Terrence Kaufman

---

title: "Terrence Kaufman" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1937-births", "2022-deaths", "linguists-from-the-united-states", "historical-linguists", "linguists-of-mesoamerican-languages", "american-mesoamericanists", "anthropology-educators", "university-of-pittsburgh-faculty", "university-of-california,-berkeley-alumni", "20th-century-mesoamericanists", "21st-century-mesoamericanists", "linguists-of-hokan-languages", "linguists-of-uto-aztecan-languages", "linguists-of-mixe–zoque-languages", "linguists-of-oto-manguean-languages", "mayanists", "linguists-of-indigenous-languages-of-the-americas", "indian-national-congress-politicians-from-maharashtra"] description: "American linguist (1937–2022)" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Kaufman" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American linguist (1937–2022) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox academic"]

Field	Value
honorific_prefix
image	Terrence_Kaufman.png
caption	Kaufman in 1986
birth_name
birth_date
death_date
title	Professor Emeritus
boards
awards
education	University of California, Berkeley (PhD)
thesis_title	Grammar of Tzeltal
thesis_year	1963
academic_advisors	William F. Shipley, Mary Haas
influences
era	21st century
discipline	Linguistics and anthropology
sub_discipline	Mesoamerican
workplaces	University of Pittsburgh, University of California, Berkeley
doctoral_students
notable_students
influenced
::

| honorific_prefix = | name = | honorific_suffix = | image = Terrence_Kaufman.png | image_size = | alt = | caption = Kaufman in 1986 | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_name = | birth_date = | birth_place = | death_date = | death_place = | death_cause = | nationality = | citizenship = | other_names = | occupation = | period = | known_for = | home_town = | title = Professor Emeritus | boards = | spouse = | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | awards = | website = | education = University of California, Berkeley (PhD) | thesis_title = Grammar of Tzeltal | thesis_url = | thesis_year = 1963 | school_tradition = | doctoral_advisor = | academic_advisors = William F. Shipley, Mary Haas | influences = | era = 21st century | discipline = Linguistics and anthropology | sub_discipline = Mesoamerican | workplaces = University of Pittsburgh, University of California, Berkeley | doctoral_students = | notable_students = | main_interests = | notable_works = | notable_ideas = | influenced = | signature = | signature_alt = | signature_size = | footnotes =

Terrence Kaufman (June 12, 1937 – March 3, 2022) was an American linguist who specialized in lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics, the documentation of unwritten languages, and language contact phenomena. He served as Professor Emeritus of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Early life and education

Kaufman was born on June 12, 1937.[[File:Tuxtla Statuette.svg|thumb|right|A drawing of the [[Tuxtla Statuette]], which also used inscriptions from Kaufman's work]] He received his PhD in Linguistics in 1963 from the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on the grammar of the Tzeltal language.

Career

He taught at Ohio State University (1963-1964), then at University of California, Berkeley (1964-1970), and at the University of Pittsburgh until his retirement in 2011.

Kaufman produced descriptive and comparative historical studies of languages of the Mayan, Siouan, Hokan, Uto-Aztecan, Mixe–Zoquean, and Oto-Manguean families. His work on empirical documentation of unwritten languages through fieldwork and training of native linguists gave rise to a rich body of published work as well as a substantial unpublished corpus of notes. Many of his articles were co-authored with scholars such as Lyle Campbell, Sarah Thomason, and John Justeson.

In a 1976 paper co-authored with Lyle Campbell, Kaufman advanced a theory that the Olmecs spoke a Mixe–Zoquean language, based on the significant presence of early Mixe–Zoquean loans in many Mesoamerican languages, particularly from specific, culturally significant semantic domains. Along with Lyle Campbell and Thomas Smith-Stark, Kaufman carried out research published in Language (1986) which led to the recognition of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area.

In Language contact, Creolization, and genetic linguistics (1988), Kaufman and Thomason developed a theoretical framework for the understanding of the processes of contact-induced language change.

