George Leonard Trager

Trager, George Leonard

 

Born Mar. 22, 1906, in Newark, N. J. American linguist. Member and president (1960) of the Linguistic Society of America.

Trager graduated from Rutgers University in 1926 and received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1932. From 1936 to 1938 he did postdoctoral work at Yale University, where he taught from 1936 to 1946. Trager has taught at the University of Oklahoma (1946–48), the University of Buffalo (1956–67), Southern Methodist University (1967–71), and Northern Illinois University (1971–74).

Trager’s principal works deal with North American Indian languages. Under the influence of F. Boas and E. Sapir, he studied language in close connection with anthropology. From 1961 to 1967 he studied the culture of the Taos Indians and later that of the Pueblo Indians. He has published works on the phonology of English and other Indo-European languages. Trager belongs to the school of descriptive linguistics.

WORKS

Language and Languages. San Francisco, 1972.

REFERENCES

Studies in Linguistics: In Honor of George L. Trager. The Hague-Paris, 1972.
Trager, F. H. An Annotated Bibliography of the Publications and Writings of George L. Trager Through 1970. (Studies in Linguistics: Occasional Papers, no. 12.) [Dallas, 1971.]

R. A. AGEEVA