John Asher Dunn

John Asher Dunn (June 19, 1939 – July 4, 2017[1]) was an American linguist who created the first academic dictionary and grammar of the Tsimshian language, an American Indian language of northwestern British Columbia and southeast Alaska.

In 1968, Dunn and his wife Luceen began fieldwork on the Tsimshian language in Kitkatla, British Columbia and Prince Rupert, B.C., under the supervision of the linguist Bruce J. Rigsby. He did follow-up fieldwork in Prince Rupert in 1971, in Metlakatla, Alaska, in 1972, and in Hartley Bay, B.C., in 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1978. This work involved designing the first modern, practical orthography for the language.

He published his dictionary and grammar of the Tsimshian language (now known as Sm'algyax) in 1978 and 1979 respectively. They were reissued in a single volume in 1995 by the Sealaska Heritage Foundation.

In the early 1990s he participated with Susan Marsden, Marie-Lucie Tarpent, Vonnie Hutchingson, and several Tsimshian language instructors in devising an updated Sm'algyax orthography in conjunction with producing the Teachings of Our Grandfathers book series for School District no. 52 of Prince Rupert, British Columbia.

He was a retired professor of linguistics at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma.

He was also the lone proponent of the theory that the Tsimshianic languages (Sm'algyax and the Gitksan and Nisga'a languages) are a branch of the Indo-European stock.

Bibliography
  • Dunn, John Asher (1995) Sm'algyax: A Reference Dictionary and Grammar for the Coast Tsimshian Language. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
gollark: > but they dont hold u to a moral obligationI have no idea what you mean, but in a post-apocalyptic situation you'll quite probably just die horribly.
gollark: No, you'll immediately get warlords or something who will impose rules and it would be very bad.
gollark: > They would disown their kid if the kid took a vaccineI'm not sure what you would expect to do about this. I feel like forcing them to be vaccinated wouldn't really help matters.> Plus there is the indoctrination that the parents doWell, you would try and inform children about this, as you would for basically anything else.
gollark: Hence "allowed to choose themselves".
gollark: I don't really agree with mandatory vaccines. Children should be informed better and allowed to choose themselves.

References
  1. Haag, Marcia (July 25, 2017). "In Memoriam – John Asher Dunn". The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas.
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