Thomas Cedric Smith-Stark, also known as Thomas Smith-Stark or Thomas C. Smith-Stark (January 1, 1948 - May 17, 2009) was an American linguist known for his researches on

Mesoamerican languages Mesoamerican languages are the languages Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The ar ...

. Most of his academic career was developed in Mexico, where he lived for 28 years and he collaborated on 96 papers. Along with

Terrence Kaufman Terrence Kaufman (1937 – March 3, 2022) was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguistic ...

and

Lyle Campbell Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeri ...

, he helped to define

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...

as a

linguistic area A sprachbund (, from , 'language federation'), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The ...

. Smith-Stark was also part of the advisory board for the National Institute of Indigenous Languages and he took part in the discussions for drafting a Mexican policy on indigenous languages.

Early career

Thomas Smith-Stark developed an interest in linguistics when he was in high school. In the public library, he read classic works on the field. He chose linguistics as major when he went to

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

. Smith-Stark worked two summers on Frederic Cassidy's

Dictionary of American Regional English The ''Dictionary of American Regional English'' (''DARE'') is a record of regional variations within American English, published in five volumes from 1985 to 2012 and based on data mostly collected in the 1960s. It differs from other dictionarie ...

project. He spent one summer in highland

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

. He spent 22 months in the Marines working in military intelligence at Cherry Point,

North Caroline North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

. As part of his service in the Marines, he was sent to

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

, where he compiled a dictionary of Marine English. In 1971, he entered the doctoral program in linguistics at 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 ...

Fields of study

Thomas Smith-Stark was mainly interested in Mesoamerican languages. His doctoral thesis was on Pomam phonology and morphology. He developed early works on the antipassive and aspects of voice in Maya. He was into Maya glyphs, publishing in 1996 ''A Concordance to the Inscriptions of Palenque, Chiapas'', with William Ringle. In 1981 he began to work at the Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios of

El Colegio de México El Colegio de México, A.C. (commonly known as Colmex, English: The College of Mexico) is a Mexican institute of higher education, specializing in teaching and research in social sciences and humanities. The college was founded in 1940 by the Me ...

. By the mid-1980, he started studying

Amuzgo The Amuzgos are an Indigenous people of Mexico. They primarily live in a region along the Guerrero/Oaxaca border, chiefly in and around four municipalities: Xochistlahuaca, Tlacoachistlahuaca and Ometepec in Guerrero, and San Pedro Amuzgos in Oaxa ...

features like

tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...

verbal morphology A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic fo ...

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

, and

negation In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...

in collaboration with the native speaker of

San Pedro Amuzgos San Pedro Amuzgos is a town and municipality in Oaxaca in south-western Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to ...

Fermín Tapia. This represented its first contact with

Oto-manguean languages The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean () languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of th ...

. He retook the works of

Juan de Córdova ''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of '' John''. The name is of Hebrew origin and has the meaning "God has been gracious." It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking countries around the world and in the Philip ...

in Zapotec and Antonio de Rincón in

Nahuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...

. He became an expert in colonial Zapotec and Nahuatl, and he completed studies related to missionary linguistics in early

New Spain New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( ; Nahuatl: ''Yankwik Kaxtillan Birreiyotl''), originally the Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain. It was one of several ...

. Between the 1980s and 1990, he worked in

areal linguistics Geolinguistics has been identified by some as being a branch of linguistics and by others as being an offshoot of language geography which is further defined in terms of being a branch of human geography. When seen as a branch of linguistics, geoli ...

. With Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman, he published "Meso-American as a Linguistic Area", which provided evidence that Mesoamerica should be regarded as a coherent region of language contact characterized by an identifiable set of linguistic features.

Other

In the Research Library Juan de Córdova (Oaxaca, México) is available the Documentary Collection Thomas C. Smith-Stark. The collection contains books, archives, and papers that Smith-Stark elaborated on during all his life.

References

External links

Works of Thomas C. Smith-Stark in WorldCat
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith-Stark, Thomas Linguists from the United States Linguists of Mesoamerican languages American Mesoamericanists 20th-century Mesoamericanists Historical linguists Linguists of Oto-Manguean languages Linguists of Uto-Aztecan languages 1948 births 2009 deaths Brown University alumni University of Chicago alumni