Weldon South Coblin, Jr. (born February 26, 1944) is an American Sinologist, linguist, and educator, best known for his studies of

Chinese linguistics Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...

and

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken diale ...

Life and career

Coblin attended the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seatt ...

as an undergraduate student, graduating with a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in Chinese in 1967. He then continued on at Washington as a graduate student under the Belgian Sinologist and

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

clergyman Fr. Paul Serruys, earning a Ph.D. in Chinese language and literature in 1972 with a dissertation entitled "An Introductory Study of Textual and Linguistic Problems in '' Erh-ya''". After completing his Ph.D., Coblin stayed at Washington for one year as a teaching associate, then in 1973 joined the faculty of the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 co ...

, where he spent his entire career. Early in his career he made many important contributions to Tibetan and

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

linguistics, but since the mid-1990s has worked primarily on alphabetic representations of Chinese. Starting around that time along with Jerry Norman he promoted a new direction in Chinese historical phonology making less use of the ''

Qieyun The ''Qieyun'' () is a Chinese rhyme dictionary, published in 601 during the Sui dynasty. The book was a guide to proper reading of classical texts, using the ''fanqie'' method to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. The ''Qieyun'' ...

'' and other

rhyme book ''Rhyme Book'' is the second studio album by New Zealand rapper Scribe. It follows on from his 2003 award-winning album, '' The Crusader''. It was released on 29 September 2007. Background and release In an interview with ''The New Zealand Herald ...

s, and more use of the traditional

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...

. Coblin is an emeritus professor at the

Selected works

*Coblin, W. South (1972). "An Introductory Study of Textual and Linguistic Problems in ''Erh-ya''", Ph.D. dissertation (University of Washington). * "Notes on Tibetan Verbal Morphology," ''T'oung Pao'' 52 (1976), pp. 45–70. * * * * * * * * *

External links

W. South Coblin
The University of Iowa. {{DEFAULTSORT:Coblin, Weldon South 'Phags-pa script scholars American sinologists 1944 births University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences alumni University of Iowa faculty Living people