American historical linguist and anthropologist who specialized in African and Native American languages. Created a unified classification system for African languages in the 1940s-60s.

Date of birth: 28 May 1915, Brooklyn, New York
Date of death: 7 May 2001, Stanford, California

Early Academic Career
Joseph Harold Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York on 28 May 1915. He received a BA at Columbia University 1936, studying under Franz Boas.


He then went to Northwestern University where he achieved a PhD in anthropology in 1940 under Melville J Herskovits. His thesis was on non-Islamic Hausa religion.

African Linguistic Classification
From 1940 to 45, during the US involvement in World War II, Greenberg served in US army Signal and Intelligence Corps. The year afterwards he spent studying funded by a Social Science Research Council Fellowship. In 1946, Greenberg took up a teaching position in anthropology at University of Minnesota. In 1948 he transferred to a teaching position at Colombia University, he remained there for 14 years. It was whilst teaching at Colombia that Greenberg produced his influential work on African language families: the eight-part Studies in African linguistic classificationin the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (1949 to 54), which was published in a summarized form in 1955 (Studies in African Linguistic Classification, Compass Publishing Company, 1955). Also during his time at Colombia he undertook a five year stint as co-editor of the journal Word.

Stanford
In 1962 Joseph H Greenberg moved to Stanford University and took up the post of professor of Anthropology and Linguistics. Just after he joined Stanford he published his most important work (with respect to African history), the revised and updated The Languages of Africa (Indiana University Press, 1963). This work is considered a cornerstone of the classification of African languages using the tree model. Greenberg retired in 1985, thereafter serving as professor emeritus until his death in 2001.

Greenberg's Academic Legacy
During his academic life, Joseph H Greenberg published over 250 papers, articles and books. His initial reputation was established through his work on classifying African languages. Originally, Greenberg argued for 16 different families of African languages, extending the earlier work of Meinhof. By 1963, in his revised work The Languages of Africa he suggested four phyla would cover all African languages: Afro-Asiatic; Niger-Kordofanian; Nilo-Saharan; and Khoisan. His classification system was considered controversial at the time (such as his inclusion of the Kordofanian language family with the Niger-Congo family), but his conclusions are nowadays generally accepted, and his four phyla are subject to refinement rather than revision.

Greenberg also provided original classifications for the Native American language groups (Language in the Americas, Stanford University Press,1987), and suggested a combination of languages from Europe and Asia (Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Stanford University Press, 2000). He is also known for work in the field of language typology and language universals. His chapter, 'Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements', in Universals of Language published in 1966, suggested 45 'universals' of word order (syntax) and inflection based on research covering over 30 different languages.

Academic Recognition
Joseph H Greenberg was awarded the Haile Selassie Prize for African Research in 1967. He was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. During his academic career he served as president of the Linguistic Society of America, the African Studies Association, and the West African Linguistic Society.

Selected books and papers

African Language Groups
'The classification of African languages', American Anthropologist, Volume 50, pp24–30, 1948.
'Studies in African linguistic classification: I. The Niger-Congo family', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Volume 5, pp79–100, 1949.
'Studies in African linguistic classification: II. The classification of Fulani', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Volume 5, pp190–98, 1949.
'Studies in African linguistic classification: III. The position of Bantu', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Volume 5, pp309–17, 1949.
'Studies in African linguistic classification: IV. Hamito-Semitic', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Volume 6, pp47–63, 1950.
'Studies in African linguistic classification: V. The Eastern Sudanic family', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Volume 6, pp 143–60, 1950.
'Studies in African linguistic classification: VI. The Click languages', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Volume 6, pp 223–37, 1950.
'Studies in African linguistic classification: VII. Smaller families; index of languages', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Volume 6, pp 388–98, 1950.
'Studies in African linguistic classification: VIII. Further remarks on method: revisions and corrections', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Volume 10, pp405–15, 1954.
Studies in African Linguistic Classification, New Haven, Compass Publishing Company, 1955. (Reprint of the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology articles with minor corrections )
Essays in Linguistics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1957.
The Languages of Africa, Indiana University Press, 1963. (Second revised edition in 1966.)
'Linguistic evidence regarding Bantu origins', Journal of African History, Volume 13, pp189–216, 1972.

Other Language Groups
Language in the Americas, Stanford University Press, 1987.
Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. 1: Grammar, Stanford University Press, 2000.
Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. 2: Lexicon, Stanford University Press, 2002.

Language Universals
Universals of Language, ed. By Greenberg, Report of a Conference Held at Dobbs Ferry, New York, April 13–15, 1961. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1963. (Second edition 1966.)
'Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements' in Universals of Language, ed. by J.H. Greenberg. MIT Press, 1966.
Universals of Human Language Vol. 1: Method and Theory , Stanford University Press, 1978.
Universals of Human Language Vol. 2: Phonology , Stanford University Press, 1978.
Universals of Human Language Vol. 3: Word Structure, Stanford University Press, 1978.
Universals of Human Language Vol. 4: Syntax, Stanford University Press, 1978.