Robert B. Jones (linguist)


Robert Burton "RB" Jones was a linguist whose research focused on the South East Asian languages, in particular Karen, Burmese and Thai. He was a professor at Cornell University.
Jones studied music as an undergraduate at Southern Methodist University, particularly focusing on the organ. In 1941, he joined the United States Army for World War II and studied Japanese in the army. After the war he began he resumed his studies, this time at University of California, Berkeley, graduating 1947.
He finished a Ph.D. in Linguistics at Berkeley in 1958 under Mary Haas. He travelled on a Ford Foundation grant to Burma in 1957–58.
Jones taught at Georgetown University, the Foreign Service Institute of the State Department, and in 1955, started at Cornell University.
Jones retired from Cornell in 1986.

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