Ernst Pulgram (September 18, 1915 – August 17, 2005) was an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n origins whose main interest lay in the Italic and

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...

. He is survived by his wife, linguist Frances McSparran. Born and educated in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, he was forced to leave shortly after the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

to escape from the Nazis. He moved to the United States and joined the US army to fight in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Because he had left Vienna a few days before his PhD defence and thus was not able to complete the degree, shortly after the war Pulgram started a new PhD at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

under the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

. After graduation, he spent most of his career
1948–1986
at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. Throughout his life, he maintained ties to his Austrian homeland, which included in later years several Viennese linguists (such as historical English linguist Herbert Schendl). One obituary read that Pulgram's death meant that "the last of the great Romanists who had to flee from the Nazis and went to the States, is gone." Pulgram held Visiting Professorships at universities in Florence, Cologne, Heidelberg, Regensburg, Vienna, Innsbruck, Munich, and Tokyo.

Bibliography

* ''The Tongues of Italy, Prehistory and History'' * ''Latin-romance phonology: Prosodics and metrics (Ars grammatica)'' * ''Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching'' * ''Italic, Latin, Italian: 600 B.C. to A.D. 1260 : texts and commentaries''; (Indogermanische Bibliothek. Reihe 1, Lehr und Handbücher) * ''Practicing linguist: Essays on language and languages, 1950-1985''

References

Linguists from the United States Linguists from Austria Romance philologists University of Michigan faculty Austrian emigrants to the United States Scientists from Vienna 1915 births 2005 deaths Harvard University alumni 20th-century linguists {{Austria-academic-bio-stub