Lionel Bender (linguist)

Marvin Lionel Bender (1934–2008) was an American author and co-author of several books, publications and essays regarding African languages, particularly from Ethiopia and Sudan. He retired from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He did extensive work in all four language families of Ethiopia: Semitic, Cushitic, Omotic, Nilo-Saharan. Together with J. Donald Bowen, Robert L. Cooper, and Charles A. Ferguson, he carried out the Survey of Language Use and Language Teaching in East Africa, sponsored by the Ford Foundation in 1968-1970. He later performed other research sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Among other works, his books include Amharic Verb Morphology (his PhD dissertation - a generative study of Amharic verbal morphology), Language in Ethiopia (co-edited with C. Ferguson, C. Bowen, R. Cooper), Nilo-Saharan Language Studies, The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia, Preliminary Gaam-English-Gaam Dictionary, Omotic Verb Morphology, and the Berta Lexicon. For many years, he was closely involved with NACAL, the annual North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics.

Life

Bender was born August 18, 1934, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Bender travelled throughout the world, particularly in Northeast Africa, and was an accomplished chess player. Dr. Bender died of complications from a stroke and brain hemorrhage on February 19, 2008 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Works

• 1968: Amharic Verb Morphology: A Generative Approach. University of Texas.
• 1975. Omotic: a new Afroasiatic language family. (University Museum Series, 3.) Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University.
• 1976: (et al.) Language in Ethiopia. London: Oxford University Press.
• 1976: (ed.) The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University.
• 1980: (with: Malik Agaar Ayre) Preliminary Gaam-English-Gaam Dictionary. Carbondale, IL: Dept. of Linguistics, Southern Illinois University.
• 1981: (ed.) Peoples and Cultures of the Ethio-Sudan Borderlands. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University.
• 1981: (with: Thilo C. Schadeberg, eds.) Nilo-Saharan. Dordrecht, Holland & Cinnaminson, NJ: Foris.
• 1983: (ed.) Nilo-Saharan Language Studies. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University.
• 2000. Comparative Morphology of the Omotic Languages. Munich: LINCOM.

Notes

• Obituary by Grover Hudson at the LINGUIST List web resource.

Persondata
Name	Bender, Lionel
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1934
Place of birth
Date of death	2008
Place of death