Professor Peter K. Austin
Märit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics
Note: for the whole of 2010 Professor Austin is on sabbatical leave and will be mostly overseas
Peter Austin joined SOAS in October 2002 after having held a Humboldt Prize at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt. He was previously Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Melbourne (1996-2002) and has held visiting appointments at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, University of Hong Kong, and Stanford University. He studied at the Australian National University, completing a BA with first class Honours in Asian Studies (Japanese and Linguistics) in 1974, and a PhD in 1978 on the Diyari language spoken in the far north of South Australia. He taught at the University of Western Australia (1978), held a Harkness Fellowship for post-doctoral research at UCLA and MIT (1979-80), and in 1981 set up the Department of Linguistics at La Trobe University.
Peter's research interests cover descriptive, theoretical and applied linguistics. He has extensive fieldwork experience on Australian Aboriginal languages (northern New South Wales, northern South Australia, and north-west Western Australia) and has co-authored with David Nathan the first fully page-formatted hypertext dictionary on the World Wide Web, a bilingual dictionary of Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi), northern New South Wales, as well as publishing seven bilingual dictionaries of Aboriginal languages. Since 1995 he has been carrying out research on Sasak and Samawa (or Sumbawan), Austronesian languages spoken on Lombok and Sumbawa islands, eastern Indonesia. His theoretical research is mainly on syntax and focuses on Lexical Functional Grammar, morpho-syntactic typology, computer-aided lexicography and multi-media for endangered languages. He has also published on historical and comparative linguistics, typology, and Aboriginal history and biography.
Peter currently is a member of the following bodies:
Peter is currently supervising 6 PhD students (and on the PhD committees of 5 others) working on languages spoken in Australia, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Nepal, Solomon Islands, Algeria, Egypt, and Iran. See here for their names and provisional thesis titles.
Since 2007 Peter has been an occasional contributor to the "Transient Languages and Cultures" blog based at the University of Sydney. You can find links to his blog posts below.
Selected publications | Hard to find papers | Websites | Podcasts | Blog posts 2010 | Blog posts 2009 | Blog posts 2008 | Blog posts 2007 | PhD students | Del.ici.ous bookmarks | Links
Selected publications
Note: to download prepublication versions of these papers click the highlighted links.
Austin, Peter K. (ed.) 2010 Language Documentation and Description, Volume 7 London: SOAS
Austin, Peter K. 2010 Current issues in language documentation. In Peter K. Austin (ed.) Language Documentation and Description, Volume 7, 12-33. London: SOAS
Austin, Peter K. 2010 Communities, ethics and rights in language documentation. In Peter K. Austin (ed.) Language Documentation and Description, Volume 7, 34-54. London: SOAS
Austin, Peter K. 2010 Applying for a language documentation research grant. In Peter K. Austin (ed.) Language Documentation and Description, Volume 7, 285-299. London: SOAS
Austin, Peter K. (ed.) 2009 Language Documentation and Description, Volume 6 London: SOAS
Austin, Peter K. (ed.) 2008 1,000 Languages London: Thames and Hudson; and Berkeley: University of California Press.
See here, here and here.
A review in the New York Times says: "Anyone interested in world culture or the history of mankind should take a look at One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost, edited by Peter K. Austin, the director of the endangered languages program at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. I know I found it irresistible."
Translations are now available in Dutch, German, Icelandic, Spanish, Italian, Rumanian, Estonian, and Japanese.
