20th Issue of “Mother Tongue” dedicated to Dr. Harold C. Fleming (1926-2015)
In honor of Harold C. Fleming, emeritus professor of Anthropology and African Studies at BU, who passed this past year in Gloucester, MA, the 20th issue of Mother Tongue, a journal of linguistics he founded in 1995, will be dedicated to his memory. The issue will include articles by several eminent anthropologists and genetic linguists, including Stephen Zegura (U. of Arizona), Gábor Takács (ELTE, Hungary), Paul Black (Charles Darwin U.), Václav Blažek (Masaryk U.), and Roger Blench (Cambridge U.), among others. It will also include a biography of Dr. Fleming, and a list of his publications.
Dr. Fleming had a long career at BU, beginning in 1965. He retired in 1989, and continued as a Research Fellow in the African Studies Center and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology.
John D. Bengtson, vice president of the Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory (ASLIP), writes that “Hal Fleming was a distinguished anthropologist and linguist, specializing in East African languages and kinship systems and especially in Ethiopian languages. During his years at BU, he established himself as one of the world’s experts in the history and relationships of African languages, and a leading supporter of the controversial efforts of Joseph Greenberg to extend the methods of historical linguistics into remote prehistory. Hal was a world figure in his discipline, developing ties with the Moscow circle of historical linguists and eventually founding and editing an international newsletter on historical linguistics that became the journal Mother Tongue. Hal Fleming’s network gave rise to the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, for which he served as president from 1988 to 1996, and in which he remained active until his passing. With his full white beard and well-endowed tummy, Hal was also the fellow who who dressed up as an eerily convincing Santa Claus for the annual winter anthropology party. Always ready with a kind word and a twinkle in his eye, Hal was an esteemed colleague and a dear friend to many in African Studies, Anthropology, History, and Linguistics. He will be remembered fondly.”
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