Kurt R. Jankowsky
Professor Emeritus of German
jankowsk@georgetown.edu
Kurt R. Jankowsky obtained his M.A. degree (= Staatsexamen) in German and English, his Dr. phil. degree in German, English, and Philosophy from the University of Münster, and his M.E. degree (= Assessoren-Examen) at Bochum in Germany. For four years he taught German language and linguistics at the University of Poona / India before joining Georgetown University in 1962. From 1964 to 1979 he served as Chair of the German Department. He spent several summers in Salzburg / Austria directing Georgetown's Summer Program there and was instrumental in relocating the Program to Trier / Germany in the early 1970s, where he spent about half a dozen summers as the Program Director. His principal research interest has remained the field of Germanic linguistics, specifically the numerous dimensions of the history of language, which resulted in eight book publications and approximately 100 journal articles. He has also taught, done research, and published on matters involving semantic theory, for instance, the interrelation of language and thought. Since the introduction of the Ph. D. program in German he has mentored about 20 theses specializing on linguistic aspects. Part of his extra-curricular activities has been conducting the Father Bunn, S.J., Memorial Lecture Series on German-American Relations which he established in 1972. So far about 120 distinguished representatives of public life, mostly from Germany, have presented their ideas on transatlantic cooperation before an audience composed of Georgetonians and non-Georgetonians from the Greater Washington area. Other international activities involved teaching linguistic courses in Tokyo and participating in international linguistics conferences in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. He was recently appointed Honorary President of the English Philological Society of Japan, Tokyo, and elected Fellow of the RSA, London.
Since March 2003 he was actively involved in the second edition of the Enyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, both as contributor of 14 articles and as Biographies Section Editor with responsibility for the selection of the 700-plus "Most distinguished linguists past and present, worldwide," for assigning their biographies to appropriate authors, and editing the respective manuscripts. The14 volumes of this greatest reference work of its kind finally appeared early in Spring 2006, published by Elsevier Ltd., Oxford / U.K.
