Joseph Voyles

I met Joe in 1965, when I was finishing an MA in Slavic linguistics at UW and he was a beginning assistant professor of Germanic linguistics at UW. We shared an interest in linguistics, and in humor. During that year I heard a lot about New Albany, Indiana, and “Big Liz”, and I made what I consider a life-long friend, even though our paths didn’t cross much after that. After I went on to Harvard for my doctoral studies, I was the recipient of several of his “memorable” letters, and got quite a bit of chaffing from him for being at the wrong end of Mass Ave (Harvard is at one end of Massachusetts Avenue, and MIT, the center of Chomskyan linguistics, at the other). I didn’t get back to Seattle much after that, but I did make at least one visit to Joe and Rosie, and had a chance to sit on their porch with them (I don’t recall the year but I think it was when Christina and David were still small). When my husband of 40 years – himself a linguist and a German speaker, though a specialist in Turkish linguistics rather than Germanic linguistics – passed away some 18 months ago, Joe and Rosie wrote me a beautiful note of sympathy, and as I had a trip planned to Seattle in March of 2020 one of my goals had been to look them up and thank them in person for their kindness. But the fates intervened, and nobody went anywhere for the rest of 2020. It gladdened my heart so much to attend the service this afternoon, to hear of the way in which Joe’s life impacted family and friends, and to see the wonderful slide show which gave such a vivid sense of his life force. I like to think of Joe having finally tracked down Herbert Penzl, and the two of them not only settling once and for all the question of the Germanic vowel shift, but also laughing about it. God bless his soul.