Obituary: Bernard Theodoor Marie Tervoort
May 29, 1920, Groesbeek, the Netherlands—August 17, 2006, Bussum, the Netherlands
Sint-Michielsgestel, the Netherlands
Feelings of dismay and sadness flowed when I learned the death of Dr. Bernard Tervoort at the age of 86. One of the founding fathers of international sign language research, Tervoort was Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam.
In 1950, Tervoort, a Catholic priest at that time, finished his studies in theology and linguistics. He was looking for a topic for his PhD project. He visited the Instituut voor Doven [Institute for the Deaf] in Sint-Michielsgestel and attended several lessons. Tervoort noticed that the deaf pupils signed among themselves in spite of the fact that spoken language was the instructional language. He became interested in the communication system of deaf children and decided to make this the topic of his PhD research.
Tervoort finished his thesis in 1953. It entailed a structural analysis of visual language use within a group of deaf children. He described this visual language as an esoteric communication system. He did not label it as a sign language. This had to wait for William Stokoe. Instead, Tervoort contrasted the visual esoteric communication system with the exoteric system, spoken Dutch. However, his thesis ends with an impressive appeal from the researcher to the teacher of the deaf: "If you want deaf children to learn your language, you first have to learn theirs." This advice made Tervoort the first scholar to advocate bilingual education for deaf children, and in this respect he was way ahead of the entire field of deaf education.
Tervoort continued his research between 1958 and 1967 with a huge follow-up study that involved Dutch, Belgian, and American schools for the deaf. Results were published in articles such as "Esoteric Symbolism in the Communication Behavior of Young Deaf Children" and "You Me Downtown Movie Fun."
In 1964, Tervoort received an honorary doctorate from Gallaudet College in Washington for his research. Until that year Tervoort held various positions at the Instituut voor Doven, but in 1964 he left office. Tervoort also left the priesthood, with the permission of the Vatican. Not long thereafter he married his wife Dieuwertje.
In 1967, Tervoort was appointed Professor at the Department of General Linguistics of the University of Amsterdam. He became interested in specific language impairment, aphasia, and second language acquisition, but he remained thoroughly involved with the Deaf community, their sign language and culture. In the early 1980s, Tervoort initiated research into the communicative proficiency of deaf children and adults raised in predominantly oral educational settings. As editor of several publications concerning the sign communication between deaf people, Tervoort paved the way for research projects into Sign Language of the Netherlands, carried out by various Dutch universities. It is this research that ultimately, more than four decades after his seminal dissertation, led to the introduction of bilingual deaf education in the Netherlands.
In 1987, Tervoort retired as a professor, but he remained active through scientific publications and lectures. Apart from his scientific work, Tervoort was known as a writer of youth novels. In 1998, he published his autobiography, and in 2004, made his debut as an author of crime stories with his book "Sign of Life" about a deaf monk in a medieval monastery.
Tervoort was a man with enormous energy, various talents, and a sound dose of humor. Many Dutch scholars in the fields of deafness, specific language impairment, aphasia, and child language studies were once his PhD students.
Bernard, or Ben, as we used to call him, was a man whom we expected to live forever, but alas nature decided differently. In Tervoort we have lost a passionate scholar, an energetic supporter of the Deaf community, a great storyteller, and a dear friend.
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