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64-468: The term "Bantoid" was first used by Krause in 1895 for languages that showed resemblances in vocabulary to Bantu. Joseph Greenberg , in his 1963 The Languages of Africa , defined Bantoid as the group to which Bantu belongs together with its closest relatives; this is the sense in which the term is still used today. However, according to Roger Blench , the Bantoid languages probably do not actually form

128-438: A book, The Languages of Africa , in 1955). He revised the book and published it again during 1963, followed by a nearly identical edition of 1966 (reprinted without change during 1970). A few more changes of the classification were made by Greenberg in an article during 1981. Greenberg grouped the hundreds of African languages into four families, which he dubbed Afroasiatic , Nilo-Saharan , Niger–Congo , and Khoisan . During

192-544: A class taught by Franz Boas concerning American Indian languages . He graduated in 1936 with a bachelor's degree. With references from Boas and Ruth Benedict , he was accepted as a graduate student by Melville J. Herskovits at Northwestern University in Chicago and graduated in 1940 with a doctorate degree. During the course of his graduate studies, Greenberg did fieldwork among the Hausa people of Nigeria, where he learned

256-558: A coherent group. A proposal that divided Bantoid into North Bantoid and South Bantoid was introduced by Williamson. In this proposal, the Mambiloid and Dakoid languages (and later Tikar ) are grouped together as North Bantoid, while everything else Bantoid is subsumed under South Bantoid; Ethnologue uses this classification. The phylogenetic unity of the North Bantoid group is sometimes thought to be questionable, and

320-419: A combination of errors, accidental similarity, excessive semantic latitude in comparisons, borrowings, onomatopoeia, etc. However, Harvard geneticist David Reich notes that recent genetic studies have identified patterns that support Greenberg's Amerind classification: the "First American” category. "The cluster of populations that he predicted to be most closely related based on language were in fact verified by

384-684: A different sub-committee of experts in the field for example on dairy cattle . The National Academy of Sciences meets annually in Washington, D.C., which is documented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), its scholarly journal. The National Academies Press is the publisher for the National Academies and makes more than 5,000 publications freely available on its website. From 2004 to 2017,

448-511: A formal nomination, followed by a vetting period, and culminates in a final ballot at the academy's annual meeting in April each year. Members are affiliated with a specific scientific field in one of six so-called "classes", which include: Physical and Mathematical Sciences; Biological Sciences; Engineering and Applied Sciences; Biomedical Sciences; Behavioral and Social Sciences; and Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. Over

512-532: A letter signed by 255 Academy members was published in Science magazine , decrying "political assaults" against climate change scientists. This was in response to a civil investigative demand on the University of Virginia (UVA) by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli , seeking a broad range of documents from Michael E. Mann , a former UVA professor from 1999 to 2005. Mann, who currently works at

576-542: A number of different awards: In 2005, the national science academies of the G8  forum (including the National Academy of Sciences) and science academies of Brazil, China, and India (three of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the developing world) signed a statement on the global response to climate change . The statement stresses that the scientific understanding of climate change had become sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. On May 7, 2010,

640-515: A single genetic unit. This excludes the Austronesian languages , which have been established as associated with a more recent migration of people. Greenberg's subgrouping of these languages has not been accepted by the few specialists who have worked on the classification of these languages. However, the work of Stephen Wurm (1982) and Malcolm Ross (2005) has provided considerable evidence for his once-radical idea that these languages form

704-625: A single genetic unit. Wurm stated that the lexical similarities between Great Andamanese and the West Papuan and Timor–Alor families "are quite striking and amount to virtual formal identity [...] in a number of instances." He believes this to be due to a linguistic substratum . Most linguists concerned with the native languages of the Americas classify them into 150 to 180 independent language families. Some believe that two language families, Eskimo–Aleut and Na-Dené , were distinct, perhaps

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768-400: A time, his classification was considered bold and speculative, especially the proposal of a Nilo-Saharan language family. Now, apart from Khoisan, it is generally accepted by African specialists and has been used as a basis for further work by other scholars. Greenberg's work on African languages has been criticised by Lyle Campbell and Donald Ringe, who do not believe that his classification

832-424: A tripartite overall grouping: he considers Afroasiatic, Nostratic and Elamite to be roughly equidistant and more closely related to each other than to any other language family. Sergei Starostin's school has now included Afroasiatic in a broadly defined Nostratic. They reserve the term Eurasiatic to designate the narrower subgrouping, which comprises the rest of the macrofamily. Recent proposals thus differ mainly on

