Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

education in anthropological linguistics, pragmatics and semiotics where Silverstein had
left off and was always generous with his time and his optimism.
In my third year at UCLA, I discovered Sumerian in the classes of Bob Englund and
have spent the vast majority of my time here at UCLA ever since preoccupied by the
languages, culture and history of Mesopotamia. Bob has done everything in his power to
make me into a good Assyriologist. In the meantime, he has gone to a great deal of
trouble to ensure that I was well fed, had a roof over my head and was able to ignore the
daily rush and concentrate on learning to read cuneiform. Over the years, he has listened
with some amusement I imagine to my theories, all the while insisting that I master, to
the best of my ability, the philological and historical disciplines that constitute
Assyriology as a field of study. For all of these things, I am eternally grateful. Thanks to
Klaudia as well for always making me feel welcome when I was out visiting the boss. It
is telling that Englund thought it important that I spent some time studying with at least
one other leading Assyriologist so as to broaden my exposure to the different methods
and the best practices of other leaders in the field. When I applied for and received a two-
year fellowship to study with Professor Maekawa at Kyoto University, Englund
supported it even through the territory was unfamiliar and my departure left him with no
graduate students to help out with the preliminary stages of the Cuneiform Digital
Library Initiative.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to the Japanese Ministry of
Education for providing me with two years of funding that allowed me to study Sumerian
full-time in Kyoto without giving a thought to my financial situation; at the same time, I
ix