Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946, Thornbury[1]) is a British-born[2]linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht.
As a young teenager, Michael Fortescue and his family moved to California where he went to La Jolla High School 1956-1959.[1][3] He finished school at Abingdon School in 1963.[4] In 1966, he received a B.A. with "Honours with great Distinction" in Slavic languages and literatures from University of California, Berkeley, where he then taught Russian 1968-1970 and finished an M.A. in Slavic languages and literatures. In the years 1971-1975 he taught English for the International Language Centre in Osaka and the University of Aix/Marseille.[3] He took a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh 1975-1978[5] with the thesis Procedural discourse generation model for 'Twenty Questions'.[6] With a Danish scholarship, he visited University of Copenhagen and did fieldwork in Greenland in 1978-79, and this research became supported from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities in the period 1979-1982. In 1984, he became associate professor in eskimology at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1989 docent.[3] He became professor in linguistics in 1999, and retired in 2011.[2]
On the occasion of his retirement in 2011, a special issue in the journal Grønland was published in 2012 as a festschrift. After retiring, he moved to England,[1] where he was elected an associate of St Hugh's College.[7] An edited book was published as a festschrift in his honour in 2017.[8] In 2019, he was elected to Academia Europaea.[7]
His Comparative Eskimo Dictionary, co-authored with Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan,[9] is the standard work in its area, as is his Comparative Chukotko-Kamchatkan Dictionary.[10] In his book Pattern and Process,[11] Fortescue explores the possibilities of a linguistic theory based on the philosophical theories of Alfred North Whitehead.[12][13][bettersourceneeded]
A more complete listing is available in the Festschrift in his honor.[8]
1984. Some Problems Concerning the Correlation and Reconstruction of Eskimo and Aleut Mood Markers. Institut for Eskimologi, Københavns Universitet.
1990. From the Writings of the Greenlanders: Kalaallit Atuakklaannit. University of Alaska Press.
1991. Inuktun: An Introduction to the Language of Qaanaaq, Thule. Institut for eskimologis skriftrække, Københavns Universitet.
1992. Editor. Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. John Benjamins Publishing Co.
1994. With Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan. Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates. Alaska Native Language Center.
1998. Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence. London and New York: Cassell.
2001. Pattern and Process: A Whiteheadian Perspective on Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Co.
2002. The Domain of Language. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
2005. Comparative Chukotko-Kamchatkan Dictionary. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
2007. Comparative Wakashan Dictionary. Munich: LINCOM Europa.
2016. Comparative Nivkh Dictionary. Munich: LINCOM Europa.
1 2 3 Grove, Arnaq (2012). "Introduktion til festskrift i anledning af Michael Fortescues fratrædelse fra Københavns Universitet". Grønland. 60 (2): 80–83.
1 2 3 Riegels, Naja (30 January 2009). "Michael Fortescue". Den Store Danske (in Danish). Lex.dk. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
1 2 Kaplan, Lawrence D.; Berge, Anna, eds. (2017). "Publications on Indigenous Languages by Michael D. Fortescue". Studies in Inuit Linguistics. In Honor of Michael Fortescue. Fairbanks, Alaska: Alaska Native Language Center. pp.185–190. ISBN978-1-55500-125-4.
Bobaljik, Jonathan David (1998). "Review of Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates". Book Reviews. Anthropological Linguistics. 40 (3): 514–518. JSTOR30028655.
Dorais, Louis-Jacques (2011). "Review of Comparative Eskimo Dictionary With Aleut Cognates, Second Edition". Book Reviews. Études/Inuit/Studies. 35 (1–2): 294. doi:10.7202/1012850ar.
Vajda, Edward J. (2003). "Review of Pattern and Process: A Whiteheadian Perspective on Linguistics". Book Notices. Language. 79 (3): 653. doi:10.1353/lan.2003.0194.
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