Mei Tsu-lin (梅祖麟), a leading academic of historical Chinese linguistics, passed away on Oct. 14 in Ithaca, New York, Academia Sinica announced on Friday.
He was 90.
Mei was an elected member of Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology since 1994.
Photo: Screen grab from Academia Sinica’s Web site
His research focused on Chinese historical grammar, Chinese historical dialectology, the morphology of Chinese characters and Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics, according to Cornell University, where Mei taught from 1971 to 2001.
Mei’s time at Cornell saw him achieve the status of Hu Shih professor emeritus of Chinese literature and philology while chairing the university’s Department of Asian Studies and directing its East Asia Program.
Following his retirement from Cornell, Mei became a visiting professor at prestigious academic institutions around the world, including National Taiwan University and National Tsing Hua University, as well as Stanford University in California, Beijing University, the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing, Tsinghua University in Beijing and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Mei became president of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics in 1994 and was also a member of Taiwan’s Association of Chinese Phonology.
Academia Sinica said that Mei’s professional achievements were preceded by his prestigious education, having attained a doctorate in philosophy from Yale in 1962.
Cornell said that he received a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College in 1954 and a master’s in mathematics from Harvard in 1955, where he also taught from 1964 to 1971.
Academia Sinica said that Mei heavily contributed to the research of modern Chinese grammar and dialectology alongside old morphology.
Mei’s efforts in tracing the grammatic and phonetic development of the Chinese language became a tool used in literary criticism, Academia Sinica said, adding that Mei also proposed that Sanskrit had an impact on modern Chinese poetry.
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