William Edward Collinson

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Dr. William Edward Collinson (4 January 1889-1969) was an eminent British linguist and, from 1914 to 1954, Chair of German at the University of Liverpool. Like Edward Sapir and Otto Jespersen, he collaborated with Alice Vanderbilt Morris to develop the research program of the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). From 1936 to 1939, he was Research Director of IALA. Under Collinson's guidance, methods of compiling international word material were tested at Liverpool. E. Clark Stillman succeeded Collinson as Research Director.

Collinson was initially an Esperantist, writing a book in that language, La Homa Lingvo ("The Human Language").^[1] However, the culmination of IALA's interlinguistic research was the auxiliary language Interlingua. In 1951, IALA presented Interlingua to the general public in the form of the Interlingua-English Dictionary (IED) and the Interlingua Grammar.

[edit] References

• Gode, Alexander. Interlingua-English: A Dictionary of the International language. New York: Storm Publishers, 1951.
• Falk, Julia S. "Words without grammar: Linguists and the international language movement in the United States," Language and Communication, 15(3): pp. 241-259. Pergamon, 1995.

1. ^ Enciklopedio de Esperanto, 1933.

[edit] External links

• University of Liverpool: Chairs