896-568: Is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization . NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine , along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). As a national academy , new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Election to

960-666: Is a subfamily of Nilo-Saharan. During 1971 Greenberg proposed the Indo-Pacific macrofamily , which groups together the Papuan languages (a large number of language families of New Guinea and nearby islands) with the native languages of the Andaman Islands and Tasmania but excludes the Australian Aboriginal languages . Its principal feature was to reduce the manifold language families of New Guinea to

1024-477: Is an NAS conference facility. The president is the head of the academy, elected by a majority vote of the membership to serve in this position for a term to be determined by the governing Council, not to exceed six years, and may be re-elected for a second term. The academy has had 22 presidents since its foundation. The current president is geophysicist Marcia K. McNutt , the first woman to hold this position. Her term expires on June 30, 2022. The academy gives

1088-406: Is an attempt to demonstrate such means. Greenberg argued for the virtues of breadth over depth. He advocated restricting the amount of material to be compared (to basic vocabulary, morphology, and known paths of sound change) and increasing the number of languages to be compared to all the languages in a given area. This would make it possible to compare numerous languages reliably. At the same time,

1152-539: Is justified by his data and request a re-examination of his macro-phyla by "reliable methods" (Ringe 1993:104). Harold Fleming and Lionel Bender , who were sympathetic to Greenberg's classification, acknowledged that at least some of his macrofamilies (particularly the Nilo-Saharan and the Khoisan macrofamilies) are not accepted completely by most linguists and may need to be divided (Campbell 1997). Their objection

1216-708: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1973) and the American Philosophical Society (1975). In 1996 he received the highest award for a scholar in Linguistics, the Gold Medal of Philology. Greenberg is considered the founder of modern linguistic typology , a field that he has revitalized with his publications in the 1960s and 1970s. Greenberg's reputation rests partly on his contributions to synchronic linguistics and

1280-491: The Dakoid languages are often now placed outside Bantoid. But the work did establish Southern Bantoid as a valid genetic unit. Southern Bantoid includes the well known and numerous Bantu languages . Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist , known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Joseph Greenberg

1344-564: The Hausa language . The subject of his doctoral dissertation was the influence of Islam on a Hausa group that, unlike most others, had not converted to it. During 1940, he began postdoctoral studies at Yale University . These were interrupted by service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II , for which he worked as a codebreaker in North Africa and participated with the landing at Casablanca . He then served in Italy until

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1408-501: The International Science Council (ISC). Although there is no formal relationship with state and local academies of science, there often is informal dialogue. The National Academy is governed by a 17-member Council, made up of five officers (president, vice president, home secretary, international secretary, and treasurer) and 12 Councilors, all of whom are elected from among the academy membership. Agencies of

1472-562: The Ivy League , account for nearly 28% of all members ever elected. Those ten are also precisely the only institutions in the entire history of the NAS to have had 100 or more members overall. On the list for living members, only 14 institutions have 50 or more members overall, including the medical school (where it applies). They represent 32% of all living members of the NAS. The National Academy of Sciences maintains multiple buildings around

1536-682: The Prague school of structuralism , which influenced his work. In 1962, Greenberg relocated to the anthropology department at Stanford University in California, where he continued working for the rest of his life. In 1965 Greenberg served as president of the African Studies Association . That same year, he was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences . He was later elected to

1600-483: The Americas has generated lively debate, but has been criticized strongly; it is rejected by most specialists of indigenous languages of the Americas and also by most historical linguists. Specialists of the individual language families have found extensive inaccuracies and errors in Greenberg's data, such as including data from non-existent languages, erroneous transcriptions of the forms compared, misinterpretations of

1664-500: The NAS, NAE, and NAM. Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences hosts exhibitions exploring intersections of art, science, and culture such as Mathemalchemy . The 2012 Presidential Award for Math and Science Teaching ceremony was held here on March 5, 2014. Approximately 150 staff members work at the NAS Building. In June 2012, it reopened to visitors after a major two-year restoration project which restored and improved

1728-468: The National Academy is one of the highest honors in the scientific field. Members of the National Academy of Sciences serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation" on science, engineering, and medicine. The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code . Congress legislated, and President Abraham Lincoln signed, a 1863 Act of Congress establishing

1792-505: The National Academy of Sciences administered the Marian Koshland Science Museum to provide public exhibits and programming related to its policy work. The museum's exhibits focused on climate change and infectious disease . In 2017, the museum closed and made way for a new science outreach program called LabX. The Act of Incorporation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863, created

