Joseph Greenberg

Lore & Background

Joseph Greenberg was born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York, on May 28, 1915. His first great interest was music; at age 14 he gave a piano concert in Steinway Hall. After graduating from James Madison High School, he chose a scholarly career and enrolled at Columbia College in 1932. During his senior year, he attended a class by Franz Boas on American Indian languages. He graduated in 1936 with a bachelor's degree and, with references from Boas and Ruth Benedict, became a graduate student under Melville J. Herskovits at Northwestern University, earning his doctorate in 1940. His fieldwork among the Hausa people of Nigeria included learning the Hausa language, and his dissertation examined the influence of Islam on a non-converted Hausa group. He began postdoctoral studies at Yale in 1940, interrupted by World War II service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a codebreaker in North Africa, participating in the landing at Casablanca and later serving in Italy. He married Selma Berkowitz in 1943 before leaving for Europe.

Reader's Guide

Greenberg's significance lies in his foundational contributions to linguistic typology and his controversial method of mass comparison for genetic classification. He conceptualized implicational universals (e.g., if a language has mid front rounded vowels, it must also have high front rounded vowels), influencing synchronic linguistics. Unlike Noam Chomsky's formalist approach, Greenberg's method was functionalist. He argued that genetic classification is methodologically prior to comparative reconstruction and advocated multilateral comparison over bilateral comparison. His classification of African languages into four families—Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Khoisan—popularized the term 'Afroasiatic' and reclassified Bantu as part of Atlantic-Congo. This work faced criticism from linguists like Lyle Campbell and Donald Ringe, who questioned its methodological validity. Greenberg also proposed classifications for languages of New Guinea, Tasmania, and the Andaman Islands. His legacy includes both widespread adoption of his typological insights and ongoing debate over his genetic groupings.

Did You Know?

• Greenberg gave a piano concert at Steinway Hall at age 14.
• He served as a codebreaker in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II.
• He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1965.
• He coined the term 'multilateral comparison' to replace 'mass comparison' in 1987.