Greenberg, Joseph H.

Greenberg, Joseph H. (Harold)

(1915– ) anthropologist, linguist; born in New York City. He directed the West African Languages Survey (1959–66) and taught at Stanford University (1962–85). He used "multilateral comparison" in his groundbreaking and sometimes controversial work on the classification and typology of Amerindian and African languages. His books include the now-standard Languages of Africa (1963), Anthropological Linguistics (1967), and Languages in the Americas (1987).