John Asher Dunn papers, 1968-2017

John Asher Dunn was an American linguist who received his Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, in 1970. His dissertation topic was “A Phonology of the Coast Tsimshian Language.” He taught linguistics and anthropology at Oregon State University, the University of Northern British Columbia, and the University of Oklahoma. In 1978, he published a Coast Tsimshian Dictionary (Canadian Ethnology Service Paper 42, National Museums of Canada), and, in 1979, A Reference Grammar for the Coast Tsimshian Language (Canadian Ethnology Service Paper 55, National Museums of Canada). In 1995, the Sealaska Heritage Foundation and the University of Washington Press jointly republished this dictionary. Professor Dunn helped develop course materials for the Coast Tsimshian language (grades K thru 12, and four college semesters). He helped in the training of Coast Tsimshian speakers as teachers in several northern British Columbia school districts. In 2000, he retired as Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma and worked on A Tsimshian Proto-Indo-European Comparative Lexicon, published in 2017. He died on July 4, 2017.