LINGUIST List 3.745

Sat 03 Oct 1992

All: David Abercrombie

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1. , Re: 3.710 Obituary: David Abercrombie

Message 1: Re: 3.710 Obituary: David Abercrombie

	The notice of David Abercrombie's death very rightly emphasized
both the excellence of his scholarship and his boundless humanitarian
generosity. Even in the weakened condition of his last years he projected
compassionate warmth and bristling intellectual curiosity together. For
all his preeminence as a phonetician, no area of language or linguistics
was outside the scope of his interest. He was a close personal friend
of C. K. Ogden and taught Ogden's Basic English in Greece and Egypt under
the auspices of the British Council before the outbreak of WWII. It is
a story in itself. In Athens, the Basic English classes were so popular
that crowds in the streets, trying to get into overenrolled classes,
drew the attention of the police, who eventually turned hundreds away.
The Basic English success story continued in Alexandria, where the
Abercrombie team of teachers included the young Lawrence Durrell.
	The forthcoming Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics from
Pergamon will include a number of entries prepared by David. Typically,
he was passionately engaged in this and much other work till his last
days. He was a model for all of us.

Terry Gordon (WTGORDONAC.DAL.CA)