Professor R. M. W. (Bob) Dixon
Adjunct Professor (Humanities)
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Room: |
Cairns A4-229A |
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Telephone: |
+61 (07) 4042 1461 |
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Fax: |
+61 (07) 4042 1390 |
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Email: |
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Address: |
The Cairns Institute/SASS James Cook University PO Box 6811 Cairns QLD 4870 AUSTRALIA |
Qualifications, Memberships and Consultancies
Qualifications
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University of London: PhD in Linguistics, 1968. Thesis title: The Dyirbal language of North Queensland
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Australian National University: Doctor of Letters, 1991 (by examination of published work - four books and five papers)
Membership of Learned Societies
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Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (elected 1998)
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Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (elected 1982)
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Member of Linguistic Society of America since 1962; elected HonoraryMember 1987 (the number of Honorary Members was limited to 40 by the LSA constitution; they are spread over 25 countries)
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Member of the Australian Linguistic Society since 1977; Vice-President1977-80; President 1980-82
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Member of the Philological Society, London, since 1962
Research Interests
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Theoretically-informed description of previously undescribed languages, especially those from Australia, Amazonia and Oceania
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Inductive generalizations concerning the nature of human language
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Reconstructing past stages of languages and ways in which modern languages develop, in a principled fashion, from putative ancestor languages
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Study of the syntax, morphology, lexicon and phonology of English.
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Documentation of the indigenous languages of Australia, with particular reference to those of the Cairns-Townsville area
Selected Publications
Dixon, R.M.W., (1972) The Dyirbal language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W., (1977) A grammar of Yidin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press..
Dixon, R.M.W., (1982). Where have all the adjectives gone? And other essays in semantics and syntax. Berlin:Mouton.
Dixon, R.M.W., (1988).A grammar of Boumaa Fijian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press..
Dixon, R.M.W., (1994). Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W., and Koch, Grace (1996). Dyirbal song poetry:The oral literature of an Australian rainforest people. StLucia: University of Queensland Press.
Dixon, R.M.W., (1997) The rise and fall of languages. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. [Translated into Japanese and Chinese.].
Dixon, R.M.W., (2002) Australian languages: their nature and development.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W., (2004) The Jarawara language of southern Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Recipient of Leonard Bloomfield Award, from the Linguistic Society of America, as the best book across all field of linguistics published worldwide between March 2003 and February 2005.
Dixon, R.M.W.,(2005) A semantic approach to English grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W.,(2010) Basic linguistic theory, Volume 1, Methodology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W.,(2010) Basic linguistic theory, Volume 2, Grammatical topics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dixon, R.M.W.,(2011) I am a linguist. Leiden: Brill
Aikhenvald, AlexandraY, and Dixon, R.M.W.(2011). Language at large: Essays on syntax and semantics. Leiden: Brill
Dixon, R.M.W.,(2012) Basic linguistic theory, Volume 3, Further grammatical topics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plus five other books on linguistics, 20 edited volumes, 120 scholarly papers, two novels and one discography.