Frederic G. Cassidy
Chief Editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English
From CreoLIST
Originally:
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 10:13:41 -0500
Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Joan Houston Hall <jdhall@FACSTAFF.WISC.EDU>
Subject: Fred Cassidy
To: ADS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
FWD by:
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 11:50:41 -0700
From: Salikoko Mufwene
Subject: Fwd: Fred Cassidy [Dead]
I am deeply sorry to have to tell you that your friend and colleague, Frederic G. Cassidy, Chief
Editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English, died this morning. It is hard to imagine
DARE without him.
Salikoko
S. Mufwene
University of Chicago
Department of Linguistics 1010 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 10:55:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Rickford
Subject: Re: Fwd: Fred Cassidy [Dead]
Fred Cassidy's contributions to the field were numerous, and he will be sorely missed, as much for those as for his good nature, his willingness to answer queries from and otherwise support the scholarship of his colleagues, and his active participation in the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, the American Dialect Society, and the Society for Pidgin Creole Linguistics.
Others will say more when his obits are written, but I would like to refer interested creolists to the
"Focus on Creolists" headline article about him in the March 1984 Carrier Pidgin (vol. 12, no 1),
written by Bob LePage, with whom he coedited the _Dictionary of Caribbean English_.
This work, together with his 1961 book, _Jamaica Talk_, and the multi-volumed _Dictionary of American
Regional
English_ to which he
devoted the bulk of his later years, establishes him as one of the leading lexicographers of his day.
We should remember also Cassidy's many rich contributions to other aspects of creole
linguistics, including his classic articles on iteration in
Jamaican Creole (American Speech 1957, vol. 32:49-53), on multiple etymologies in JC
(American Speech 1966, vol. 41:211-213), on the pedagogy of teaching standard English to creole
speakers (Georgetown University Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics 1969, vol.
22:203-214), on the pidgin element in Jamaican Creole (in Hymes' 1971 ed.
Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, 203-221), and on the relation between
Gullah and Jamaican Creole (in a debate with Ian Hancock, American Speech 1980:vol
55:3-16).
I will miss him, both as a scholar and as an incredibly warm and genial human being.
John