Robert W. Young

Robert W. Young (May 18, 1912 – February 20, 2007), professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of New Mexico, was an American linguist known for his work on the Navajo language. From the late 1930s, Young cooperated with the Navajo linguist and scholar William Morgan, publishing a "practical orthography" in 1937.

From the 1940s through the 1950s, they published three major works, including ''The Navajo Language'' (1943), a compiled dictionary. That year Young and Morgan served as editors and began publication of ''Ádahooníłígíí,'' the first newspaper written in Navajo and the second Native American-language newspaper in the United States, after the ''Cherokee Phoenix'' of 1828–1834. Its publication contributed to standardization of Navajo orthography.

The men continued their work of analysis and documentation of Navajo; in 1980, 1987 they published ''The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary,'' representing "a huge increase in descriptive coverage" of the language. The 1987 edition included new appendices and grammar sections. It established itself as the major reference grammar of the Navajo language. Young, Morgan and Sally Midgette also produced the ''Analytical Lexicon of Navajo'' (1992), which re-organizes the lexicon by root, one of the principle elements in verbs and nouns of Athabaskan languages. Provided by Wikipedia