Dyk, Walter

Born in Germany on September 30, 1899, the linguist Walter Dyk emigrated to Gloversville, N.Y., as a young child. After receiving his bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1928, he pursued graduate work in linguistics under Edward Sapir, receiving his MA at Chicago for "Verb Types in Wishram" (1931) and his dissertation at Yale for "A Grammar of Wishram" (1933).

Following completion of his doctorate, Dyk turned from Chinookan languages to Navajo, doing intensive fieldwork in Arizona in 1934 on a grant from the National Research Council that he had secured with the support of Sapir. His analysis of clan and kinship informed his two most influential works, Son of Old Man Hat (New York, 1938), an "autobiographical" narrative written with his consultant Left Handed, and A Navaho Autobiography (New York, 1948), concerning Old Mexican. Dyk's Notes and Illustrations of Navaho Sex Behavior was similarly influential in its discussion of incest.

Dyk served as a fellow at the Harvard Psychological Clinic and taught at Simmons College and, after 1942, at Brooklyn College. However the progressive effects of Parkinson's disease began increasingly to take effect. Although able to return to Arizona for research in 1947-1948, he was ultimately forced to retire from teaching in 1962. He died in 1972, leaving a wife and two children.

From the guide to the Walter Dyk Collection, 1931-1956, (American Philosophical Society)