William J. Samarin

William J. Samarin (born 1926 in a Russian Molokan community in East Los Angeles) earned his B.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. After serving as missionary-linguist in the Central African Republic (formerly the French colony Oubangui-Chari) for eight years, he taught linguistics at Hartford Seminary Foundation for seven. He joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in 1968 with a split appointment in the departments of Linguistics and Anthroplogy, retiring in 1991. His career as linguist has been devoted almost entirely to anthropological and socio-linguistics, with Africa, pidgins, and the language of religion, especially glossolalia, as topical specializations. With respect to language and colonization he has undertaken research and published on American Indian Sign Language, Chinook Jargon, Sango, the lingua franca of the Central African Republic), Kituba, and Bangala-Lingala. As a linguist and Africanist, he studied ideophony, with special reference to African ideophones especially in the Gbaya language. He is at work finishing a book on the origin, development, and spread of Sango.