Peter Austin (linguist)
| Peter Austin | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | Linguist |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | SOAS, University of London |
Peter Austin is an Australian linguist. He has done fieldwork on several Australian languages including Diyari, Gamilaraay[1] and Payungu, and the Austronesian languages Sasak and Samawa. He has published in the fields of language documentation, syntax and linguistic typology. He is currently the Märit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics at SOAS, University of London.[2] Austin is deeply involved in work to salvage languages that are otherwise on the verge of extinction.[3]
Austin maintains a blog on Diyari, dieriyawarra.wordpress.com (Dieri yawarra means 'Dieri language'). The blog is one of a number of language revitalisation and reclamation activities held in conjunction with the Dieri community.[4] He was also a pioneer in digital dictionaries of Australian languages with the 1994 Gamilaraay online dictionary.[5]
On January 30, 2015 Austin received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University for playing "a crucial international part in drawing attention to endangered languages by emphasising the importance of documenting the human cultural heritage represented by the thousands of languages at risk of vanishing in the near future. His motto that ‘every lost word means yet another lost world’ has boosted schools’ and the public’s interest in endangered languages."[6]
Notes and references
Notes
- ↑ Dixon 2011, p. 218.
- ↑ "Peter K. Austin at The Linguistic Summer Institute 2015". Archived from the original on 10 January 2016.
- ↑ Austin 2008.
- ↑ https://dieriyawarra.wordpress.com/about/. Missing or empty
|title=(help) - ↑ http://www.dnathan.com/language/gamilaraay/dictionary/GAMDICTF.HTM. Missing or empty
|title=(help) - ↑ "Two new honorary doctors at Faculty of Languages - Uppsala University, Sweden". www.uu.se. Retrieved 2016-02-02.
References
- Austin, Peter K. (17 August 2008). "Peter K Austin's top 10 endangered languages". The Guardian.
- Dixon, R. M. W. (1977). A Grammar of Yidin. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-21462-9.