R. M. R. Hall

R. M. R. Hall

Richard Michael Ryan Hall (July 28, 1927 in Portland, Oregon – November 11, 1996) was an American linguist who lived and worked in New York. Hall went by the name "Mike Hall" for most of his adult life. Professor Hall taught linguistics at CUNY Queens College from 1967 until the time of his death. The department chair, Robert Vago, noted that he was instrumental in founding its Department of Linguistics.

Hall served as a U.S. Army medical clerk in Germany near the end of World War II. He learned to speak German during his time served there, explaining to one of his students that his "rich uncle sent me on vacation to Stuttgart." Hall received his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1953 and his doctorate from New York University about ten years later. His dissertation was on the Yiddish language. In the 50's he taught English as a Second Language in Venezuela. He was a Fulbright Scholar first in 1976-77 at the University of Khartoum in Sudan and then in 1985 - 86 at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. His areas of study and expertise (academically as well as professionally) included historical linguistics, Indo-European studies, theoretical and applied linguistics, and Nilotic etymology. In 1976, Mike and Beatrice Hall spent a year in Sudan collecting data on fourteen Nilotic languages. This was the groundwork for A Nilotic Etymological Dictionary, to which Hall devoted the next 20 years. At the time of his death, the dictionary contained over 1200 items, but had not yet been published.

He died of a heart attack following lung cancer surgery on November 11, 1996. At the time of his death, he was survived by his daughters, Margaret and Judith, his son John, and two grandchildren, Alexander and Elisabeth. His wife, Beatrice Lincoff Hall, a Professor of Linguistics at SUNY Stony Brook, died in 1982.