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Frans (Camille Cornelis) Van Coetsem〔This is the official spelling of his name, i.e., as it appears in the civil registry of his native Geraardsbergen and hence on his birth certificate. In his publications, Van Coetsem often adhered to the Dutch convention of spelling ''van'' (i.e., with a lower case ''v'') when his first name or its initial preceded. Even then he alphabetized his name under ''V'' in his English language publications. American sources sometimes give his first name as ''Francis'' or spell his last name ''VanCoetsem''.〕 (April 14, 1919 – February 11, 2002) was a Belgian (Flemish) linguist. After an academic career in Flanders and the Netherlands he was appointed professor at Cornell University in 1968, and consequently he emigrated to the USA, where, after a few years, he chose to become a naturalized American citizen. ==Life== Frans Van Coetsem was born on April 14, 1919, in Geraardsbergen, a small town in the southeastern part of the province of East Flanders, on the Franco-Dutch language border. His native language was the (Dutch) dialect of Geraardsbergen. At a very early age he lost both his parents, and the aunt and uncle who raised him sent him to a French-language boarding school. After finishing high school in 1939, he attended a Nivelles “régendat” (a type of teacher training college below university level), yet another French-language school. But he was dissatisfied with the education he was getting and in 1941 he broke it off and switched to the Catholic University of Leuven to study Germanic philology. (At the time “Germanic philology” included Dutch, English and German languages and literatures, as well as a number of courses in philosophy and history.) Even before graduating he worked as an interpreter for the British armed forces during the Allieds’ invasion of Germany. He graduated in 1946; his undergraduate thesis dealt with the sounds and the morphology of his native Geraardsbergen dialect. Less than a year later, on April 30, 1947, he married his childhood sweetheart. His Ph.D. thesis, which he defended in 1952, was also devoted to the sounds and the morphology of the Geraardsbergen dialect; his thesis supervisor was L. Grootaers. But already before he had obtained his degree he was hired by the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT) as a trainee editor. This meant moving to Wassenaar, near his job in Leiden. At the WNT he was coached by K.H. Heeroma, who also assisted him in choosing the subject of his “Aggregatie voor het Hoger Onderwijs”, which he obtained in 1956.〔One of only two such degrees ever granted in the department of Germanic Philology of the Catholic University of Leuven; see Marcel De Smedt ''Honderd jaar Germaanse Filologie in Leuven (1894–1994)'' (Leuven: Germanistenvereniging, 1994), p. 65; available (here ).〕 His thesis, published by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in the same year, was a significant breakthrough in the comparative study of the Germanic languages, and established his international reputation in the field. In 1957 he was appointed successor to his supervisor L. Grootaers () at the Germanic Philology department of the Catholic University of Leuven, and he moved back to Belgium. But from 1963 he was also Extraordinary Professor of comparative Germanic linguistics at Leiden University. Cornell University invited him as visiting professor for the academic year 1965–1966. Its research facilities as well as the opportunity to teach mainly graduate students made him decide in 1968 to accept Cornell’s offer of tenure. In Cornell he supervised a number of Ph.D. students who all went on to have academic careers. After his retirement in 1989, he remained active, supervising graduate students and continuing his research. It was mainly as an emeritus professor that he wrote his important works about language contact, some of which were unfinished at his death and were published posthumously. Some five years after his wife’s death—she died on January 26, 1993—Frans Van Coetsem was diagnosed with cancer, which was the cause of his death on February 11, 2002. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Frans Van Coetsem」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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