1856-447: The National Academy of Sciences and named 50 charter members. Many of the original NAS members came from the so-called " Scientific Lazzaroni ", an informal network of mostly physical scientists working in the vicinity of Cambridge, Massachusetts ( c.  1850 ). In 1863, the organizers enlisted the support of Alexander Dallas Bache , and also Charles Henry Davis , a professional astronomer who had been recently recalled from

1920-447: The National Academy of Sciences as an independent, trusted government institution created for the purpose of "providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology [and] to provide scientific advice to the government 'whenever called upon' by any government department", an objective that promulgated the academy with the broad and enduring purpose of enriching and providing resources to any part of

1984-423: The National Academy of Sciences includes 2,687 NAS members and 531 international members . It employed about 1,100 staff in 2005. Some 190 members have won a Nobel Prize. By its own admission in 1989, the addition of women to the academy "continues at a dismal trickle"; at that time there were 1,516 male members and 57 female members. The National Academy of Sciences is one of the 135 member organizations of

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2048-657: The National Academy of Sciences – formerly located at 525 E St., N.W. – hosted visits from the public, school field trips, and permanent science exhibits. NAS also maintains conference centers in California and Massachusetts. The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center is located on 100 Academy Drive in Irvine, California , near the campus of the University of California, Irvine ; it offers a conference center and houses several NAS programs. The J. Erik Jonsson Conference Center, located at 314 Quissett Avenue in Woods Hole, Massachusetts ,

2112-661: The Navy to Washington to head the Bureau of Navigation . They also elicited support from Swiss-American geologist Louis Agassiz and American mathematician Peirce , who together planned the steps whereby the National Academy of Sciences was to be established. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts was to name Agassiz to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution . Agassiz was to come to Washington, D.C., at

2176-502: The Nostratic hypothesis. Greenberg basically agreed with the Nostratic concept, though he stressed a deep internal division between its northern 'tier' (his Eurasiatic) and a southern 'tier' (principally Afroasiatic and Dravidian). The American Nostraticist Allan Bomhard considers Eurasiatic a branch of Nostratic, alongside other branches: Afroasiatic, Elamo-Dravidian , and Kartvelian . Similarly, Georgiy Starostin (2002) arrives at

2240-466: The Nostraticists had excluded from comparison because they are single languages rather than language families) and in excluding Afroasiatic . At about this time, Russian Nostraticists, notably Sergei Starostin , constructed a revised version of Nostratic. It was slightly larger than Greenberg's grouping but it also excluded Afroasiatic. Recently, a consensus has been emerging among proponents of

2304-548: The United States government fund about 85 percent of the academy's activities. Further funding comes from state governments, private foundations, and industrial organizations. The council has the ability ad-hoc to delegate certain tasks to committees. For example, the Committee on Animal Nutrition has produced a series of Nutrient requirements of domestic animals reports since at least 1944, each one being initiated by

2368-544: The United States. The National Academy of Sciences Building is located at 2101 Constitution Avenue , in northwest Washington, D.C. ; it sits on the National Mall , adjacent to the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building and in front of the headquarters of the U.S. State Department . The building has a neoclassical architectural style and was built by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue . The building

2432-552: The bill incorporating the Academy, including in it the name of fifty incorporators". During the last hours of the session, when the Senate was immersed in the rush of last-minute business before its adjournment, Senator Wilson introduced the bill. Without examining it or debating its provisions, both the Senate and House approved it, and President Lincoln signed it. Although hailed as a great step forward in government recognition of

2496-505: The building's historic spaces, increased accessibility, and brought the building's aging infrastructure and facilities up to date. More than 1,000 National Academies staff members work at The Keck Center of the National Academies at 500 Fifth Street in northwest Washington, D.C. The Keck Center provides meeting space and houses the National Academies Press Bookstore. The Marian Koshland Science Museum of

2560-733: The course of his work, Greenberg invented the term "Afroasiatic" to replace the earlier term "Hamito-Semitic", after showing that the Hamitic group, accepted widely since the 19th century, is not a valid language family. Another major feature of his work was to establish the classification of the Bantu languages , which occupy much of Central and Southern Africa, as a part of the Niger–Congo family, rather than as an independent family as many Bantuists had maintained. Greenberg's classification rested largely in evaluating competing earlier classifications. For

