Kay Williamson

Kay Williamson (1935 – January 3, 2005, Brazil), born Ruth Margaret Williamson was a linguist who specialised in the study of African languages, particularly those of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, where she lived for nearly fifty years. Her many publications include a grammar and dictionary of the Ijo language, a dictionary of Igbo and numerous articles on diverse topics. She is also notable for proposing the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet.

Her unpublished work is being edited by Roger Blench.

Major publications

• Williamson, Kay. 1965 (2nd ed. 1969). A grammar of the Kolokuma dialect of Ịjọ. (West African Language Monographs, 2.) London: C.U.P.
• Williamson, Kay, and Kiyoshi Shimizu (edd.). 1968. Benue-Congo comparative wordlist: Volume I. Ibadan: West African Linguistic Society.
• Williamson, Kay (ed.) 1972. Igbo-English dictionary. Benin: Ethiope Publishing Corporation.
• Williamson, Kay (ed.). 1973. Benue-Congo comparative wordlist: Volume II. Ibadan: West African Linguistic Society.
• Williamson, Kay (ed.) 1983. Orthographies of Nigerian languages: Manual II. Lagos: National Language Centre, Federal Ministry of Education.
• Williamson, Kay, and A. O. Timitimi (edd.). 1983. Short Ịzọn-English dictionary. (Delta Series No. 3.) Port Harcourt: University of Port Harcourt Press. ISBN 9782321095, 9789782321091
• Williamson, Kay. 1984. Practical orthography in Nigeria. Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd.
• Williamson, Kay. 1971. The Benue-Congo languages and Ịjọ. In: Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 7, series ed. by T. A. Sebeok, 245-306.
• Williamson, Kay. 1979. Small languages in primary education: the Rivers Readers Project as a case history. African Languages/Langues Africaines 5:2.95-l05.
• Williamson, Kay. 1989. Niger-Congo Overview. In: The Niger-Congo languages, ed. by John Bendor-Samuel, 3-45. University Press of America.
• Williamson, Kay. 1989. Benue-Congo Overview. In: The Niger-Congo languages, ed. by John Bendor-Samuel, 246-274. University Press of America.
• Williamson, Kay, and Roger Blench. 2000. Niger-Congo. In: African languages: an introduction, ed. B. Heine and D. Nurse, Chapter 2, 11-42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Obituary