John Samuel Kenyon (July 26, 1874 – September 6, 1959) was an American

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 ...

. Born in

Medina, Ohio Medina ( ) is a city in Medina County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. The population was 26,094 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It lies about south of Cleveland and west of Akron, Ohio, Akron within the Cleveland met ...

, he graduated from

Hiram College Hiram College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Hiram, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1850 as the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute by Amos Sutton Hayden and other members of the Disciples of Christ Church. The college is nonse ...

in 1898 and taught there as a professor of English from 1916 to 1944, when he retired and became an

emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

professor until his death. Together with Thomas A. Knott, he wrote '' A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English'' (1944). Kenyon had also earlier published ''American Pronunciation'' (1924) and served as the consulting editor of pronunciation to the second edition of ''

Webster's New International Dictionary ''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the US English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), a US lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's n ...

'' in his career as a pioneering expert on the study of American English, which earned him the

epithet An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleima ...

"the dean of American phoneticians". As Kenyon hailed from Northeast Ohio, he used speech forms there as the basis of the popular text ''American Pronunciation'' that became widely disseminated as General American English.

Works

*''American Pronunciation'' (1924/1950), Tenth Edition, Ann Arbor: George Wahr. *''A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English'', with Thomas A. Knott (1944/1953) " KK", Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Articles

* 'Ye and You in the King James Version.' Modern Language Association, PMLA , 1914, Vol. 29, No. 3 (1914), pp. 453-471.

References

External links

Brief profile from the Hiram College archives
1874 births 1959 deaths American phoneticians Hiram College alumni {{US-linguist-stub