Floyd Lounsbury

Floyd Glenn Lounsbury (April 25, 1914 – May 14, 1998) was an American linguist, anthropologist and Mayanist scholar and epigrapher, best known for his work on linguistic and cultural systems of a variety of North and South American languages. Equally important were his contributions to understanding the hieroglyphs, culture and history of the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

Early life and education Lounsbury was born in Stevens Point, Wisconsin to John Glenn Lounsbury and Anna Louise Jorgensen. He was one of three children, along with a brother, Gordon, and a sister, Elva.

He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1941, majoring in mathematics. During his undergraduate studies, Morris Swadesh was on the faculty, lecturing on American Indian linguistics. Lounsbury audited his courses, and when Swadesh received grants from the Works Progress Administration for a study of Oneida language and folklore, he appointed Lounsbury as his assistant. When Swadesh left Wisconsin for Mexico City, Lounsbury took over as the director of the project. He created an orthography for the language, and taught it to students who gathered a variety of texts from Oneida language speakers. After the project, Lounsbury began work in 1940 on the phonology of the language for his master's degree at the university. ), and his dissertation formed the basis of a 1953 publication (Oneida Verb Morphology) that established a framework and terminology followed ever since in the analysis of Iroquoian languages. Upon his retirement, he was appointed Sterling Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, a post he held until his death at age 84.

Contributions He traced the historical relationship between various Iroquoian languages, and as part of his work for the New York Vermont Interstate Commission on the Lake Champlain Basin, wrote an authoritative study of Iroquois place names in the Champlain Valley (Lounsbury 1960). He initiated the application of linguistic methods to the formal analysis of kinship terminology and social organization. He also recorded the Oneida creation myth in 1971 in Ontario, which was to result in a book, published posthumously (in 2000) by his student Bryan Gick, that included the creation myth and references to versions translated earlier, and linguistic analysis of various aspects of Iroquoian stories.

Personal life Lounsbury married fellow linguist Masako Yokoyama in 1952. The novelist and film-maker Ruth Ozeki is their daughter. Elected to National Academy of Sciences, 1969 Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1976 Appointed the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Anthropology by the Yale University, 1979 Delivered the Distinguished Lecture at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 1990

Notable students Source:

Marianne Mithun Wallace Chafe William C. Sturtevant Hanni Woodbury Harold Conklin Peter Mathews Bryan Gick Stephen Houston