Abraham "Abe" Meyer Halpern (February 20, 1914,

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

– October 20, 1985,

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , literal translation, lit. "Holy Faith") is the capital city, capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Santa Fe County. With over 89,000 residents, Santa Fe is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, fourt ...

) was a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

who specialized in

Native American Languages The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas Pre-Columbian era, before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while m ...

. In the wake of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

he initiated a second career focusing on

United States foreign policy The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America, including all the bureaus and offices in the United States Department of State, as mentioned in the ''Foreign Policy Agenda'' of the Department of State, are ...

, especially in regard to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Late in life he resumed studying and publishing on the languages of California.

Early life and education

Halpern was born in Boston, where he attended

Boston Latin School The Boston Latin School is a Magnet school, magnet Latin schools, Latin Grammar schools, grammar State school, state school in Boston, Massachusetts. It has been in continuous operation since it was established on April 23, 1635. It is the old ...

. He went on to receive his B.A. from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

, and to do graduate research at Harvard, the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

Work in linguistics

Quechan

At Berkeley Halpern studied under

Alfred L. Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber ( ; June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the fi ...

. In 1935, in a project funded by the California State Emergency Relief Administration, he undertook to supervise the compilation of a dictionary of the

Quechan language Quechan or Kwtsaan (, Kwatsáan Iiyáa), also known as Yuma, is the native language of the Quechan people of southeastern California and southwestern Arizona in the Lower Colorado River Valley and Sonoran Desert. Despite its name, it is not re ...

(also formerly known as Yuma) of southern California and

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. (However, the dictionary was not completed as the funding organization was dismantled and replaced by the

Works Projects Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to c ...

.) At this point, on the suggestion of Kroeber, Halpern transferred to the University of Chicago to study under

Harry Hoijer Harry Hoijer (September 6, 1904 – March 11, 1976) was a linguist and anthropologist who worked on primarily Athabaskan languages and culture. He additionally documented the Tonkawa language, which is now extinct language, extinct. Hoijer's few w ...

. He would carry out extensive linguistic

fieldwork Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct f ...

on Quechan, resulting in his Ph.D. dissertation, the first published grammar of a Yuman language. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1947. ''Kar?úk: Native Accounts of the Quechan Mourning Ceremony'', a study of a traditional Quechan ceremony, was edited and published posthumously.

Pomoan

He first worked on the

Pomoan languages The Pomoan, or Pomo , languages are a small family of seven languages indigenous to northern California spoken by the Pomo people, whose ancestors lived in the valley of the Russian River (California), Russian River and the Clear Lake (California ...

Northern California Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...

in 1936, and again in 1939 and 1940. Much later in life he returned to the study of the Pomoan languages: he made field recordings of three of the languages in the 1980s: Central, Southern, and Southeastern languages. Among the speakers he worked with in the 1980s was

Pomo The Pomo are a Indigenous peoples of California, Native American people of California. Historical Pomo territory in Northern California was large, bordered by the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to ...

basketweaver

Elsie Allen Elsie Comanche Allen (September 22, 1899 – December 31, 1990) was a Native American Pomo basket weaver from the Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California in Northern California, significant as for historically categorizing and teac ...

Work in international relations

Halpern became involved in the teaching of the

Japanese language is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...

when he organized the teaching program in the Civil Affairs Training School in Chicago, together with his first wife Mary Fujii Halpern. This project became Halpern's entrée into the world of international relations, which became a second career. He went on to carry out work on international relations at several institutions, including the

Carnegie Institution The Carnegie Institution for Science, also known as Carnegie Science and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is an organization established to fund and perform scientific research in the United States. This institution is headquartered in Wa ...

and the

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation, doing business as RAND, is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND engages in research and development (R&D) in several fields and industries. Since the ...

, where he published extensively on

and

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. Later he worked at the

Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank focused on Foreign policy of the United States, U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is an independent and nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organi ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

. He assumed the position previously held by linguist Robert King Hall at the Civil Information and Education Section of GHQ/SCAP in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, where he promoted the adoption of the

phonemic A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

Kunrei-Shiki , also known as the Monbusho system (named after the endonym for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) or MEXT system, is the Cabinet-ordered romanization system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Lat ...

style of

romanization of Japanese The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as . Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Ch ...

(''rōmaji''), and supervised studies on the feasibility of widening the use of romanization in Japan.

Archived work

Halpern's field recordings are archived at the Berkeley Language Center, and his documentary work is archived at the

Survey of California and Other Indian Languages The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...

. His 1941 fieldnotes on the

Potawatomi language Potawatomi (, also spelled Pottawatomie; in Potawatomi , , or ) is a Central Algonquian languages, Central Algonquian languages, Algonquian language. It was historically spoken by the Potawatomi, Pottawatomi people who lived around the Great Lake ...

are archived at the

National Anthropological Archives The National Anthropological Archives is the third largest archive in the Smithsonian Institution and a sister archive to the Human Studies Film Archive. The collection documents the history of anthropology and the world's peoples and cultures, ...

in Suitland, Maryland.

Personal life

Halpern married twice. His first wife was Mary Fujii, daughter of Rutaro Fujii and Katsu Yokobori Fujii of Hayward, California; she died in 1967. They had two sons, Alexander and Paul. His second wife was anthropologist Katherine Spencer Halpern; they married in 1968. Halpern died in 1985, aged 71 years, in

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Halpern, Abraham M. 1914 births 1985 deaths Boston Latin School alumni Harvard College alumni People from Boston University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Chicago alumni Linguists of Pomoan languages Linguists of Quechan 20th-century American anthropologists 20th-century American linguists