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{{Short description|Chinese linguist and sinologist (1902–1987)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2016}}
{{family name hatnote|Li|lang=Chinese}}
{{Infobox academic
| name               = Li Fang-Kuei
| image              = Li Fang-kuei.jpg
| birth_date         = {{birth date|1902|08|20}}
| birth_place        = [[Guangzhou]], Guangdong
| death_date         = {{death date and age|df=yes|1987|8|21|1902|08|20}}
| death_place        = [[San Mateo County, California]], United States
| nationality        = {{ubl|[[Republic of China]]|[[United States]]{{citation needed|date=October 2009}}}}
| education          = {{ubl|[[Tsinghua University]]|[[University of Michigan]]|[[University of Chicago]]}}
| thesis_title       = Mattole: An Athabaskan Language
| thesis_year        = 1928
| doctoral_advisor   = [[Edward Sapir]]
| discipline         = [[Linguistics]]
| workplaces         = {{ubl|[[Yale University]]|[[Harvard University]]|[[Academia Sinica]]|[[University of Washington]]|[[University of Hawaiʻi]]}}
| notable_students   = {{ubl|[[W. South Coblin]]|[[David R. Knechtges]]}}
| module             = {{Infobox Chinese
 |child=yes
 |c=李方桂
 |p=Lǐ Fāngguì
 |w=Li<sup>3</sup> Fang<sup>1</sup>-kuei<sup>4</sup>
 |mi={{IPAc-cmn|l|i|3|-|f|ang|1|g|wei|4}}
 |gr=Lii Fangguey
 |j=Lei<sup>5</sup> Fong<sup>1</sup>-gwai<sup>3</sup>
 |y=Léih Fōng-gwai
 }}
}}

'''Li Fang-Kuei''' ({{zh|c=李方桂}}; 20 August 1902{{snd}}21 August 1987) was a Chinese [[linguist]] known for his studies of the [[varieties of Chinese]], his [[Linguistic reconstruction|reconstruction]]s of [[Old Chinese]] and [[Proto-Tai]], and his documentation of [[Dene languages|Dene]] languages in North America.

==Biography==
Li Fang-Kuei was born on 20 August 1902 in [[Guangzhou]] during the final years of the [[Qing dynasty]] to a minor scholarly family from [[Xiyang County|Xiyang]], a small town in [[Shanxi]] roughly {{convert|50|km|mi|sp=us}} south of [[Yangquan]]. Li's father Li Guangyu ({{zhi|c=李光宇}}) received his [[imperial examination]] degree in 1880, and served in minor official posts in the late 19th to early 20th century.

Li was one of the first Chinese people to study linguistics outside China. Originally a student of medicine, he switched to linguistics when he went to the United States in 1924. He earned a BA in linguistics at the [[University of Michigan]] in 1926 after only two years of study. He then did graduate study under [[Edward Sapir]] at the [[University of Chicago]], where he was Sapir's first graduate student. From Sapir he learned phonetics, field methods, and [[Indigenous languages of the Americas|American Indian languages]]. Sapir also encouraged him to study East and Southeast Asian languages, leading to his work on Thai and Sino-Tibetan. Li was also a student of [[Leonard Bloomfield]] at this time, from whom Li learned [[Germanic languages|Germanic]] linguistics and [[textual analysis]]. Li also studied [[Indo-European]] linguistics, especially Greek and Latin, from [[Carl Darling Buck]] at Chicago, and in 1928 Buck secured a 6-month fellowship at [[Harvard University]] for him, where he studied Sanskrit and Tibetan.<ref name="foo">{{cite web |title=Linguistics east and west: American Indian, Sino-Tibetan, and Thai, Fang-kuei Li |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb3489n99m;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00014&toc.depth=1&toc.id=div00014&brand=calisphere&query=Hare |website=oac.cdlib.org |access-date=26 March 2022}}</ref>

