Michael Fortescue

Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946, Thornbury ) is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht.

Fortescue is known for his reconstructions of the Eskaleut, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh, and Wakashan proto-languages.

Biography
As a young teenager, Michael Fortescue and his family moved to California where he went to La Jolla High School 1956-1959. He finished school at Abingdon School in 1963. In 1966, he received a B.A. with "Honours with great Distinction" in Slavic languages and literatures from University of California, Berkeley, where he then taught Russian 1968-1970 and finished an M.A. in Slavic languages and literatures. In the years 1971-1975 he taught English for the International Language Centre in Osaka and the University of Aix/Marseille. He took a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh 1975-1978 with the thesis Procedural discourse generation model for 'Twenty Questions'. With a Danish scholarship, he visited University of Copenhagen and did fieldwork in Greenland in 1978-79, and this research became supported from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities in the period 1979-1982. In 1984, he became associate professor in eskimology at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1989 docent. He became professor in linguistics in 1999, and retired in 2011.

On the occasion of his retirement in 2011, a special issue in the journal Grønland was published in 2012 as a festschrift. After retiring, he moved to England, where he was elected an associate of St Hugh's College. An edited book was published as a festschrift in his honour in 2017. In 2019, he was elected to Academia Europaea.

He was chairman of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen 2005-2011.

Selected works
His Comparative Eskimo Dictionary, co-authored with Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan, is the standard work in its area, as is his Comparative Chukotko-Kamchatkan Dictionary. In his book Pattern and Process, Fortescue explores the possibilities of a linguistic theory based on the philosophical theories of Alfred North Whitehead.

A more complete listing is available in the Festschrift in his honor.
 * 1984. Some Problems Concerning the Correlation and Reconstruction of Eskimo and Aleut Mood Markers. Institut for Eskimologi, Københavns Universitet.
 * 1990. From the Writings of the Greenlanders: Kalaallit Atuakklaannit. University of Alaska Press.
 * 1991. Inuktun: An Introduction to the Language of Qaanaaq, Thule. Institut for eskimologis skriftrække, Københavns Universitet.
 * 1992. Editor. Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. John Benjamins Publishing Co.
 * 1994. With Steven Jacobson and Lawrence Kaplan. Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates. Alaska Native Language Center.
 * 1998. Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence. London and New York: Cassell.
 * 2001. Pattern and Process: A Whiteheadian Perspective on Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Co.
 * 2002. The Domain of Language. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
 * 2005. Comparative Chukotko-Kamchatkan Dictionary. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
 * 2007. Comparative Wakashan Dictionary. Munich: LINCOM Europa.
 * 2016. Comparative Nivkh Dictionary. Munich: LINCOM Europa.