Warren Cowgill

Warren Cowgill
Born	(1929-12-19)December 19, 1929 Grangeville, Idaho, U.S.
Died	June 20, 1985(1985-06-20) (aged 55) New Haven, Connecticut
Spouses	Sheila Blau Levitsky ​ ​ (m. 1966⁠–⁠1970)​ Kathryn Louise Markhus ​ ​ (m. 1970)​
Children	1 (born 1967)
Parents	George Dewey Cowgill Ruby Eugenia Smith Cowgill
Relatives	George Cowgill (twin brother)
Academic background
Education	Stanford University Yale University
Thesis	The Indo-European Long-Vowel Preterits (1957)
Doctoral advisor	Paul Tedesco Konstantin Reichardt
Academic work
Institutions	Yale University
Main interests	Indo-European languages

Warren Crawford Cowgill (/ˈkoʊɡɪl/ KOH-gill;^[1] December 19, 1929 – June 20, 1985) was an American linguist. He was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica's authority on Indo-European linguistics.^[2] Two separate Indo-European sound laws are named after him, both called Cowgill's law in Greek and Germanic respectively.

Cowgill was unusual among Indo-European linguists of his time in believing that Indo-European should be classified as a branch of Indo-Hittite, with Hittite as a sister language of the Indo-European languages, rather than a daughter language.

Warren Cowgill and his twin brother, anthropologist George Cowgill, were born near Grangeville, Idaho. Along with his brother, he graduated from Stanford University in 1952 and received a Ph.D. from Yale in 1957. He was a member of the Yale faculty in the Department of Linguistics until his death in 1985.^[3][4]

References

1. Cowgill, Warren C. (2006). "Cowgill on Cowgill: Autobiographical Letter to the LSA Archives" (PDF). In Klein, Jared (ed.). The Collected Writings of Warren Cowgill. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Beech Stave Press. p. xlvii. ISBN 0-9747927-1-3. the first syllable rhymes with know, not with how.
2. "Indo-European languages," Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite, Chicago 2007.
3. "Dr. Warren C. Cowgill". The New York Times. June 25, 1985. Archived from the original on January 30, 2013.
4. "Linguistics at Yale University". Retrieved March 23, 2007.

External links

• Table of contents for The Collected Writings of Warren Cowgill (ISBN 0-9747927-1-3)