2624-468: The end of the war. Before leaving for Europe during 1943, Greenberg married Selma Berkowitz, whom he had met during his first year at Columbia University. After the war, Greenberg taught at the University of Minnesota before returning to Columbia University in 1948 as a teacher of anthropology . While in New York, he became acquainted with Roman Jakobson and André Martinet . They introduced him to

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2688-469: The entire history of the NAS, Harvard University is associated with the most members (331) overall, while the University of California at Berkeley is associated with the most members (255) without including the medical school. E.g. of the topmost schools, UC Berkeley/MIT/Princeton/Caltech do not have medical schools, while Harvard/Stanford do. The top ten institutions, two of which are from the University of California System and another four of which are in

2752-575: The establishment of the Nobel Prize at the end of the 19th century. In 1870, the congressional charter was amended to remove the limitation on the number of members. In 2013, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked to write a speech for the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address in which he made the point that one of Lincoln's greatest legacies was establishing the National Academy of Sciences in that same year, which had

2816-475: The federal government—rather than as a tool of one branch, or executive agencies, which adds a risk or propensity of becoming the tool of one part of the government. The goal was somewhat unusual at the time, and also different than other knowledge based entities serving a branch of government, such as the Library of Congress. The academy receives no compensation from the government for its services. As of 2024 ,

2880-412: The genetic patterns in populations for which data are available.” Nevertheless, this category of "First American" people also interbred with and contributed a significant amount of genes to the ancestors of both Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dené populations, with 60% and 90% "First American" DNA respectively constituting the genetic makeup of the two groups. Later in his life, Greenberg proposed that nearly all of

2944-486: The goal of determining broad patterns of relationship, the idea was not to get every word right but to detect patterns. From the beginning with his theory of mass comparison, Greenberg addressed why chance resemblance and borrowing were not obstacles to its being useful. Despite that, critics consider those phenomena caused difficulties for his theory. Greenberg first termed his method "mass comparison" in an article of 1954 (reprinted in Greenberg 1955). As of 1987, he replaced

3008-513: The government's expense to plan the organization with the others. This bypassed Joseph Henry , who was reluctant to have a bill for such an academy presented to Congress . This was in the belief that such a resolution would be "opposed as something at variance with our democratic institutions". Nevertheless, Henry soon became the second President of NAS. Agassiz, Davis, Peirce, Benjamin Gould and Senator Wilson met at Bache's house and "hurriedly wrote

3072-660: The language families of northern Eurasia belong to a single higher-order family, which he termed Eurasiatic . The only exception was Yeniseian , which has been related to a wider Dené–Caucasian grouping, also including Sino-Tibetan . During 2008 Edward Vajda related Yeniseian to the Na-Dené languages of North America as a Dené–Yeniseian family. The Eurasiatic grouping resembles the older Nostratic groupings of Holger Pedersen and Vladislav Illich-Svitych by including Indo-European , Uralic , and Altaic . It differs by including Nivkh , Japonic , Korean , and Ainu (which

3136-487: The long-term effect of "setting our Nation on a course of scientifically enlightened governance, without which we all may perish from this Earth". The academy currently (as of late-2024) has 6892 members, including international ones, both past and present. 3218 of them are living. Existing members elect new members for life. Up to 120 members are elected every year while up to 30 foreign citizens may be elected as international members annually. The election process begins with

3200-400: The meanings of words used for comparison, and entirely spurious forms. Historical linguists also reject the validity of the method of multilateral (or mass) comparison upon which the classification is based. They argue that he has not provided a convincing case that the similarities presented as evidence are due to inheritance from an earlier common ancestor rather than being explained by

3264-482: The order of meaningful elements". Greenberg rejected the opinion, prevalent among linguists since the mid-20th century, that comparative reconstruction was the only method to discover relationships between languages. He argued that genetic classification is methodologically prior to comparative reconstruction, or the first stage of it: one cannot engage in the comparative reconstruction of languages until one knows which languages to compare (1957:44). He also criticized

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3328-414: The precise inclusion of Dravidian and Kartvelian. Greenberg continued to work on this project after he was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer and until he died during May 2001. His colleague and former student Merritt Ruhlen ensured the publication of the final volume of his Eurasiatic work (2002) after his death. National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences ( NAS )

