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Siebert As Algonquianist, Karl Van Duyn Teeter

Maine History

Karl V. (van Duyn) Teeter learned Japanese as a U.S. Army draftee during the Korean War. Upon his discharge from the military in 1954 he went to Berkeley, majoring in Oriental Languages. He entered Berkeley ’s linguistics program and did fieldwork with the last speaker of Wiyot, a language indigenous to northern California that has since been demonstrated to be genetically related to all the Algonquian languages. After coming to Harvard in 1959 he studied Maliseet-Passamaquoddy and, for several years, chaired Harvard’s linguistics department. He is now Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus at Harvard. What follows is his assessment of Frank …