G. Tucker Childs

G. Tucker Childs, Ph.D. (UC Berkeley), professor of Applied Linguistics at PSU, and co-editor of the volume, has published extensively in the areas of African languages, sociolinguistics, pidgins and Creoles of Africa and the African Diaspora. Dr. Childs has researched extensively on African languages living and interacting with different ethnic groups. Like many young Americans in the 1960s he became interested in Africa through a concern for civil rights and the Black Power Movements in Africa and the African Diaspora. These concerns led him into the United States Peace Corps Volunteer program for service in Africa. Assigned specifically to Liberia, he elected to go to the interior to work with the rural instead of urban communities. He would soon find out that even the resident pidgin, Liberian English, did not help much in understanding the residents who spoke a language he did not know. Learn an African language as a Peace Corps volunteer sensitized him to the importance of language. That encounter finally marked the beginning of his career in linguistics. His research interest led him to travel extensively in Africa, including his longish stints in West Africa, East Africa and southern Africa as his interest and knowledge grew. His most recent book, An Introduction to African Languages (2003) is something of a recapitulation and summary of those experiences and is a popular text for many educational institutions as both text and reference volume. Dr. Child's major interest lies in documenting, with the view to rescuing, disappearing in West African languages. Professor Childs returns to Africa regularly for his research and is currently conducting research on Mmani, a dying African language spoken on the West African coast of southeastern Guinea-Conakry.