'Roy Andrew Miller' (born
September 5,
1924) is a
linguist notable for his advocacy of
Korean and
Japanese as members of the
Altaic group of languages.
Miller was born in
Winona, Minnesota, USA, on September 5th, 1924. In
1953, he completed a
PhD in Chinese and Japanese at Columbia University in New York. Long a student of languages, his early work in the
1950s was largely with
Chinese and
Tibetan. For example, in
1969 he wrote the
Encyclopædia Britannica entry on the
Tibeto-Burman Languages of
South Asia.
He was Professor of Linguistics at the
International Christian University in
Tokyo from
1955 to
1963. Subsequently he taught at
Yale 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 the
University of Washington in
Seattle. Since then, he has taught in
Europe, mainly in
Germany and
Scandinavia.
Prof. Miller has written extensively on the Japanese language, from ''A Japanese Reader'' (
1963) and ''The Japanese Language'' (
1967) to ''Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages'' (
1971) and ''Nihongo: In Defense of Japanese'' (
1986). He later broadened his scope by linking Korean both to Japanese and Altaic, most notably in ''Languages and History: Japanese, Korean, and Altaic'' (
1996).
On the occasion of Miller's 75th birthday, Professors
Karl Menges and
Nelly Naumann prepared a
Festschrift highlighting his career and including articles on Altaic languages.
Miller's Contributions to Tibetan Linguistics
MILLER, Roy Andrew. 1955a. “Studies in spoken Tibetan I: phonemics.” ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 75: 46-51.
_____. 1955b. Review of チベット語古典文法学 / ''Chibettogo koten bunpōgaku''. [Classical Tibetan Language Grammatical Studies.] (昭和Shōwa 29.) by Inaba Shōju稻葉正就. Kyoto: 法藏館 Hōzōkan, 1954. Language 31. 481-482
_____. 1955c. “Notes on the Lhasa dialect of the early ninth century.” ''Oriens'' 8: 284-291.
_____. 1962. “The Si-tu Mahapandita on Tibetan Phonology.” 湯浅八郎博士古稀記念論文集 / ''Yuasa Hachirō hakushi koki kinen ronbunshu / To Dr. Hachiro Yusasa; A collection of Papers commemorating his Seventieth Anniversary.'' 921-933. Tokyo: 国際基督教大学 / Kokusai Kirisutokyō Daigaku.
_____. 1966. “Early Evidence for Vowel Harmony in Tibetan.” ''Language'' 42: 252-277.
_____. 1967. "Some Problems in Tibetan Transcription of Chinese from Tun-huang." ''Monumenta Serica'' 27: 123-48 (publ. 1969).
_____. 1968. Review of ''Tibeto-Mongolica: The Loanwords of Mongour and the Development of the Archaic Tibetan Dialects.'' (Indo-Iranian Monographs 7.) by András Róna-Tas. The Hague: Mouton, 1966. Language 44.1: 147-168.
_____. 1976. ''Studies in the grammatical tradition in Tibet.'' Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
_____. 1993. ''Prolegomena to the First Two Tibetan Grammatical Treatises.'' (Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 30.) Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien.
_____. 1994. “A New Grammar of Written Tibetan.” Review of ''The Classical Tibetan Language'', by Stephen Beyer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 114.1. 67-76.
Source
Menges, Karl H. and Nelly Naumann, Ed. ''Language and Literature--Japanese and the other Altaic Languages.'' Harrossowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, Germany. 1999.