Prof Thomas Arwyn Watkins was the most accomplished exponent of Welsh linguistics of his generation. His research encompassed the full range of synchronic and diachronic aspects of language study and he was one of those who rekindled the flame of serious dialectology in Wales in the 1950s.
Born in the Swansea village of Llansamlet in 1924, he was educated at the village school, Bishop Gore Grammar School and Swansea University College, where he was a student from 1941 to 1943. He returned in 1947, after army service, to take a diploma in education. He had read English, French and Welsh but responded eagerly to an invitation from the head of department, Prof Henry Lewis, the leading figure in the study of Welsh linguistics, to read for an honours degree in Welsh and graduated with a First the following year.
For his research dissertation, Watkins chose to make a study of the phonology and morphology of his local Llansamlet dialect, an apprenticeship which laid the foundations for much of his later work in dialectology and modem linguistics.
A fellowship enabled him to continue his studies at Leeds, Zurich and Rennes, and he was appointed to a lectureship in 1952 in the expanding Welsh department at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.
He taught Old and Middle Welsh and introduced courses on dialectology and linguistics.
From the last of these stemmed his book leithyddiaeth: agweddau ar astudio iaith (1961), (Linguistics: aspects of the study of language). It remains a comprehensive and wide-ranging introduction characterised by its clear exposition, which has had enormous influence. His courses on dialectology were equally influential. Reflecting Watkins's interests and research at the time, these are mainly phonological, morphological and lexical in scope and reveal little interest in socio-linguistics, but they were being produced at the point of the disappearance or fatal diluting of these dialects so that they constitute an important record.
Watkins's personal research turned to a greater extent to phonology, historical syntax and the development of Welsh orthography.
He spent a term as visiting professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1971 and was elected to the Chair of Welsh at University College Dublin in 1981, where he remained until his retirement in 1989. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1984 and honorary Professor of Welsh at University College Swansea in 1989.
A gifted teacher, he could inspire students with his unquenchable enthusiasm so that even those for whom the term Old Welsh presaged little more than dread or apathy found themselves won over by his lucid and scholarly exposition of medieval texts and glosses which brought them into a living relationship with the language they spoke at home.
He was concerned for the quality of modern spoken Welsh and for the future of the language and was prompt to censure what he perceived as instances of its misuse, particularly in the media, and sometimes expressed his opposition to aspects of language policy in Wales. He was a man of strong social and political convictions, acquired in his youth in the working-class community where he had been brought up, but serious conflicts of opinion were generally assuaged by his warm personality. Lively, energetic, competitive but never aggressive, Arwyn Watkins brought the same qualities of honesty and commitment to all he did, in his research, teaching, sport and personal relationships.
He died at his home in Swansea. He is survived by his wife Gwalia, his sons Sion and Rhys, and his daughter Lona.
Thomas Arwyn Watkins: born: July 20th, 1924; died: August 4th, 2003.