Dr Anthony R. Jukes

Former Research Associate

Anthony Jukes was a former ELDP-funded post-doctoral research fellow, working on the documentation and description of Toratán (Ratahan), an endangered language spoken by the older generation in a handful of villages located in southern Minahasa, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Toratán is an isolated member of the Sangiric language family, surrounded by Minahasan languages. Like other languages of the region it is giving way to Manado Malay and the national language Bahasa Indonesia. Its decline is more advanced than most regional languages, with no more than a few hundred fluent speakers, all of advanced age. This project documented the language while it was still possible, and also involved working with the language community on maintenance strategies.

Anthony studied Linguistics and Japanese in the University of Melbourne, completing a BA (Hons) in 1996. He then began research on Makassarese, a language with about 2 million speakers located in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. His MA thesis (1998) describes the phonology and verbal morphology of that language. He then spent some time working as a research assistant on an Australian Research Council funded project on languages of Lombok and Sumbawa, and also studied Indonesian at the South-East Asian Studies Summer Institute at the University of Oregon. He returned to the University of Melbourne to continue work on Makassarese, especially the literary genre contained in manuscripts written in an obsolete local script. His PhD thesis (2006) is a reference grammar focusing on morphosyntax.