In Memory of Raimo Anttila

Raimo Anttila was a faculty member at UCLA when I first met him as a new linguistics graduate student in 1969. His erudition was immensely impressive. He spoke many languages very well, could read most of the other languages of Europe, seemed to know everything about Indo-European and Uralic, and had broad knowledge far beyond just linguistic matters. He published many articles and books, not only on Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, and Finnish, but also on historical and comparative linguistics, analogy, morphology, and semiotics, and he published many original etymologies. He also wrote many things opposing generative grammar. I eagerly read nearly everything he wrote. I also personally had wished that he would have spent more of his time on Indo-European themes, where his talent was supreme; I felt that his criticisms of generative linguistics were ineffective and did not serve him well.

It was hard not to be impressed by Raimo's sense of humor. He told many jokes, in various languages; some of them were really good, some not so much. He was delighted that occasionally he received mail in Santa Monica addressed to "Ramón Antilla."

What impressed me most was his humanity, and his kindness, especially to me.

I think Raimo was surprised and pleased to have me in the graduate program. He often commented that I was the only student who had read his 1969 book, Uusimman Äännehistorian Suunnasta ja Luonteesta (Publications of the Phonetics Department, University of Turku, 5) [On the Direction and Nature of the Latest Sound History]. Earlier, I had had ambitions to become a Finno-Ugric scholar; I had learned Finnish and my MA thesis at the University of Washington was a generative phonology of Finnish. We often spoke Finnish together, not something he could do with most other students.

I came to know Raimo very well and developed a strong appreciation for him. He was in Linguistics and Indo-European at UCLA from 1965 to retirement in 2006; I was there 1968-1971. He was the professor of general linguistics at the University of Helsinki from 1972 to 1974. I stayed at his house in Santa Monica, CA on several occasions over the years. In 1973, I was on a Fulbright fellowship in the department of linguistics that Raimo chaired at the University of Helsinki. While there, I interacted almost daily with him and continued to learn much from him. To mention just one example, at the time I knew nothing of architecture and so had scarcely any appreciation of it, but as we walked to different places around Helsinki, with great enthusiasm Raimo pointed out architectural styles, features, and details of numerous buildings we passed. From that I learned to pay attention to and appreciate the architecture wherever I have traveled or lived. Raimo resigned from his professorship at the University of Helsinki and returned to California because one of his two children had difficulty adapting to schooling in Finland.

I also visited Raimo in Finland on several other occasions over the years. Some of the visits were to his summer cabin in eastern Finland. It was far more than a summer cabin, however; it was more like a private folk museum. Raimo had acquired – rescued – a number of old farm buildings of various sorts, including saunas, and brought them to this summer place. It was truly impressive to see, a monumental achievement in my estimation. Later on I was called upon to give a deposition about what I had observed of these buildings and what Raimo had done with them in connection with turbulent and protracted divorce proceedings in Finland.

As an aside, one morning at his summer place as I was making my way to the outhouse (toilet), I got a great shock: an adder was sunning itself on the last flat rock of the stone walkway leading up to the outhouse. Because I was distracted, only at the last second did I avoid stepping on it. Raimo was very sympathetic about how icky being startled like that could make you feel. I knew about adders in Finland, but I had never expected to experience one up close and personal.

Raimo's best known publication was his 1972 An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics (and its second edition in 1989). For a number of years it was the dominant introductory textbook for historical linguistics. I had kind of a strange connection with that book. In 1997, the Edinburgh University Press (EUP) asked me to write an introduction to historical linguistics. I told them I did not want to do that because some friends and colleagues of mine, including especially Raimo, were authors of introductory textbooks for historical linguistics and that it did not feel proper to write a book that would compete with their texts, and I did not want to be disloyal to my former professor. The Press wrote that, OK, they would just get someone else to write it. That alternative seemed almost equally undesirable, since in any event it would result in competition with Raimo's textbook and for those of the other authors. I wrote to those author friends and asked them what they thought; they said that another such book on the market would not matter to them at all, and since EUP was going to commission one in any event, I should just go ahead and accept their request. So I wrote Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, published in 1998 by EUP and MIT Press (4th edition in 2020). I learned only later that the circumstances that led to me doing this book had not been clear to Raimo. That made me sad, but I was happy for the opportunity to clarify my earlier reluctance and how only the encouragement from those other authors of similar textbooks could have induced me to agree to write another one.

Raimo was crucial to my education and the directions my career would take; I am deeply indebted to him. I had fancied myself as preparing for a career primarily as a generative phonologist, maybe with some secondary specializations. I took two seminars in advanced historical linguistics from Raimo at UCLA, and I was captivated by the intellectual excitement of historical linguistics. This eventually came to influence my career immensely. My paper for his seminar was a preliminary reconstruction of the K'ichean subgroup of Mayan languages. This later evolved into my dissertation, and that in turn determined what I would consider my professional specializations to be.

Incidentally, in that seminar, we looked briefly into Illich-Svitych's publications on Nostratic. Raimo was vaguely sympathetic to the hypothesis; I was agnostic to it. The topic had not been of any real significance to him or to me, though later on I ended up writing a critique of the hypothesis, grateful for Raimo's earlier introduction and orientation to it (Campbell, Lyle. 1998. Nostratic: a personal assessment. Nostratic: sifting the evidence, ed. by Brian Joseph and Joe Salmons, 107-152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.)

Raimo was very kind to me in many ways. I'll mention just one example; over the years he gave me many books. He came to my wedding in 1988, in Toronto, one of the few friends or family from my side in attendance. Much later, in 2012, he visited me with his niece in Hawai'i. I mistakenly took them hiking on the Mānoa Falls Trail, normally a beautiful experience, except that we went after heavy rain and the mud was a painful ordeal for them.

I saw Raimo in person for the last time in 2013, in an unusual circumstance. It was at the defense of a PhD dissertation on Indo-European at the University of Helsinki, where I acted as the "official opponent." I had been asked by University of Helsinki colleagues there to do this and I had declined, saying it was not my area and that there were many scholars much more qualified for this than I was, but I ended the communication saying that if they absolutely could not get anyone else to do it, they could ask me again. Well, they did get two others to read the dissertation and give written reports, but neither could go to the official oral defense – one was in the hospital, the other didn't speak English. So, very reluctantly I agreed. The Helsinki colleagues thought that having me be the opponent was just fine because of my general historical linguistic background, though I thought the opponent should have stronger Indo-Europeanist credentials. So, I went. Raimo was in the audience, a true Indo-Europeanist of the highest caliber. Apparently, my performance as opponent went well enough, thanks, I think, to training I had received from studying with Raimo. The irony, however, was almost painful, that Raimo, the real Indo-Europeanist, should be in the audience while I, the non-Indo-Europeanist and his student, acted the part of the opponent. Unfortunately, Raimo and I only got to talk very briefly there.

I have just reread the last email messages I got from Raimo, ten in 2012 and 2013. In the last one I received, he wrote, "Fall is here. I am trimming my apple trees, and doing some masonry under my outside tub (which should start hibernating before use). Am reasonably happy. Totally out of academe." Eight of the ten messages are in Finnish; their topics include linguistics in Finland, loss of vowel harmony in Estonian and how little had been written about it, Indo-European, Finland, and Hawai'i.

I miss him sadly and sorely.

Reference

Campbell, Lyle. 1998. Nostratic: a personal assessment. Nostratic: sifting the evidence, ed. by Brian Joseph and Joe Salmons, 107-152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.