Robert M. W. Dixon

Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon (Gloucester, England, 25 January 1939[1]) is a Professor of Linguistics in the College of Arts, Society, and Education and The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland. He is also Deputy Director of The Language and Culture Research Centre at JCU.[2] Doctor of Letters (DLitt, ANU, 1991), he was awarded a prestigious Honorary Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa by JCU in 2018. Fellow of British Academy; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America, he is one of three living linguists to be specifically mentioned in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics by P. H. Matthews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).[3]

Early life

Dixon was born in Gloucester, in the west of England, in 1939, and as a child lived at Stroud and later at Bramcote near Nottingham, where his father became principal of the People's College of Further Education. He was educated at Nottingham High School and then at the University of Oxford, where he took his first degree in mathematics in 1960, and finally at the University of Edinburgh, where he was a Research Fellow in Statistical Linguistics in the English department from July 1961 to September 1963. After that until September 1964 he did field work for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in north-east Queensland, working on several of the Aboriginal languages of Australia, but taking a particular interest in Dyirbal.[4]

Career

Research

Dixon has written on many areas of linguistic theory and fieldwork, being particularly noted for his work on the languages of Australia and the Arawá languages of Brazil. He has published grammars of Dyirbal, Yidiny, Warrgamay, Nyawaygi, and Mbabaram. He published a comprehensive grammar of Boumaa Fijian, a Polynesian language (1988), and Jarawara, an Arawá language from southern Amazonia (2004), for which he received the prestigious Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistic Society of America. Dixon's work in historical linguistics has been highly influential. Based on a careful historical comparative analysis, Dixon questions the concept of Pama–Nyungan languages for which sufficient evidence has never been provided. He also proposes a new "punctuated equilibrium" model, based on the theory of the same name in evolutionary biology, which is more appropriate for numerous language regions, including the Australian languages. Dixon puts forth his theory in The Rise and Fall of Languages, refined in his monograph Australian Languages: their nature and development (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Dixon is the author of a number of other books including Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development Cambridge University Press and Ergativity. His monumental three-volume work, Basic Linguistic Theory (2010–2012), was published by the Oxford University Press. His further work on Australian languages was published in Edible gender, mother-in-law style, and other grammatical wonders: Studies in Dyirbal, Yidiñ and Warrgamay, 2015 His further influential monographs include work on English grammar, especially A new approach to English grammar (1991, revised and enlarged edition 2005, Oxford University Press), and Making New Words: Morphological Derivation in English, 2014, Oxford University Press. His recent monograph Are Some Languages Better than Others, Oxford University Press (2016, paperback 2018) poses a question of efficiency and value of different languages, in an engaging and provocative way.

His editorial work includes four volumes of Handbook of Australian languages (with Barry J Blake), a special issue of Lingua on ergativity, and, jointly with Alexandra Aikhenvald, numerous volumes on linguistic typology in the series Explorations in linguistic typology (Oxford University Press), the fundamental The Amazonian languages (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and the monumental The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology (2017, Cambridge University Press). His most recent book is The unmasking of English dictionaries, from Cambridge University Press, 2018, which offers a concise history of English dictionaries unmasking their drawbacks, and suggests a new innovative way of dictionary making (). His 'We used to eat people', Revelations of a Fiji islands traditional village, from McFarland 2018 offers a vivid portrayal of his fieldwork in Fiji in the late 1980s ().

Academic positions

In 1996, Dixon and another linguist, Alexandra Aikhenvald, established the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at the Australian National University in Canberra. On 1 January 2000, the centre relocated to La Trobe University in Melbourne.[1]

Both Dixon (the Director of the centre) and Aikhenvald (Associate Director) resigned their positions in May 2008.[5] In early 2009, Aikhenvald and Dixon established the Language and Culture Research Group (LCRG) at the Cairns campus of James Cook University.[6] This has been transformed into a Language and Culture Research Centre within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at JCU, Cairns, in 2011. Currently, Professor Aikhenvald is Director and Prof Dixon Deputy Director of the Centre.[7]

Bibliography

(The list below is incomplete; for a full publication list, see R. M. W. Dixon's overview)

