Adolfo Constenla Umaña (January 14, 1948, in

San José, Costa Rica San José (; meaning "Saint Joseph") is the capital city, capital and largest city of Costa Rica, and the capital of San José Province. It is in the center of the country, in the mid-west of the Costa Rican Central Valley, Central Valley, wi ...

– November 7, 2013) was a Costa Rican philologist and linguist who specialized in the indigenous languages of

Central America Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually ...

. He is especially known as a leading scholar on

Chibchan languages The Chibchan languages (also known as Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa R ...

, and some sources referred to him as the "father of Chibchan linguistics."

Education

He studied Spanish philology at the University of Costa Rica. In 1981, he graduated with a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

with a thesis on the comparative phonology of the

Career

Beginning in 1970, he worked as a teacher and researcher at the School of Philology, Linguistics, and Literature at the University of Costa Rica. He was promoted to Professor in 1983. In 1969 Constenla began a life-long working relationship when, at the recommendation of Arturo Agüero, he visited the Malecu (Guatuso) people of northern Costa Rica. He would study and publish extensively about their language Maleku Lhaíca (also known in Spanish as Guatuso), for the rest of his life:

(When I was about to do my licentiate thesis, I wanted it to be about an indigenous language. And Arturo Agüero, who was then the directory of the School of Philology, told me that Maleku was the least studied mong Costa Ricanlanguages, and that I should write my thesis about it. And so, I went o the Malekuin the following year, 1969.)

His work was by no means limited to Maléku, however. By his own accounting, he lists the languages he worked on most as:

The languages I have worked with the most are, well, I started with aléku This was the focus of my undergraduate thesis. After that, I continued with Boruca … the first book I published was on Boruca. Then I worked on Bribri as well. Some of my first publications, around the same time, were also on Bribri. I also did a lot of work on Térraba. I have done some work, though not much, on Guaymí and Cabécar. ''Las lenguas con las que más he trabajado son, bueno, comencé con alécu Esta fue el tema de mi tesis de licenciatura. Después seguí con el boruca … mi primer libro que publiqué fue sobre boruca. Luego trabajé en bribri también. Algunas de mis primeras publicaciones, más o menos en la misma época, fueron sobre bribri. También trabajé mucho en térraba. He trabajado un poco en guaymí y cabécar, pero no demasiado.''

Constenla was the founder and coordinator of the ''Programa de Investigaciones sobre las Lenguas de Costa Rica y Áreas Vecinas'' (PIL; "Research Program on the Languages of Costa Rica and Neighboring Areas"). From 1985 to 1996, he collected and analyzed linguistic data of many indigenous Central America languages. He published a full-length grammar of Maleku in 1998 From 1988–1989, he was a visiting professor at the

State University of New York at Albany The State University of New York at Albany (University at Albany, UAlbany, or SUNY Albany) is a public research university in Albany, New York, United States. Founded in 1844, it is one of four "university centers" of the State University of N ...

. In 1995, he became a full member of the Academia Costarricense de la Lengua. He advised (as of 2011) 22 degrees, 9 Masters and 12 Licentiate, mostly regarding indigenous languages of Costa Rica and Central America. For his work, Constenla received the Aquileo J. Echeverría National Award three times, in 1979, 1998, and 2007. In addition, he received the Carlos Gagini Award from the Costa Rican Association of Philology and Linguistics in 1984. He died from cancer on November 7, 2013, at the age of 65.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Constenla Umana, Adolfo 1948 births 2013 deaths Linguists of Chibchan languages People from San José, Costa Rica Academic staff of the University of Costa Rica