George van Driem

George "Sjors" van Driem (born March 19, 1957 in Nassawadox, Virginia) is a Dutch linguist at Leiden University, where he holds the chair of Descriptive Linguistics.

George "Suresh" van Driem

Background

Van Driem earned a B.S. in biology at the University of Virginia in 1979, an M.S. in Slavic languages and linguistics at Leiden University in 1983, and a Ph.D. in linguistics at Leiden in 1987, with a doctoral dissertation on the grammar of Limbu, a language of Eastern Nepal and Sikkim. In 1999 he became a professor at his alma mater.

Research

Van Driem directs the Himalayan Languages Project and participates in the research program Languages and Genes of the Greater Himalayan Region. He is an authority on Tibeto-Burman, a language family often considered a subgroup of Sino-Tibetan. He developed the Darwinian theory of language known as Symbiosism, and he is author of the philosophy of Symbiomism. Van Driem has been conducting field studies in the Himalayas since 1983. He was commissioned by the Royal Government of Bhutan to codify a grammar of the national language Dzongkha, design a phonological romanisation for the language known as Roman Dzongkha, and complete a survey of the languages and language communities of the kingdom. He and native Dzongkha speaker Karma Tshering co-authored the authoritative textbook on Dzongkha. George van Driem has also written grammars of Limbu, Dumi and the Bumthang language and a two-volume ethnolinguistic handbook of the greater Himalayan region.

Since 2001, van Driem has also done field work with geneticist Peter de Knijff taking DNA samples from over 2,000 volunteers throughout Nepal and Bhutan while indicating the native language of each volunteer, to study the correlation of genes and languages. Based on this work, van Driem has advocated elevating "Tibeto-Burman" to displace "Sino-Tibetan" as the top-tier language family, with the Chinese languages (Sinitic) classified as a sub-branch within the Tibeto-Burman/Sino-Tibetan family. ^[1]

Apart from his academic activities, he paraglides and scuba dives.

Publications

• van Driem, George (2007). "Austroasiatic phylogeny and the Austroasiatic homeland in light of recent population genetic studies". Mon-Khmer studies: a journal of Southeast Asian languages and cultures (37): 1–14. 

• van Driem, George (2005), "The Language Organism: The Leiden theory of language evolution", in Minett, James W.; Wang, William S-Y., Language Acquisition, Change and Emergence: Essays in Evolutionary Linguistics, Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, pp. 331–340, http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~junwang4/langev/localcopy/pdf/vandriem05languageOrganism.pdf 
• van Driem, George (2004), "Language as organism: A brief introduction to the Leiden theory of language evolution", in Ying-chin, Lin; Fang-min, Hsu; Lee, Chun-chih et al., Studies on Sino-Tibetan Languages: Papers in Honor of Professor Hwang-cherng Gong on his Seventieth Birthday, Language and Linguistics Monograph Series W-4, Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, pp. 1–9 
• van Driem, George (2003), "The Language Organism: The Leiden theory of language evolution", in Mírovský, Jiří; Kotěšovcová, Anna; Hajičová, Eva, Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Linguists, Prague, July 24-29, 2003, Prague: Matematicko-fyzikální fakulty Univerzity Karlovy 

• van Driem, George (2003), "Tibeto-Burman Phylogeny and Prehistory: Languages, Material Culture and Genes", in Bellwood, Peter; Renfrew, Colin, Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis, (Ch. 19) 

• van Driem, George (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region : Containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language. Brill. pp. 1412. ISBN 9004120629. 
• van Driem, George L; Karma Tshering of Gaselô (collab) (1998). Dzongkha. Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region. Leiden: Research School CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies. ISBN 905789002X. 
• van Driem, George L (1993). "Language policy in Bhutan". SOAS, London. http://repository.forcedmigration.org/pdf/?pid=fmo:3003. 
• van Driem, George (1993). A Grammar of Dumi. Mouton De Gruyter. pp. 472. ISBN 3110123517. 
• van Driem, George. Een taal van Midden-Bhutan, met een overzicht van de talen en volkeren van Bhutan. 
• van Driem, George (1992). The Grammar of Dzongkha. Thimphu, Bhutan: RGoB, Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC). 
• van Driem, George (1991). Guide to Official Dzongkha Romanization. Thimphu, Bhutan: Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC). 
• van Driem, George (n.d.). The First Linguistic Survey of Bhutan. Thimphu, Bhutan: Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC). 
• van Driem, George (1987). A Grammar of Limbu. Mouton De Gruyter. pp. 565. ISBN 3110112825. 

References

1. ^ Van Driem, George "Tibeto-Burman Phylogeny and Prehistory: Languages, Material Culture and Genes". Bellwood, Peter & Renfrew, Colin (eds) Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis (2003), Ch 19.

External links

• The Dutch god of language
• George van Driem, Open Semiotics Resource Center
• Himalayan Languages Project