Karl V. Teeter
| Karl van Duyn Teeter | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 2, 1929 |
| Died | April 20, 2007 (aged 78) |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Fields | linguistics |
| Doctoral advisor | Mary Haas |
| Doctoral students | Ives Goddard |
| Known for | work on the Algic languages |
Karl van Duyn Teeter (March 2, 1929 – April 20, 2007) was an American linguist known especially for his work on the Algic languages.
Teeter was born in Berkeley, California, to Charles Edwin Teeter, Jr., a college professor of acoustic engineering, and Lura May (née Shaffner) Teeter. Raised in Lexington, Massachusetts, he dropped out of high school and joined the United States Army, where he served as a Supply Sergeant from 1951 to 1954. In 1951, Teeter married Anita Maria Bonacorsi, the daughter of Sicilian immigrants. Sent to Japan to serve in the occupation forces, he became deeply interested in the Japanese language and on returning received a bachelor's degree in Oriental Languages from the University of California at Berkeley. There he continued his studies as a graduate student in linguistics. His dissertation, supervised by Mary Haas, was a description of the soon-to-be-extinct Wiyot language.
Teeter's work on Wiyot not only provided the last and best data for this language, but set the stage for the resolution of the Ritwan controversy. Teeter not only provided crucial data, but recognized many of the correspondences with Algonquian cited by Mary Haas. He later contributed some of the grammatical arguments which, along with those made by his student Ives Goddard, finally settled the question.
With field work on Wiyot no longer possible, Teeter turned his attention to Malecite-Passamaquoddy, a distantly related Algonquian language of New Brunswick and Maine. His work on this language stimulated that of Philip LeSourd.
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