Obituaries

Robert Anderson Hall Jr., the professor of linguistics emeritus who ventured beyond his field of undisputed expertise in Romance philology to the world of Viking rune-stones, died Dec. 2 in Cayuga Medical Center following a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. He was 86.

Hall joined the Cornell faculty in 1946 after earning a doctoral degree (1934) from the University of Rome and teaching at Brown and Princeton universities and the University of Puerto Rico. Many of his more than four dozen books and hundreds of articles concerned his research specialties -- comparative grammar of Romance languages, general linguistics and the Creole and Pidgin languages. He was the first linguist to write a structural grammar of the Italian language and to structurally analyze Hungarian and French.

When the University of Chicago conferred an alumnus award in 1978, Hall was cited "one of the world's most distinguished linguists." He was a past-president of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States

In 1979 Hall rekindled controversy when his translation of rune-like characters, carved in a rock from a Minnesota farm field, was said to prove a 1362 visit by Scandinavians to the heartland of the New World, 130 years before Columbus. Subsequent books about the Kennsington Rune-stone were hailed by advocates of pre-Columbian exploration, yet many skeptics were unconvinced and Hall continued to debate the issue, most recently with a 1995 book on the disputed rune-stone.

Survivors include his wife, Alice M. Colby-Hall of Ithaca, a son and two daughters. A memorial service is planned for April 4, 1998, at 2 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Ithaca. Memorial contributions, in lieu of flowers, may be made to the church or a charity of one's choice.

Undergraduate student Kianweng (Kenny) Chong, a citizen of Malaysia, died at Cayuga Medical Center on Dec. 3. He was 21. Chong enrolled in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at the beginning of the fall 1997 semester and resided on campus. He was a third-year student in the college's professional bachelor of architecture program.

There will be a memorial service today at 4 p.m. in Sage Chapel.

Robert Battig, a graduate student in mathematics, died on the Cornell campus Dec. 2. He was 29. Battig, who lived in Ithaca, enrolled in the doctoral program in mathematics in fall 1992 and was scheduled to receive his doctorate in May.

There will be a memorial service today at 2:30 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Chapel.