Robbins Burling

1926-Present

            Robbins Burling was born on April 18, 1926 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received his Bachelors Degree from Yale University in 1950 and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1958. After he finished college, Burling got married and had three children. His teaching career began as a Teaching Fellow in Anthropology at Harvard University in the Fall of 1953, the Spring of 1954 and the Spring of 1957.

            Burling was an Instructor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1957-1959. He became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pennsylvania from 1959-1963. From 1959-1963 he was the Assistant Curator of General Ethnology at the University Museum.

            From 1959-1960, Burling was a Visiting Lecturer, Fulbright Program, in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Rangoon, Burma. He became an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan from 1966-1995. Currently, he is a Emeritus Professor at the University of Michigan.

            Throughout his interesting career, Burling  has written many papers about language, culture and the ethnology of India and Bangladesh. He has traveled throughout the world to do research on these topics and has visited many interesting places. Burling has lived in Oslo, Norway, and Meghalaya, India.

            Burling has made great contributions to the field of anthropology and he continues to do so. He is still traveling around the world to learn about different cultures. Publications of Robbins Burling include the following:

1999. "Motivation, Conventionalization and Arbitrariness". In Barbara J. King (ed.) The Origins of Language: What Nonhuman Primates Can Tell Us. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. 307-350. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~burling/motivation.html

1999. Review of Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue, Stuart G. Shanker, and Talbot J. Taylor. Apes, Language and the Human Mind. Language. Vol. 75: 591-593.

1999. "The Cognitive Prerequisites for Language": Target article on language prerequisites. PSYCOLOQUY 10(032). http://.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/

1999. Volume.10/ psyc.99.10.032.language-prerequisites.1.burling http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc-bin/newspy?10.032.

In Press. "Comprehension, Production, and Conventionalization in the Origins of Language". To appear in a book tentatively titled The Emergence of Language, edited by Chris Knight, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, and James Hurford. Due November 2000

Submitted. "The Slow Growth of Language in Children". For a book to be edited by Jean-Louis Dessailles, Alison Wray, and Chris Knight. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rburling/slowgrowth.html Tibeto-Burman

1999. "Phom Phonology and Word List". Linguistics of the Tibeto Burman Area (with L. Amon Phom). 21.2: 13-42. 1999. "Wancho Phonology and Word List". Language of the Tibeto Burman Area. (with Mankai Wanchu). 21: 43-71.

2000. "A Note on 'Kamarupan." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 22.2: 169-170. In Press. "Garo". To appear in Graham Thurgood and Randy LaPolla (eds.) The Sino-Tibetan Languages. London: Curzon Press

In Press. "Languages of North-East India." To appear in Graham Thurgood and Randy LaPolla (eds.) The Sino-Tibetan Languages. London: Curzon Press.

In Press. "Tone Correspondences in the Bodo Languages". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. (With U.V. Joseph).

1998. "The Border that Divides the Garos." In Manis, Kumar, Raha and Aloke. Kumar. Gosh, eds. North-East India: The Human Interface. New Delhi: Gyan Books. 345-363.

1998. "Assimilation and Separatism: Acceptance and Rejection of Bengali Influence by the Mandi of Bangladesh". In Enayet Rahim (ed.) Contributions to Bengal Studies: an Interdisciplinary and International Approach. Dhaka: Pustaka. 397-406

1998. "Return to Rengsanggri" Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities. (Shillong, India). Vol 1. No. 2. 21-45. 1999.

1999. "Mandi Men and Mandi Women" in Willem van Schendel and Ellen Ball (eds.). Bangali Chara Anyanya Jatir Prasanga. The Many People of Bengal: Studies on Non-Bengali Groups. 207-221. In Bengali.

In Press. "Where did the Garos come from?" To appear in a felicitation volume for Professor Milton Sangma, edited by J. P. Singh.

In Press. The Mandis of Bangladesh. for a book to be edited by Philip Gain.

 

Resources:

Former link, http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/csas/faculty/burling.html

www-personal.umich.edu/~rburling/

Burlings, Robbins. Email correspondence. 25 April 2001, 16 August 2001.

 

Written by: Ryan Linneman