Philip S. LeSourd is a linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 and an anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 professor at Indiana University

Indiana University Bloomington

Indiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. He is one of the world's foremost experts on the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy

Passamaquoddy

The Passamaquoddy are the First Nations people who live in northeastern North America, primarily in Maine and New Brunswick....

 language and the Algonquian

Algonquian languages

The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...

 language family.

LeSourd earned both a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. in linguistics at M.I.T. He became fascinated with Algonquian languages after a class in the Mesquakie (Fox) language from Ives Goddard

Ives Goddard

Robert Hale Ives Goddard, III is curator emeritus in the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. He is widely considered the leading expert on the Algonquian languages and the larger Algic language family.-Early life and education:Ives...

 at Harvard soon after finishing his bachelor's degree. At the instigation of Karl Teeter

Karl V. Teeter

Karl van Duyn Teeter was an American linguist known especially for his work on the Algic languages.Raised in Lexington, Massachusetts, he dropped out of high school and joined the United States Army, where he served as a Supply Sergeant from 1951-1954...

 and later Ken Hale

Kenneth L. Hale

Kenneth Locke Hale was a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied a huge variety of previously unstudied and often endangered languages—especially indigenous languages of North America, Central America and Australia...

, he spent time residing among the Maliseet and Passamaquoddy communities in Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and New Brunswick

New Brunswick

New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. He studied the language both academically, with expert Robert Leavitt of the Mi'kmaq - Maliseet Institute at the University of New Brunswick

University of New Brunswick

The University of New Brunswick is a Canadian university located in the province of New Brunswick. UNB is the oldest English language university in Canada and among the first public universities in North America. The university has two main campuses: the original campus founded in 1785 in...

, and through study with a variety of native speakers. LeSourd, Leavitt, and native Passamaquoddy speaker David Francis, Sr. launched a Maliseet-Passamaquoddy to English dictionary project, which resulted in a published dictionary entitled Kolusuwakonol, about eight years after the project began. The project has continued since, including with funding by Industry Canada

Industry Canada

Industry Canada is the department of the Government of Canada with responsibility for regional economic development, investment, and innovation/research and development. The department employs 6104 FTEs across Canada....

 and the National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

, and has been made available online.

LeSourd has continued actively to research Maliseet-Passamaquoddy and a variety of other Algonquian languages.

External links

• Faculty profile at Indiana University
• Kolusuwakonol: Philips S. Lesourd's English and Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary at Amazon.com
• Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics) at Amazon.com
• Maliseet - Passamaquoddy Dictionary hosted by the Mi'kmaq - Maliseet Institute
• Saving a Native Language by Robert M. Leavitt, presented at the “Revitalizing Algonquian Languages Conference: Sharing Effective Language Renewal Practices II” at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center, Feb. 2004, credits LeSourd's role