Hall, Robert A.
Hall, Robert A., Jr., 1911-1997. Cornell linguist; died of Parkinson's Disease
Robert Anderson Hall, Jr. was born on April 4, 1911 in Raleigh, North Carolina to Lolabel House Hall and Robert Anderson Hall. The family moved to Minneapolis around 1914, and later to Brooklyn, New York in 1919. Hall attended Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School in Brooklyn. In 1923 Hall changed his name from William Durham Hall to Robert A. Hall, Jr. He began attending Princeton University in 1927, and received his A.B. in 1931. Hall began studying at the University of Chicago the following fall, and received his A.M. in 1935. He taught at the University of Puerto Rico from 1937 to 1939.
By 1995 Hall was a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Italian at Cornell University and the author of numerous books dealing with Italian language, literature and culture. He was a member of the Wodehouse Society and was its president from 1986 to 1985.
Hall is the author of Pidgin and creole languages (1966) The Comic Style of P.G. Wodehouse. (1974), Language, literature, and life: selected essays (1978) The Kensington rune-stone is genuine : linguistic, practical, methodological considerations (1982),A life for language : a biographical memoir of Leonard Bloomfield (1990), The Kensington Rune-Stone: Authentic and Important. A Critical Edition (1995), and many other works.
Obituary:
Robert Anderson Hall Jr., the professor of linguistics emeritus who ventured beyond his field of undisputed expertise in Romance philology to the world of Viking rune-stones, died Dec. 2 (1997) in Cayuga Medical Center following a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. He was 86.
Hall joined the Cornell faculty in 1946 after earning a doctoral degree (1934) from the University of Rome and teaching at Brown and Princeton universities and the University of Puerto Rico. Many of his more than four dozen books and hundreds of articles concerned his research specialties -- comparative grammar of Romance languages, general linguistics and the Creole and Pidgin languages. He was the first linguist to write a structural grammar of the Italian language and to structurally analyze Hungarian and French.
When the University of Chicago conferred an alumnus award in 1978, Hall was cited "one of the world's most distinguished linguists." He was a past-president of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States
In 1979 Hall rekindled controversy when his translation of rune-like characters, carved in a rock from a Minnesota farm field, was said to prove a 1362 visit by Scandinavians to the heartland of the New World, 130 years before Columbus. Subsequent books about the Kennsington Rune-stone were hailed by advocates of pre-Columbian exploration, yet many skeptics were unconvinced and Hall continued to debate the issue, most recently with a 1995 book on the disputed rune-stone.
Survivors include his wife, Alice M. Colby-Hall of Ithaca, a son and two daughters. A memorial service is planned for April 4, 1998, at 2 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Ithaca. Memorial contributions, in lieu of flowers, may be made to the church or a charity of one's choice.
Robert A. Hall, Jr., '31
Robert Anderson Hall Jr. died Dec. 2, 1997, at the Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, N.Y., of Parkinson's disease.
Bob was our class's gift to the science of linguistics. After his AB, he earned his MA from Chicago U. and his doctorate from the U. of Rome. He taught courses in modern languages at the U. of Puerto Rico, Princeton, and Brown. He became associate professor of linguistics at Cornell in 1946, full professor in 1950, and professor emeritus of linguistics and Italian in 1976.
Bob published over 50 books and more than 500 articles relating to linguistics, and became president of the Linguistic Assn. of Canada and the U.S. in 1984. He was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fulbright lecturer. During WWII, Bob took part in the Army's Intensive Language Program, teaching, Italian, French, and Melanesian Pidgin.
As a sideline, Bob sang in choirs and choruses, and composed a Mass (you guessed it) in Latin.
His first wife, the mother of his children, Frances I. Adkins, died in 1975. He is survived by his second wife, Alice M. ColbyHall, son Philip, daughters Diana Goodal and Caroline Erickson, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Alice, Bob's widow, has had an extraordinary career of her own, recently mentioned in '31's class notes.
The Class of 1931
PAW April 22nd, 1998