Roy Andrew Miller

For other people named Roy Miller, seeRoy Miller.

Roy Andrew Miller
Miller in Kyōto in 1982 (Photograph by William Schoen)
Born	(1924-09-05)September 5, 1924 Winona,Minnesota
Died	August 22, 2014(2014-08-22)(aged 89) Honolulu,Hawaii
Nationality	American
Academic background
Education	Gustavus Adolphus College(B.A.) Columbia University(M.A., Ph.D.)
Academic work
Discipline	Linguist
Institutions	International Christian University Yale University University of Washington

Roy Andrew Miller(September 5, 1924 – August 22, 2014)was anAmericanlinguistbest known as the author of several books onJapanese languageand linguistics, and for his advocacy ofKoreanand Japanese as members of the proposedAltaic language family.

Biography

Miller was born inWinona,Minnesota,on September 5, 1924, to Andrew and Jessie (née Eickelberry) Miller. In 1953, he completed a Ph.D. in Chinese and Japanese atColumbia UniversityinNew York.Long a student of languages, his early work in the 1950s was largely with Chinese andTibetan.For example, in 1969 he wrote theEncyclopædia Britannicaentry on theTibeto-Burman languagesofSouth Asia.

He was Professor of Linguistics at theInternational Christian UniversityinTokyofrom 1955 to 1963. Subsequently he taught atYale University;between 1964 and 1970, he was chairman of the department of East and South Asian Languages and Literatures. From 1970 until 1989 he held a similar post at theUniversity of WashingtoninSeattle.He then taught in Europe, mainly in Germany andScandinavia.

He wrote extensively on the Japanese language, fromA Japanese Reader(1963) andThe Japanese Language(1967) toJapanese and the Other Altaic Languages(1971) andNihongo: In Defense of Japanese(1986). He later broadened his scope by linking Korean both to Japanese and Altaic, most notably inLanguages and History: Japanese, Korean, and Altaic(1996).

On the occasion of his 75th birthday, ProfessorsKarl MengesandNelly Naumannprepared aFestschrifthighlighting his career and including articles on Altaic languages.

Selected works

Books

• 1967a.The Japanese Language.Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle.
• 1971.Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ISBN0-226-52719-0.
• 1975.The Footprints of the Buddha:An Eighth-Century Old Japanese Poetic Sequence,New Haven (CT): American Oriental Society.ISBN978-0-940-49058-1
• 1976.Studies in the Grammatical Tradition in Tibet.Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• 1980.Origins of the Japanese Language: Lectures in Japan during the Academic Year 1977–78.Seattle: University of Washington Press.ISBN0-295-95766-2.
• 1982.Japan's Modern Myth: The Language and Beyond.Tokyo: John Weatherhill Inc.ISBN0-8348-0168-X.
• 1986.Nihongo: In Defence of Japanese.London: Athlone Press.ISBN0-485-11251-5.
• 1993.Prolegomena to the First Two Tibetan Grammatical Treatises.(Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde30.) Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien.
• 1996.Languages and History: Japanese, Korean and Altaic.Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture.ISBN974-8299-69-4.

Articles

• 1955a. "Studies in spoken Tibetan I: Phonemics".Journal of the American Oriental Society75: 46–51.
• 1955c. "Notes on the Lhasa dialect of the early ninth century".Oriens8: 284–291.
• 1955d. "The significance for comparative grammar of some ablauts in the Tibetan number-system".T'oung-pao43: 287–296.
• 1955e. "The Independent Status of Lhasa dialect within Central Tibetan".Orbis4.1: 49–55.
• 1956. "Segmental diachronic phonology of a Ladakh (Tibetan) dialect".Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morganländischen Gesellschaft106: 345–362.
• 1956. "The Tibeto-Burman ablaut system".Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan / Kokusai Tōhō Gakusha Kaigi kiyō1: 29–56.
• 1957. "The phonology of the Old Burmese vowel system as seen in the Myazedi inscription".Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan / Kokusai Tōhō Gakusha Kaigi kiyō2: 39–43.
• 1962. "The Si-tu Mahapandita on Tibetan phonology". Canh thiển tám lang tiến sĩ cổ lai hi kỷ niệm luận văn tập /Yuasa Hachirō hakushi koki kinen ronbunshu / To Dr. Hachiro Yuasa; A Collection of Papers Commemorating His Seventieth Anniversary,921–933. Tokyo: Quốc tế đạo Cơ Đốc đại học / Kokusai Kirisutokyō Daigaku.
• 1966. "Early evidence for vowel harmony in Tibetan".Language42: 252–277.
• 1967b."Old Japanese phonology and the Korean–Japanese relationship".
• 1967c. "Some problems in Tibetan transcription of Chinese from Tun-huang".Monumenta Serica27: 123–148 (publ. 1969).
• 1976. "The Relevance of Historical Linguistics for Japanese Studies".The Journal of Japanese Studies2.2: 335-388.
• 1977. "The 'Spirit' of the Japanese Language".The Journal of Japanese Studies3.2: 251-298.
• 1978, "Is Tibetan genetically related to Japanese?", in: Proceedings of the Csoma de Körös memorial Symposium, ed. L. Ligeti, Budapest 1978, pp. 295–312.)
• 2002. "TheMiddle Mongolianvocalic hiatus ".Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae55.1–3: 179–205.
• 2008 "The Altaic Aorist in *-Ra in Old Korean". Lubotsky, Alexander, ed.Evidence and counter-evidence: essays in honour of Frederik KortlandtAmsterdam: Rodopi. (Studies in Slavic and general linguistics; 32–33) 267–282.

Reviews

• 1955b. Review of lúa diệp chính liền Inaba Shōju, チベット ngữ cổ điển ngữ pháp học /Chibettogo koten bunpōgaku[Classical Tibetan Language Grammatical Studies] Kyoto: Pháp tàng quán Hōzōkan, 1954 ( chiêu cùng Shōwa 29).Language31: 481–482.
• 1968. Review of András Róna-Tas,Tibeto-Mongolica: The Loanwords of Mongour and the Development of the Archaic Tibetan Dialects(Indo-Iranian Monographs7), The Hague: Mouton, 1966. InLanguage44.1: 147–168.
• 1970. Review of R. Burling’s Proto-Lolo-Burmese.Indo-Iranian Journal12 (1970), 146–159.
• 1974. "Sino-Tibetan: Inspection of a Conspectus".Journal of the American Oriental Society94.2: 195–209.
• 1982. "Linguistic issues in the study of Tibetan Grammar".Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens und Archiv für indische Philosophie26: 86–116.
• 1994. "A new grammar of written Tibetan". Review of Stephen Beyer,The Classical Tibetan Language,Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.Journal of the American Oriental Society114.1: 67–76.
• 1998,Miller, Roy Andrew; Taylor, Insup; Taylor, M. Martin (July–September 1998). "Reviewed Work:Writing and Literacy in China, Korea and Japanby Insup Taylor, M. Martin Taylor ".Journal of the American Oriental Society.118(3): 431–433.doi:10.2307/606087.JSTOR606087.
• 2001 Review of Philip Denwood, "Tibetan", (London Oriental and African Language Library, vol. 3). Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999.Journal of the American Oriental Society121.1:125–128.

External links

• Roy Andrew Miller (1924–2014)byMarc Miyake.
• Roy Andrew Miller, an unsung hero (villain) of academic dissing.