  • Linguistic Science and Logic, 1963
  • Blues & Gospel records, 1902-1943, 1964
  • Blues and Gospel Records: 1890-1943, 1964
  • What is language? A New Approach to Linguistic Description, 1965
  • Recording the Blues, 1970
  • The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland, 1972
  • Grammatical categories in Australian languages, 1976
  • A Grammar of Yidiɲ, 1977.
  • Handbook of Australian Languages: Volume 1, 1979
  • Handbook of Australian Languages: Volume 2, 1981
  • Handbook of Australian Languages: Volume 3, 1983
  • Handbook of Australian Languages: Volume 4, 1991
  • Handbook of Australian Languages: Volume 5, 2000
  • The Languages of Australia, 1980
  • Where Have All the Adjectives Gone? and Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax, 1982
  • Physical Science: A Dynamic Approach, 1986
  • Studies in Ergativity, 1987
  • A Grammar of Boumaa Fijian, 1988
  • Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning, 1990
  • The Honey-Ant Men's Love Song and Other Aboriginal Song Poems (UQP Poetry), 1990
  • Words of our country : stories, place names, and vocabulary in Yidiny, the Aboriginal Language of the Cairns-Yarrabah Region (Editor), 1991.
  • A New Approach to English Grammar, on Semantic Principles, 1991
  • Searching for Aboriginal Languages: Memoirs of a Field Worker, 1993
  • Ergativity, 1994
  • Dyirbal Song Poetry: The Oral Literature of an Australian Rainforest People, 1996
  • The Rise and Fall of Languages, 1998
  • The Amazonian Languages (Editor with Alexandra Aikhenvald), 1999
  • Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity, 2000
  • 言語の興亡 (岩波新書), 2001 [Japanese “Ring of Language”]
  • Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics (Editor with A. Aikhenvald), 2002
  • Word: A Cross-linguistic Typology, 2003
  • The Jarawara language of Southern Amazonia, 2004
  • Adjective Classes: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Editor with Aikhenvald), 2006
  • Complementation: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Editor with Aikhenvald), 2006
  • Australian languages : their nature and development, 2007
  • Serial Verb Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Editor with Aikhenvald), 2007
  • Grammars in Contact: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Editor with A. Aikhenvald), 2007
  • A Semantic Approach to English Grammar, revised edition 2007
  • Basic Linguistic Theory Volume 1: Methodology, 2009
  • Basic Linguistic Theory Volume 2: Grammatical Topics, 2009
  • The Semantics of Clause Linking: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Editor with Aikhenvald), 2009
  • I am a Linguist, 2011
  • Basic Linguistic Theory Volume 3: Further Grammatical Topics, 2012
  • Possession and Ownership (Editor with Aikhenvald), 2013
  • Making New Words: Morphological Derivation in English, 2014.
  • The Grammar of Knowledge: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Editor with Aikhenvald), 2014
  • Edible gender, mother-in-law style, and other grammatical wonders: Studies in Dyirbal, Yidiñ and Warrgamay, 2015
  • Are Some Languages Better than Others?, 2016
  • Commands: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Editor with Aikhenvald), 2017
  • "We used to eat people": Revelations of a Fiji Islands Traditional Village, 2017

References:[8][9][10]

Non-academic publications

In addition to scholarly works, Dixon also published, in 1983, a memoir of his early fieldwork in Australia titled Searching For Aboriginal Languages. The book provides a glimpse at linguistic fieldwork as it was done in that era, as well as an interesting historical look at the appalling treatment of Aboriginal peoples of Australia that continued right into the 1960s.

His scholarly autobiography, I am a linguist, was published by Brill in 2011.

During the 1960s, Dixon published two science-fiction short stories under the name of Simon Tully, and in the 1980s two detective novels under the name of Hosanna Brown.[11]

Dixon is also the co-author, with John Godrich, of the definitive discography of American prewar blues and gospel recordings, Blues and Gospel Records: 1890–1943.[12]

References

  1. 1 2 Research Centre for Linguistic Typology: Ten Years' Achievements Archived 26 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine. (2006).
  2. ↑ Professor R. M. W. Dixon Archived 30 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine. (information page at the James Cook University site)
  3. ↑ Matthews, P. H. (2014). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  4. ↑ Robert Dixon at research.jcu.edu.au, accessed 25 April 2015
  5. ↑ RCLT Newsletter, 2009
  6. ↑ News from the newly established LCRG at James Cook University (ALS newsletter, February 2009)
  7. ↑ see https://eresearch.jcu.edu.au/spaces/TLA; https://plone.jcu.edu.au/researchatjcu/research/lcrc
  8. ↑ https://www.librarything.com/author/dixonrobertmw&all=1. , accessed 28th Jan 2018, "Robert M. W. Dixon"
  9. ↑ Dixon, Robert M. W. 1939- in libraries (WorldCat catalog). Accessed 27th Jan 2018.
  10. ↑ https://www.amazon.com/Books-R-M-W-Dixon/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AR.%20M.%20W.%20Dixon. "R. M. W. Dixon: Books", accessed 27th Jan 2018
  11. ↑ R. M. W. Dixon: 'Skeleton' (pp.xv–xvii of Dixon's academic autobiography I am a linguist. Leiden: Brill. 2011.)
  12. ↑ Edward Komara. 1998. Review of: Blues and Gospel Records, 1890–1943 by Robert M. W. Dixon; John Godrich; Howard Rye. Notes, Second Series, Vol. 55, No. 2 (December 1998), pp. 361–363.
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