Warren Cowgill

American linguist (1929–1985)

Sheila Blau Levitsky

(m. 1966⁠–⁠1970)

Kathryn Louise Markhus

(m. 1970)

Children1 (born 1967)Parents

George Dewey Cowgill
Ruby Eugenia Smith Cowgill

RelativesGeorge Cowgill (twin brother)Academic backgroundEducation

Stanford University
Yale University

ThesisThe Indo-European Long-Vowel Preterits (1957)Doctoral advisor

Paul Tedesco
Konstantin Reichardt

Academic workInstitutionsYale UniversityMain interestsIndo-European languages

Warren Crawford Cowgill (/ˈkoʊɡɪl/ KOH-gill;^[1] December 19, 1929 – June 20, 1985) was an American linguist. He was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica's authority on Indo-European linguistics.^[2] Two separate Indo-European sound laws are named after him, both called Cowgill's law in Greek and Germanic respectively.

Cowgill was unusual among Indo-European linguists of his time in believing that Indo-European should be classified as a branch of Indo-Hittite, with Hittite as a sister language of the Indo-European languages, rather than a daughter language.

Warren Cowgill and his twin brother, anthropologist George Cowgill, were born near Grangeville, Idaho. Along with his brother, he graduated from Stanford University in 1952 and received a Ph.D. from Yale in 1957. He was a member of the Yale faculty in the Department of Linguistics until his death in 1985.^[3]^[4]

References

^ Cowgill, Warren C. (2006). "Cowgill on Cowgill: Autobiographical Letter to the LSA Archives" (PDF). In Klein, Jared (ed.). The Collected Writings of Warren Cowgill. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Beech Stave Press. p. xlvii. ISBN 0-9747927-1-3. the first syllable rhymes with know, not with how.
^ "Indo-European languages," Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite, Chicago 2007.
^ "Dr. Warren C. Cowgill". The New York Times. June 25, 1985. Archived from the original on January 30, 2013.
^ "Linguistics at Yale University". Retrieved March 23, 2007.