Austin, Peter K. 2008 The classification of Pinikura, Western Australia. In Claire Bowern, Bethwyn Evans and Luisa Micelli (eds.) Morphology and Language History: In honour of Harold Koch, 31-41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=CILT%20298
Austin, Peter K. 2008 The Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) Language, northern New South Wales — A Brief History of Research. In William McGregor (ed.) Encountering Aboriginal languages: studies in the history of Australian linguistics, 37-58. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/AustinGamil.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 2008 Training for language documentation: Experiences at the School of Oriental and African Studies. In Margaret Florey and Victoria Rau (eds.) Documenting and Revitalising Austronesian Languages,25-41. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication No. 1. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press
http://hdl.handle.net/10125/1372
Austin, Peter K. 2008 Survival of Languages. In Emily F. Shuckburgh (ed.) Survival: The Survival of the Human Race, 80-98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/AustinDarwinLecture.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 2006 Content questions in Sasak, eastern Indonesia: an optimality theoretic syntax account. In Fritz Schulze and Holger Warnk (eds.) Insular Southeast Asia: Linguistic and Cultural Studies in Honour of Bernd Nothofer, 1-12. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
see http://www.buske.de/product_info.php?products_id=2794
Austin, Peter K. 2006 Data and language documentation. In Jost Gippert, Nikolaus Himmelmann and Ulrike Mosel (eds.) Essentials of Language Documentation, 87-112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/AustinDoc.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 2006 Gamilaraay. In Keith Brown (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition, 4:724-727. Oxford: Elsevier.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/Austin5040.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 2006 Jiwarli. In Keith Brown (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition, 6:125-129. Oxford: Elsevier.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/Austin5042.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 2006 Australia: Language Situation. In Keith Brown (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition, 1:580-585. Oxford: Elsevier.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/Austin1711.pdf
Austin, Peter K., Oliver Bond, Monik Charette, David Nathan and Peter Sells (eds.) 2009 Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 2. London: SOAS.
Austin, Peter K., Oliver Bond and David Nathan (eds.) 2007 Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory. London: SOAS.
Austin, Peter K. and Lenore Grenoble 2007 Current Trends in Language Documentation. In Peter K. Austin (ed.) Language Documentation and Description, Vol 4, 12-25. London: SOAS.
Austin, Peter K. and Luise Hercus 2004 The Yarli languages. In Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (eds.) Subgrouping and Australian Languages, 227-244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/HercusAustin.pdf
Austin, Peter K. and Simon Musgrave (eds.) 2008 Voice and Grammatical Functions in Austronesian Languages. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Austin, Peter K. and Julia Sallabank (eds.) in press The Handbook of Endangered Languages. Cambridge University Press.
Austin, Peter K. and Andrew Simpson (eds.) 2007 Endangered Languages. Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 14. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
http://www.buske.de/product_info.php?products_id=2794
Lise Dobrin, Peter K. Austin & David Nathan 2009 Dying to be counted: the commodification of endangered languages in language documentation. In Peter K. Austin (ed.) Language Documentation and Description, Voume 6, 37-52. London: SOAS.
Dobrin, Lise, Peter K. Austin and David Nathan 2007 Dying to be counted: commodification of endangered languages. In Peter K. Austin, Oliver Bond and David Nathan (eds.) Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory, 59-68. London: SOAS.
http://www.hrelp.org/publications/ldlt/papers/dobrin_austin_nathan.pdf
Margetts, Anna and Peter K. Austin 2007 Three participant events in the languages of the world: towards a cross-linguistic typology Linguistics 45:393-451.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/MargettsAustin.pdf
Some hard to find papers and work in progress
Austin, Peter K. 2005 Clitic pronouns in Sasak, eastern Indonesia. SOAS manuscript.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/AustinSasak.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 2002 Developing interactive knowledgebases for Australian Aboriginal languages - Malyangapa. University of Melbourne, MS [Presented at 2003 E-MELD workshop]
http://emeld.org/workshop/2003/Malyangapa.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 2001 Word order in a free word order language: the case of Jiwarli. In Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin and Barry Alpher (eds) Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian languages, 305-324. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/AustinHale.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 2001 Verbs, valence and voice in Balinese, Sasak and Sumbawan La Trobe Working Papers in Linguistics 11
http://bit.ly/76aiKr
Austin, Peter K. 1997 Causatives and applicatives in Australian Aboriginal languages. In Kazuto Matsumura and Toru Hayashi (eds.) The dative and related phenomena, 165-225. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.