3392-636: The prevalent opinion that comprehensive comparisons of two languages at a time (which commonly take years to perform) could establish language families of any size. He argued that, even for 8 languages, there are already 4,140 ways to classify them into distinct families, while for 25 languages there are 4,638,590,332,229,999,353 ways (1957:44). For comparison, the Niger–Congo family is said to have some 1,500 languages. He thought language families of any size needed to be established by some scholastic means other than bilateral comparison. The theory of mass comparison

3456-490: The process would provide a check on accidental resemblances through the sheer number of languages under review. The mathematical probability that resemblances are accidental decreases strongly with the number of languages concerned (1957:39). Greenberg used the premise that mass "borrowing" of basic vocabulary is unknown. He argued that borrowing, when it occurs, is concentrated in cultural vocabulary and clusters "in certain semantic areas", making it easy to detect (1957:39). With

3520-589: The purpose, but the Academy shall receive no compensation whatever for any services to the Government of the United States. The National Academies did not solve the problems facing a nation in Civil War as the Lazzaroni had hoped, nor did it centralize American scientific efforts. However, election to the National Academy did come to be considered "the pinnacle of scientific achievement for Americans" until

3584-737: The quest to identify linguistic universals . During the late 1950s, Greenberg began to examine languages covering a wide geographic and genetic distribution. He located a number of interesting potential universals as well as many strong cross-linguistic tendencies. In particular, Greenberg conceptualized the idea of "implicational universal" , which has the form, "if a language has structure X, then it must also have structure Y." For example, X might be "mid front rounded vowels" and Y "high front rounded vowels" (for terminology see phonetics ). Many scholars adopted this kind of research following Greenberg's example and it remains important in synchronic linguistics. Like Noam Chomsky , Greenberg sought to discover

3648-576: The results of later migrations into the New World. Early on, Greenberg (1957:41, 1960) became convinced that many of the language groups considered unrelated could be classified into larger groupings. In his 1987 book Language in the Americas , while agreeing that the Eskimo–Aleut and Na-Dené groupings as distinct, he proposed that all the other Native American languages belong to a single language macro-family, which he termed Amerind . Language in

3712-555: The role of science in American society, at the time, the National Academy of Sciences created enormous ill-feelings among scientists, whether or not they were named as incorporators. The act states: [T]he Academy shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art, the actual expense of such investigations, examinations, experiments, and reports to be paid from appropriations which may be made for

3776-546: The term "mass comparison" with "multilateral comparison", to emphasize its contrast with the bilateral comparisons recommended by linguistics textbooks. He believed that multilateral comparison was not in any way opposed to the comparative method, but is, on the contrary, its necessary first step (Greenberg, 1957:44). According to him, comparative reconstruction should have the status of an explanatory theory for facts already established by language classification (Greenberg, 1957:45). Most historical linguists (Campbell 2001:45) reject

3840-666: The universal structures on which human language is based. Unlike Chomsky, Greenberg's method was functionalist , rather than formalist . An argument to reconcile the Greenbergian and Chomskyan methods can be found in Linguistic Universals (2006), edited by Ricardo Mairal and Juana Gil. Many who are strongly opposed to Greenberg's methods of language classification (see below) acknowledge the importance of his typological work. In 1963 he published an article : "Some universals of grammar with particular reference to

3904-551: The use of mass comparison as a method for establishing genealogical relationships between languages. Among the most outspoken critics of mass comparison have been Lyle Campbell , Donald Ringe , William Poser , and the late R. Larry Trask . Greenberg is known widely for his development of a classification system for the languages of Africa , which he published as a series of articles in the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology from 1949 to 1954 (reprinted together as

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3968-451: Was methodological : if mass comparison is not a valid method, it cannot be expected to have brought order successfully out of the confusion of African languages. By contrast, some linguists have sought to combine Greenberg's four African families into larger units. In particular, Edgar Gregersen (1972) proposed joining Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan into a larger family, which he termed Kongo-Saharan . Roger Blench (1995) suggests Niger–Congo

4032-559: Was born on May 28, 1915, to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York . His first great interest was music. At the age of 14, he gave a piano concert in Steinway Hall . He continued to play the piano frequently throughout his life. After graduating from James Madison High School , he decided to pursue a scholarly career rather than a musical one. He enrolled at Columbia College in New York in 1932. During his senior year, he attended

4096-469: Was dedicated in 1924 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places . Goodhue engaged a team of artists and architectural sculptors including Albert Herter , Lee Lawrie , and Hildreth Meière to design interior embellishments celebrating the history and significance of science. The building is used for lectures, symposia, exhibitions, and concerts, in addition to annual meetings of

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