Bach's parents, Ditlev Gotthard Monrad Bach and Ellen Sigrid Bach - originally from Copenhagen, Denmark - were Lutheran missionaries in Japan. Bach – and all but the oldest of his five siblings – was born in Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu. Since his father taught Japanese to the American Navylanguage officers during the World War II, they were considered to be American nationals, and received warnings to leave Japan in 1941. As a child Bach spoke Danish and some Japanese. When he was ten, Bach was sent to the International Canadian Academy in Kobe. In Fresno, California his father was a "pastor to Japanese-Americans interned during the war." Bach attended Boulder High School in Boulder, Colorado and Roosevelt High School in Fresno, CA.
His first regular academic job was at the University of Texas at Austin where he taught from 1959 to 1972. He started in the German department and gradually switched to linguistics. He was part of the newly formed linguistics department. After spending a year teaching at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York he began teaching at the University of Massachusetts. He began teaching as professor of linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1973. "He taught syntax, semantics, typology and field methods, and supervised 12 doctorate dissertations in semantics, syntax and phonology." Following his retirement in 1992, he continued to be active in academia. Emmon's numerous publications included reviews, articles and books on "syntax, phonology, morphology and semantics, including on problems of tense and aspect in semantics, and on formal problems and semantic issues in the morphology of polysynthetic languages." During the 1980s and 1990s Bach worked extensively in British Columbia. From 1994 to 1999 he worked as a visiting professor with the First Nations Programme of the University of Northern British Columbia where he went to local First Nations communities to teach and co-teach primarily for First Nations students. He also worked as a language resource for the Haisla Treaty Commission. By 2003 Bach had already nurtured "longtime involvement with the Haisla language community in the coastal village of Kitimaat in British Columbia. His work with the Haisla has included preparation of a new dictionary and two volumes of traditional stories and life stories; transcription of biblical and homiletic materials produced by Christian missionaries in the 1940s; and the creation of an extensive archive of linguistic work on Haisla." When he first arrived in Kitimaat, Mike Shaw, a Haisla speaker, asked "Why should we help you, what good will all that do for us?" "From this exchange Bach formulated what he has come to call Mike Shaw's Principle: Time and resources for community-relevant research and activities should equal those devoted to community-external aims."
Both his first wife, Jean Bach, and his daughter, Meta Bach, predeceased him. He is survived by his wife Wynn Chao of London, his son Eric Bach and grandson Stevie Bach of Madison, his stepsons Morriss, David, and Joel Partee, his stepchildren Christopher and Gabriella Lewis, step grandchildren Sean Partee, Sara Davis, and Rachael Davis Partee, his second wife Reed Young of Houston, and his third wife Barbara Partee of Amherst. He moved to London, England in 2002.