http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/peter_austin/AustinCausatives.pdf
Austin, Peter K. 1992 Word order in a free word order language: the case of Jiwarli La Trobe Working Papers in Linguistics 5
http://bit.ly/8Wrx0u
Austin, Peter K. 1990 Classification of Lake Eyre languages La Trobe Working Papers in Linguistics 3
http://bit.ly/51KWrh
Websites
Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) bilingual dictionary
http://bit.ly/7DZpwb
Jiwarli: a language of Western Australia
http://bit.ly/5YuuoC
Podcasts
A podcast about Endangered Languages Week 2008, recorded by Cathy Edwards 23 April 2008
http://bit.ly/5SKy3x
Interview with Patrick Cox on The World in Words number 23 on 26 September 2008
http://bit.ly/8j5QBu
Blog posts
I am an occasional contributor to the "Transient Languages and Cultures" blog based at the University of Sydney. The following is a list of my blog posts for 2010. For older posts, see my blog post archive page.
Recent Blog Posts ... see also my older blog posts
- How much room is there in the arc(hive)?
9 August 2010
Discussion of data volumes and types in language archiving
http://bit.ly/b5fmXC
- New website: Aboriginal Languages Network, Port Augusta
News of a new website with information and materials on languages from Port Augusta, South Australia
22 June 2010
http://bit.ly/dyYbr8
- Contemporary Aboriginal naming practices
13 June 2010
Observations on names of children over 7 generations in one family in South Australia
http://bit.ly/dvdZaS
- And still they speak it
7 June 2010
One family has continued to speak the Diyari (Dieri) of northern South Australia up to today, with two fluent speakers remaining, despite reports that the language is extinct
http://bit.ly/c77T79
- Fieldwork training in Manchester
26 April 2010
University of Manchester is running a workshop on fieldwork on 20 May 2010
http://bit.ly/aCbACn
- Bienvnus a Dgernesi
20 April 2010
SOAS students fieldwork on Guernsey and link to their blog
http://bit.ly/aCbACn
- How long is a piece of string?
14 April 2010
Discussion of how long it takes to transcribe and translate language recordings
http://bit.ly/aPGrtp
- LDD 7 now available
7 April 2010
Advertisement for Volume 7 of Language Documentation and Description
http://bit.ly/aN9ErC
- 3L Summer School 2010
14 March 2010
Advertisement for the 3L Summer School to be held in Leiden University, July 2010
http://bit.ly/9ALy5E
- Another year over and a new one just begun
1 January 2010
A look back at 2009 activities and some exciting prospects for the future
http://bit.ly/6fJpo3
Current PhD students
Main supervisor
Louise Ashmore 'Documentation of Wik Ngatharr, Cape York Peninsula, Australia'
Gerardo De Caro 'Argument coding in Talyshi, northern Iran'
Kay Johnson 'Documentation of spatial deixis in Ske, Vanuatu'
Sophie Rendina 'Documentation of spatial deixis in Numee, New Caledonia'
Narayan Sharma 'Morphosyntax of Puma, Nepal'
Committee member
Cathy Bartram 'Tone and register in Walungge'
Tracey Carro-Noya 'Verbal morphosyntax of Chamacoco, Paraguay'
Michael Franjieh 'Possession in North Ambrym'
Lameen Souag 'Language contact: Kwaranji and Siwi'
Radu Voica 'Documentation of Blablanga, Solomon Islands'
Completed PhD students
2008
Henrik Bergqvist 'Temporal reference in Lakandon Maya'
2009
Peter Budd 'Realis and irrealis in Biriebo, Vanuatu'
Mary Chambers (nee Raymond) 'Spatial location in Kubakota, Solomon Islands'
Chaithra Puttaswamy 'Verbs in Malto'
Stuart McGill 'Agreement in Cicipu, north-west Nigeria'
Del.icio.us Bookmarks
Go here for tagged links to various materials and resources on endangered languages.
Links
SOAS Linguistics Department
Other links
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