Aert Hendrik Kuipers (10 November 1919, Oostkapelle or

Middelburg Middelburg may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Europe * Middelburg, Zeeland, the capital city of the province of Zeeland, southwestern Netherlands ** Roman Catholic Diocese of Middelburg, a former Catholic diocese with its see in the Zeeland ...

– 1 December 2012) was a Dutch linguist who, from his pioneering fieldwork among

First Nations First nations are indigenous settlers or bands. First Nations, first nations, or first peoples may also refer to: Indigenous groups *List of Indigenous peoples *First Nations in Canada, Indigenous peoples of Canada who are neither Inuit nor Mé ...

people of

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

during the 1950s, compiled the first detailed reference grammars of Squamish and Shuswap, two almost extinct

Salishan languages The Salishan languages ( ), also known as the Salish languages ( ), are a Language family, family of languages found in the Pacific Northwest in North America, namely the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washingt ...

. He also advised Jan van Eijk in his work on

Lillooet Lillooet () is a district municipality in the Squamish-Lillooet region of southwestern British Columbia. The town is on the west shore of the Fraser River immediately north of the Seton River mouth. On BC Highway 99, the locality is by road abo ...

and Hank Nater in his work on

Nuxalk The Nuxalk people (Nuxalk language, Nuxalk: ''Nuxalkmc''; pronounced )'','' also referred to as the Bella Coola, Bellacoola or Bilchula, are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous First Nations in Canada, First Nation ...

and did important work on comparative Salishan. After obtaining his PhD at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1951 with the study ''A contribution to the analysis of the Qabardian language'', Kuipers was on the faculty of the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

from 1951 to 1954. During those years, as well as in the course of a 1956 field trip, he collected extensive material on the Squamish language. From 1960 to 1983, he taught

linguistics 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 ...

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

. After 1971, he was a professor in the department of

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

and culture, specializing in

Caucasian languages The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Linguistic comparison allows t ...

.Hoogleraren, Slavische talen en kulturen
(Professors, Slavic languages and culture), Leiden University, 23 May 2013. Accessed 30 July 2013. Kuipers had a strong commitment to helping to preserve a record of threatened and endangered languages. As a 1998 article in ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

'' put it, "Aert Kuipers ... went to Canada recently with the intention of locating and preserving American Indian languages. He came across dozens, some limited to a single valley, others spoken by only a few dozen people. He settled on one, learnt it and put together a dictionary and a primer. But by the time he had finished there was only one other speaker of the language left." Kuipers responded to this in a letter that his arrival in Canada (nearly half a century earlier) was hardly "recently" and that ''The Economist'' may have conflated Squamish and Shuswap with regard to the "one speaker left" statement.

Works

As co-editor

* 1956: Bernard Geiger, Aert Kuipers, Tibor Halasi-Kun, and

Karl H. Menges Karl Heinrich Menges (April 22, 1908 – September 20, 1999) was a German linguist known for his advocacy of the Altaic hypothesis. He was a faculty member at Columbia University in New York and subsequently at the University of Vienna. Biogr ...

(eds.). ''The Caucasus'' (2 volumes). Human Relations Area File. New York: Columbia University, Language and Communication Research Center. * 1959: Bernard Geiger, Aert H. Kuipers, Tibor Halasi-Kun, and Karl H. Menges (eds.).
Peoples and Languages of the Caucasus: A synopsis
'. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 78pp. Accessed 30 July 2013. (This is a 17.3 MB PDF file which provides a brief index to the various Caucasian languages treated in detail in the 1956 work.) * 1989: Aert H. Kuipers, Gabrielle Rainich (eds.). ''Russian-English Vocabulary with Grammatical Sketch''. American Mathematical Society, 66pp. (This book is intended to help non-Russian-speakers to understand Russian-language mathematical texts.)

As author

* 1960: ''Phoneme and Morpheme in Kabardian (Eastern Adyghe).'' The Hague: Mouton & Co., 124pp. * 1967: ''The Squamish Language: Grammar, Texts, Dictionary.'' The Hague: Mouton & Co., 407pp. (This work received a generally favourable review by Laurence C. Thompson in ''

American Anthropologist ''American Anthropologist'' is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an American organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 m ...

'', 1, 1969pp. 138–139.) * 1974: ''The Shuswap Language: Grammar, Texts, Dictionary.'' The Hague: Mouton & Co., 297pp. * 1975: ''A classified English-Shuswap word-list.'' Peter de Ridder Press, 35pp. * 1975: ''A Dictionary of Proto-Circassian Roots''. John Benjamins Pub. Co., 93pp. * 1976: ''Typologically Salient Features of Some North-West Caucasian Languages''. Peter de Ridder Press, 29pp. * 1989: ''A Report on Shuswap with a Squamish Lexical Appendix.'' Peeters, 250pp. * 2002: ''Salish Etymological Dictionary.'' Missoula, Montana: Univ. Montana., Linguistics Laboratory, 240pp.

Sources

* ''De leden van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Een demografisch perspectief: 1808 tot 2008,'' Deel/Blz.: 304, annex I * ''Album Scholasticum academiae Lugduno-Batavae MCMLXXV-MCMLXXXIX'' (1975-1989).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuipers, Aert H. 1919 births 2012 deaths Anthropological linguists Linguists from the Netherlands Phoneticians Academic staff of Leiden University Academic staff of the University of British Columbia Columbia University alumni Languages of the Caucasus Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences People from Veere Linguists of Salishan languages