Li conducted field studies of the indigenous languages of the Americas. His first exposure to fieldwork was his study of the [[Mattole]] language of northern California. He received an MA in 1927 and a PhD in 1928. His dissertation ''Mattole: An [[Athabaskan Language]]'' was published in 1930. Following the completion of his PhD, Li traveled to Europe during 1928–1929 with letters of recommendation from [[Franz Boas]], and visited linguists there including [[Walter Simon (sinologist)|Walter Simon]]. Li also spent 3 months in 1929 in Canada's [[Northwest Territories]], living on an island in the middle of the [[Mackenzie River]] conducting fieldwork on the [[Hare language]].<ref name="foo" />

After his fieldwork on Hare, in 1929 he returned to China and, along with [[Y. R. Chao]] and [[Luo Changpei]], became a researcher at the Institute of History and Philology ({{zhi|t=歷史語言研究所|p=Lìshǐ yǔyán yánjiūsuǒ}}) of the [[Academia Sinica]] then located at Beijing. From this point on, he performed field studies of several [[Tai languages]], including the [[Longzhou]] and [[Wuming County|Wuming]] dialects spoken by the [[Zhuang people]], while at the same time conducting deep investigations into [[Old Chinese]] and [[Tibetic languages|Tibetan]]. Li's revisions of [[Bernhard Karlgren]]'s reconstructions of [[Middle Chinese]] and Old Chinese were widely used by students of ancient Chinese from their publication in the 1970s until the late 1990s.

Li taught Chinese language and linguistics at [[Yale University]] from 1938 to 1939, and after [[World War II]] taught at [[Harvard University]] from 1946 to 1948. During the same period he was working on a dictionary at the [[Harvard–Yenching Institute]], followed by another year teaching at Yale from 1948 to 1949, where his students included [[Nicholas Bodman]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Linguistics east and west: American Indian, Sino-Tibetan, and Thai, Fang-kuei Li |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb3489n99m;NAAN=13030&chunk.id=div00038&toc.id=div00028&toc.depth=1&brand=calisphere&anchor.id=p40 |website=oac.cdlib.org |access-date=26 March 2022}}</ref> In 1949, he became professor of Chinese at the [[University of Washington]], where he taught from 1949 to 1969, after which he taught at the [[University of Hawaiʻi]] until his retirement in 1974. In 1977, he published a comparative [[linguistic reconstruction|reconstruction]] of [[Tai languages]], the result of more than forty years of research. He also worked at [[Academia Sinica]], now in Taiwan, in 1973.

Li died in [[San Mateo County, California]], survived by his wife Xu Ying ({{zhi|t=徐櫻}}) and their daughter Lindy Li Mark, a professor of anthropology who taught at [[California State University, Hayward]] and the [[Chinese University of Hong Kong]], as well as their son Peter Li and daughter Annie Li. His alma mater [[Tsinghua University]] began to publish his complete works in 2005.