In 1993, along with John Justeson, Kaufman claimed to have successfully deciphered the Isthmian or Epi-Olmec script. This claim was rejected by anthropologists Michael Coe and Stephen Houston in 2004 after using the decipher key on a recently discovered jade mask. Coe states that the result "turns out to be total nonsense and gobbledygook". In the years prior to his death, Kaufman was involved in the "Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica" or PDLMA, which focused on collecting standardized linguistic data from the under-documented languages of Mesoamerica.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Mayan_Language_Migration_Map.svg" caption="A map showing Kaufman's theory of Mayan Language migration"] ::

Early advocate and activist for the role of native speakers

In the early 1970s, Kaufman visited Guatemala to conduct linguistic surveys in the Mayan highlands. These surveys eventually led to his proposal for a classification of the Mayan languages. In the process, he stopped at the Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM) in Antigua Guatemala, a Guatemalan NGO intent on becoming a national Mayan-based resource institution.

In collaboration with PLFM staff and inspired in part by Kenneth Hale's unpublished paper from the 1960s, American Indians in Linguistics, Kaufman was a key participant in the development of the PLFM's plan to train one hundred community-based native speakers of Mayan languages, mostly primary school graduates, to become descriptive linguists for their own languages. He spent the summer leading them through a level of training usually reserved for university students. In this, he was supported by a dozen professional linguists who were pursuing their PhDs, such as Nora England and Judith Maxwell. Each served for several years under the auspices of the Peace Corps to provide year-round follow-up training.

Under Kaufman's leadership, and in consultation with this corps of linguists and Mayan trainees, PLFM developed a proposal for "rational" alphabets for each of the Mayan languages, which respected the integrity and unique features of each. The Proposal for alphabets and orthographies for writing the Mayan languages was published in Spanish in January 1976 under Kaufman's name by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, which supported the proposal. However, due to the polarized environment of 1970s Guatemala, the proposal faced opposition from some proponents of orthographies that imposed Spanish language orthography on the Mayan languages. A corps of PLFM Mayan linguists joined national congresses and debates. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan National Congress enacted legislation that made the alphabet that Kaufman and the PLFM had proposed (with one minor change) the legal, national alphabet of the country. The Mayan trainees, who had assumed leadership of the PLFM in 1976, had been so involved in the consideration of Kaufman's published proposal that some later suggested that they should have been co-authors.

Additionally, together with Jo Froman, a PLFM linguistic aide whom he had trained, Kaufman completed his nationwide linguistic surveys and a dialect boundary mapping exercise. He then published a proposed classification for the Mayan languages. Translated and edited by Lic. Flavio Rojas Lima of the Seminario de Integración Social, PLFM volunteer Margarita Cruz, PLFM Director Tony Jackson, and supported by Ministry of Education language advisor Salvador Aguado Andreut, published the proposal in Spanish in 1974 as Idiomas de Mesoamerica ('Languages of Mesoamerica').

Selected bibliography

Articles

Books

References

• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages, The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, Oxford University Press.
• Houston, Stephen, and Coe, Michael. 2004. "Has Isthmian Writing Been Deciphered?", Mexicon XXV: 151–161.
• Brigham Young University press release on behalf of Brigham Young University archaeologist Stephen Houston and Yale University professor emeritus Michael Coe disputing Justeson/Kaufman findings.
• Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica
• Kaufman's faculty page at the University of Pittsburgh
• Autobiographical notes by Kaufman

References

1. "Language Log » Terry Kaufman 1937-2022".
2. "Terrence Kaufman Papers on Indigenous Languages of Mesoamerica". UC Berkeley.
3. (December 20, 2005). "Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, 14-Volume Set, Volume 1–14". Elsevier Science.
4. (January 1, 1976). "A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs". American Antiquity.
5. England, Nora. "Mesoamerican Languages". Oxford University Press.
6. (February 12, 1992). "Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics". University of California Press.
7. Justeson, John S. and Terrence Kaufman (1993), A Decipherment of Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing. Science, March 19, 1993, pp. 1703–1711.
8. (February 9, 2004). "A TRANSLATION UNMASKED".
9. (January 27, 2004). "Secrets of old mask still hidden, duo say".
10. "Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica (PDLMA)".
11. "Language Log » Terry Kaufman 1937-2022".
12. mangavzam. (2015-10-17). "Idiomas de Mesoamerica".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::