Roy Andrew Miller

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Roy Andrew Miller (born September 5, 1924) is a linguist notable for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the Altaic group of languages.

Miller was born in Winona, Minnesota, USA, on September 5th, 1924. In 1953, he completed a PhD in Chinese and Japanese at Columbia University in New York. Long a student of languages, his early work in the 1950s was largely with Chinese and Tibetan. For example, in 1969 he wrote the Encyclopædia Britannica entry on the Tibeto-Burman Languages of South Asia.

He was Professor of Linguistics at the International Christian University in Tokyo from 1955 to 1963. Subsequently he taught at Yale University; between 1964 and 1970, he was chairman of the department of East and South Asian Languages and Literatures. From 1970 until 1989 he held a similar post at the University of Washington in Seattle. Since then, he has taught in Europe, mainly in Germany and Scandinavia.

Prof. Miller has written extensively on the Japanese language, from A Japanese Reader (1963) and The Japanese Language (1967) to Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages (1971) and Nihongo: In Defense of Japanese (1986). He later broadened his scope by linking Korean both to Japanese and Altaic, most notably in Languages and History: Japanese, Korean, and Altaic (1996).

On the occasion of Miller's 75th birthday, Professors Karl Menges and Nelly Naumann prepared a Festschrift highlighting his career and including articles on Altaic languages.

[edit] Miller's Contributions to Tibetan Linguistics

MILLER, Roy Andrew. 1955a. “Studies in spoken Tibetan I: phonemics.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 75: 46-51.

_____. 1955b. Review of チベット語古典文法学 / Chibettogo koten bunpōgaku. [Classical Tibetan Language Grammatical Studies.] (昭和Shōwa 29.) by Inaba Shōju稻葉正就. Kyoto: 法藏館 Hōzōkan, 1954. Language 31. 481-482

_____. 1955c. “Notes on the Lhasa dialect of the early ninth century.” Oriens 8: 284-291.

_____. 1962. “The Si-tu Mahapandita on Tibetan Phonology.” 湯浅八郎博士古稀記念論文集 / Yuasa Hachirō hakushi koki kinen ronbunshu / To Dr. Hachiro Yusasa; A collection of Papers commemorating his Seventieth Anniversary. 921-933. Tokyo: 国際基督教大学 / Kokusai Kirisutokyō Daigaku.

_____. 1966. “Early Evidence for Vowel Harmony in Tibetan.” Language 42: 252-277.

_____. 1968. Review of Tibeto-Mongolica: The Loanwords of Mongour and the Development of the Archaic Tibetan Dialects. (Indo-Iranian Monographs 7.) by András Róna-Tas. The Hague: Mouton, 1966. Language 44.1: 147-168.

_____. 1993. Prolegomena to the First Two Tibetan Grammatical Treatises. (Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 30.) Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien.

_____. 1994. “A New Grammar of Written Tibetan.” Review of The Classical Tibetan Language, by Stephen Beyer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Journal of the American Oriental Society 114.1. 67-76.

[edit] Source

Menges, Karl H. and Nelly Naumann, Ed. Language and Literature--Japanese and the other Altaic Languages. Harrossowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, Germany. 1999.