astronomy

George van Driem

George van Driem is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand George van Driem rather than just read about it. In short: George L. "Sjors" van Driem (born 19 March 1957) is a Dutch professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Bern. He studied East Asian languages and is known for the father tongue hypothesis.

Key takeaways

George van Driem belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect George van Driem to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of George van Driem from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

George L. "Sjors" van Driem (born 19 March 1957) is a Dutch professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Bern. He studied East Asian languages and is known for the father tongue hypothesis.

Education Leiden University, 1983–1987 (PhD, A Grammar of Limbu) Leiden University, 1981–1983 (MA Slavic, BA English, MA General Linguistics) Leiden University, 1979–1981 (BA Slavic) University of Virginia at Charlottesville, 1975–1979 (BA Biology) Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 1978–1979 Watling Island Marine Biological Station on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas, 1977 Duke University at Durham, North Carolina, 1976

Research

George van Driem has conducted field research in the Himalayas since 1983. He was commissioned by the Royal Government of Bhutan to codify a grammar of Dzongkha, the national language, design a phonological romanisation for the language known as Roman Dzongkha, and complete a survey of the language communities of the kingdom. He and native Dzongkha speaker Karma Tshering co-authored the authoritative textbook on Dzongkha. Van Driem wrote grammars of Limbu and Dumi, Kiranti languages spoken in eastern Nepal, and the Bumthang language of central Bhutan. He authored Languages of the Himalayas, a two-volume ethnolinguistic handbook of the greater Himalayan region. Under a programme named Languages and Genes of the Greater Himalayan Region, conducted in collaboration with the Government of Nepal and the Royal Government of Bhutan, he collected DNA from many indigenous peoples of the Himalayas. In Bern, Van Driem currently runs the research programme Strategische Zielsetzungen im Subkontinent (Strategic Objectives in the Subcontinent), which aims to analyse and describe endangered and poorly documented languages in South Asia. This programme of research is effectively a diversification of the Himalayan Languages Project, which he directed at Leiden University, where he held the chair of Descriptive Linguistics until 2009. He and his research team have documented over a dozen endangered languages of the greater Himalayan region, producing analytical grammars and lexica and recording morphologically analysed native texts. His interdisciplinary research in collaboration with geneticists has led to advances in the reconstruction of Asian ethnolinguistic prehistory. Based on linguistic palaeontology, ethnolinguistic phylogeography, rice genetics and the Holocene distribution of faunal species, he identified the ancient Hmong–Mien and Austroasiatics as the first domesticators of Asian rice and published a theory on the homelands and prehistoric dispersal of the Hmong–Mien, Austroasiatic and Trans-Himalayan linguistic phyla. His historical linguistic work on linguistic phylogeny has replaced the unsupported Sino-Tibetan hypothesis with the older, more agnostic Tibeto-Burman phylogenetic model, for which he proposed the neutral geographical name Trans-Himalayan in 2004. He developed the Darwinian theory of language known as Symbiosism, and he is author of the philosophy of Symbiomism.

Selected publications — (1987). A Grammar of Limbu. Mouton De Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-011282-5. — (1997). "Sino-Bodic". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 60 (3): 455–488. doi:10.1017/S0041977X0003250X. S2CID 246638512. — (2001). Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill. ISBN 90-04-12062-9. — (2003). "The Language Organism: The Leiden theory of language evolution". In Mírovský, Jiří; Kotěšovcová, Anna; Hajičová, Eva (eds.). Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Linguists, Prague, July 24–29, 2003. Prague: Matematicko-fyzikální fakulty Univerzity Karlovy. — (2002). "Tibeto-Burman Phylogeny and Prehistory: Languages, Material Culture and Genes". In Bellwood, Peter; Renfrew, Colin (eds.). Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. pp. 233–249. ISBN 1-902937-20-1. — (2004). "Language as organism: A brief introduction to the Leiden theory of language evolution". In Lin, Ying-chin; Hsu, Fang-min; Lee, Chun-chih; Jackson, T.S. (eds.). Studies on Sino-Tibetan Languages: Papers in Honor of Professor Hwang-cherng Gong on his Seventieth Birthday. Language and Linguistics Monograph Series W-4. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. pp. 1–9. — (2007). "Austroasiatic phylogeny and the Austroasiatic homeland in light of recent population genetic studies" (PDF). Mon-Khmer Studies (37): 1–14. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. — (2007). "The diversity of the Tibeto-Burman language family and the linguistic ancestry of Chinese". Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics. 1 (2): 211–270. doi:10.1163/2405478X-90000023. — (2007). A Holistic Approach to the Fine Art of Grammar Writing: The Dallas Manifesto.

Awards and honours 1996 Rolex Awards for Enterprise for setting up the Himalayan Languages Project 1998 Elected Honorary Member of the Kirat Yakthung Chumlung at Kathmandu

See also Mahakiranti languages Karasuk languages

References

External links George Van Driem's home page at Himalayan Languages Project (archived) Publication list (archived)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with George van Driem

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what George van Driem claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to George van Driem before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about George van Driem ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of George van Driem

In research: George van Driem appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses George van Driem in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: George van Driem is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1957 births, 20th-century Dutch linguists, 21st-century linguists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for George van Driem outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “George van Driem” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study George van Driem in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what George van Driem means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain George van Driem out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is George van Driem in simple terms?

George L. "Sjors" van Driem (born 19 March 1957) is a Dutch professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Bern. He studied East Asian languages and is known for the father tongue hypothesis.

Why does George van Driem matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study George van Driem?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on George van Driem.