to the United States
Category:Linguists from the United States
Category:Linguists of Southeast Asian languages
Category:Academics from Vancouver
Category:Russian studies scholars
Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni
Category:Yale University alumni
Category:Yale University faculty
Category:Writers from Vancouver
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