==Selected works==
* Li Fang-Kuei. ''Mattole: An Athabaskan Language''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930. 152 pages.
* ——— (1933). "Certain Phonetic Influences of the Tibetan Prefixes upon the Root Initials". ''Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology'' '''6.2''': 135–157.
* ——— (1956a). "The Inscriptions of the Sino-Tibetan Treaty of 821–822". ''T'oung p'ao'' '''44''': 1–99.
* {{Cite journal
  | script-title = zh:上古音研究
  | trans-title = Studies on Archaic Chinese |language=zh
  | last = Li | first = Fang-Kuei | author-mask = 3
  | journal = The Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies | volume = IX | year = 1971 | pages = 1–61
  }}
* ——— (1972), "Language and Dialects in China". ''Free China Review'' '''XXII''', No. 5.
* {{Cite journal
  | title = Studies on Archaic Chinese
  | surname = Li | given = Fang-Kuei | author-mask = 3
  | translator-first = Gilbert L. | translator-last = Mattos
  | journal = Monumenta Serica | volume = 31 | year = 1974–1975 | pages = 219–287
  | doi = 10.1080/02549948.1974.11731100
  | jstor = 40726172
  | ref = none
  }} translation of {{harvp|Li|1971}}.
* {{cite book
  | title = A handbook of comparative Tai
  | surname = Li | given = Fang-Kuei | author-mask = 3
  | publisher = University Press of Hawaii | location = Manoa | year = 1977 | isbn = 978-0-8248-0540-1
  | ref = none
  }}
* ——— (1979) "The Chinese Transcription of Tibetan Consonant Clusters". ''Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology Academia Sinica'' '''50''': 231–240.
* ——— and [[Weldon South Coblin|W. South Coblin]] (1987).  ''A study of the old Tibetan inscriptions''. (Special publications 91.) Taipei: Academia Sinica.
* {{cite book
  | surname = Li | given = Fang-Kuei | author-mask = 3
  | title = Linguistics East and West: American Indian, Sino-Tibetan, and Thai
  | publisher = Bancroft Library, University of California | location = Berkeley | year = 1986
  | url = http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb3489n99m
  | ref = none
  }} Interviews conducted by Ning-Ping Chan and Randy La Polla, with an Introduction by George Taylor.

==See also==
* [[Karlgren–Li reconstruction of Middle Chinese]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
*{{in lang|zh}} Mah Feng-hua 馬逢華 (1988), "Daonian Li Fanggui xiansheng" 悼念李方桂先生 ("Remembering Mr. Li Fang-kuei"), in ''Zhuanji wenxue'' 25.2: 110–114.
*{{in lang|zh}} Xu Ying 徐櫻 (1994). ''Fanggui yu wo wushiwu nian'' 方桂與我五十五年 (Fang-kuei's Fifty-five Years with Me) (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan).

==External links==
*[https://www.jstor.org/stable/681594 Obituary] by Ron and Suzanne Scollon, ''[[American Anthropologist]]'', 1989, available through [[JSTOR]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110928074412/http://victoria.linguistlist.org/~lapolla/rjlapolla/papers/LiFangKuei_bio.pdf Li Fang-Kuei (1902–1989)], by R.J. LaPolla, in ''[[Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics]]'', 2nd Edition, Keith Brown (ed.), London: Elsevier, 2005, pp.&nbsp;514–515. {{ISBN|978-0-08-044299-0}}.
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20041214035647/http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/l/li.htm Fanggui Li Collection], at [[American Philosophical Society]]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060918074437/http://depts.washington.edu/asianll/downloads/asia_notes/Asia_Notes_2001.pdf "Professor Li Fang-kuei: a Personal Memoir"] by Anne Yue-Hashimoto
*[http://depts.washington.edu/asianll/news/events/special/lfk/event_lfk.html Li Fang-Kuei Symposium]
*[http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb3489n99m&brand=calisphere&doc.view=entire_text An interview with Li Fang-kuei]
*[http://www.lfksociety.org Li Fang-Kuei Society for Chinese Linguistics]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Li, Fanggui}}
[[Category:1902 births]]
[[Category:1987 deaths]]
[[Category:Boxer Indemnity Scholarship recipients]]
[[Category:Chinese emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:Educators from Guangdong]]
[[Category:Linguists from the United States]]
[[Category:Linguists of Na-Dene languages]]
[[Category:Linguists of Southeast Asian languages]]
[[Category:Members of Academia Sinica]]
[[Category:Taiwanese people from Guangdong]]
[[Category:Tibetologists]]
[[Category:University of Hawaiʻi faculty]]
[[Category:University of Michigan alumni]]
[[Category:University of Chicago faculty]]
[[Category:University of Washington faculty]]
[[Category:Yale University faculty]]
[[Category:Writers from Guangzhou]]
[[Category:Linguists of Chinese]]
[[Category:20th-century Chinese linguists]]
[[Category:Historical linguists]]
[[Category:Linguists of Kra–Dai languages]]