Emmon Bach Professor Emeritus |
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Born | June 12, 1929 Kumamoto, Japan |
Died |
November 28, 2014 (aged 85) Oxford, England |
Cause of death | pneumonia |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | American linguist |
Spouse(s) | Jean Bach Wynn Chao |
Children | Meta Elizabeth Bach (d. 1984) Carl Eric Bach |
Website | people |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Chicago |
Thesis title | Patterns of Syntax in Hoelderlin’s Poems |
Thesis year | 1959 |
Academic work | |
Doctoral students | Ellen Broselow George Horn Deborah Nanni Mark Stein Jean Lowenstamm Deirdre Wheeler Charles Jones Wynn Chao Carolyn Quintero Joyce McDonough Gert Webelhuth Jim Blevins |
Emmon Bach (June 12, 1929 – November 28, 2014) was an American linguist. He was Professor Emeritus at the Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), part of the University of London. He was born in Kumamoto, Japan.
His interests included syntax, phonology, the languages of British Columbia (especially Haisla), problems of tense and aspect in semantics, and formal problems and semantic issues in the morphology of polysynthetic languages. In November 2014, he died in Oxford.
Bach's parents, Ditlev Gotthard Monrad Bach and Ellen Sigrid Bach - originally from Copenhagen, Denmark - were Lutheran missionaries in Japan. Bach – and all but the oldest of his five siblings – was born in Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu. Since his father taught Japanese to the American Navy language officers during the World War II, they were considered to be American nationals, and received warnings to leave Japan in 1941. As a child Bach spoke Danish and some Japanese. When he was ten, Bach was sent to the International Canadian Academy in Kobe. In Fresno, California his father was a "pastor to Japanese-Americans interned during the war." Bach attended Boulder High School in Boulder, Colorado and Roosevelt High School in Fresno, CA.