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I am a Linguist I am a Linguist By R. M. W. Dixon With a foreword by Peter Matthews LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 Cover illustration: What native title means to us. A collaborative piece from La Grange Remote Community School, Broome West Australia. The artwork was the Western Australia state winner (years 7-9) 2001-2002 in the art competition ‘The Art of Delivering Justice Arts Prize’. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dixon, Robert M. W. I am a linguist / by R.M.W. Dixon ; with a foreword by Peter Matthews. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-19235-5 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-19405-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Dixon, Robert M. W. 2. Linguistics. I. Title. P85.D59A3 2011 410.92—dc22 [B] 2010040736 ISBN 978 90 04 19235 5 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Para minha amante my muse, my inspiration. Through slings and arrows, taking arms against dun-coloured mediocrity, together we ever reach towards the stars. Contents List of plates ix Foreword by Peter Matthews xi Preface xiii Skeleton xv 1 A day in the field 1 2 What is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 23 3 Getting there 41 4 Discography, and a bit of fiction 67 5 Into the field 83 6 Frustration and fulfilment 95 7 The role of universities 129 8 More lovely fieldwork, and some comparison 153 9 The science of linguistics, and other approaches to the study of language 167 10 Fijian, English and some novels 191 11 Academic standards 215 12 The delegate from Tasmania 245 13 Into the Amazonian jungle 267 14 God and Magog in Brazil 293 15 A productive partnership 317 16 Living a life 339 Solutions to problems from the end of Chapter 6 355 Bibliography 359 Index 383 List of pLates 1 The author (1996) 2 The thatched hut built for me in the village of Casa Nova by my Jarawara friends in 1993. It was eaten by termites about five years later. Chapter 1. 3 Bakoki, Okomobi’s elder brother, butchering a pirarucu fish. Chapter 1. 4 Manowaree, Jarawara storyteller (and Mioto’s father) with two of his sons. Photographed in the missionary’s house. Chapters 1 and 2. 5 Mioto, Jarawara teacher and friend, in the missionary’s timber house. Chap- ters 1 and 13. 6 Okomobi. village chief and teacher without peer, helping to transcribe a text in my hut. Chapters 1 and 13. 7 Kamo (sitting), married to Okomobi’s sister, and Botenawaa (standing), Okombi’s elder brother. Chapters 1 and 13. 8 Motobi (Okomobi’s younger brother), dear friend and guide on a trip to the Jamamadí village. Sadly murdered in 2000. Chapters 1, 13 and 14. 9 Father, William Ward Dixon (1904-1990), in his forties. Chapter 3. 10 Mother, Isabel Dixon, neé Greenhalgh (1908–1968), in her twenties. Chapter 3. 11 Chloe Grant (c1903–1975) in 1964. Teacher of the Jirrbal and Girramay dia- lects of Dyirbal, and valued friend. Chapters 5 and 8. 12 George Watson (c1899–1991) with wife Ginnie, outside his house on Palm Island just after he had insisted on inviting me in, breaking settlement rules (see page 93). Chapter 5. 13 Albert Bennett, last speaker of Mbabaram. outside Mrs McGrath’s general store in Petford. Chapters 5, 6 and 8. 14 The author (6’ 3½” or 1.92 m. in height) with diminutive Rosie Runaway, Jirrbal speaker. Chapter 8. 15 Dick Moses, dedicated and erudite teacher of Yidiñ, at Yarrabah. Chapter 8. 16 Tilly Fuller (left), Yidiñ storyteller and teacher, with half-sister Katie Mays, outside the converted canecutter’s shack in which they lived at Aloomba. Chapter 8. X i am a Linguist 17 Sepo (Josefa Cokanacagi) — host, mentor, guardian and teacher without peer. Here Sepo comes home with vegetables from his garden plot and scales for weighing copra. Chapter 10. 18 The author before a map showing locations of the 250 Aboriginal languages of Australia. Taken when awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters at the Australian National University in 1991. Chapter 10. 19 Elia Gavidi (my Mooomoo Levu ‘big uncle’), wise and benevolent chief of Waitabu village. Chapter 10. 20 The Fijianvillage of Waitabu, from a high hill to the north-east. Chapter 10. 21 Working on the grammar of Boumaa Fijian with Sepo on an unusually cool day. Although I had a table (rare in the village), Sepo preferred to work sitting on the floor. Chapter 10. 22 Molly Raymond, last speaker of the Ngajan dialect of Dyirbal, in her mid- ’nineties. (She lived to be 102.) Chapter 12. 23 Spider Henry, Jirrbal Gubi (‘wise man’), who was left a substantial inheri- tance and not told about it. Here he sings in Gugulu style. Chapter 12. 24 Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, against a background of an Australian Aboriginal bark painting, an Amazonian basket and a Papua New Guinea bilum (or string bag). Chapters 15 and 16. foreword Few if any linguists have displayed such insight in the field and back home in their study, and have published so much of such lasting value, on so many top- ics, as Bob Dixon has in the past forty and more years. He mentions me most generously at the end of Chapter 11, in company with the late Ken Hale. But the truth is this: that if Hale›s talents could miraculously have been combined with mine, we might have formed a true all-rounder in linguistics, as Bob actually is. It is an honour to be asked to write a foreword for him. His memoir is the testament not only of a brilliant scholar, but of a man whose heart is in the right place and whose actions show it. I will not pretend that I share all the views to which his own experience of life has led him. But where I differ it is as from many others, as intelligent as Plato or as naive as Tom Paine, who have been good people and have meant well by mankind. As a student of language I cannot commend his stance too highly. I urge younger linguists in particular, to mark all he says about their subject, to empathise with all his triumphs of analysis, and find inspiration in his example. There is a primrose path, if I may speak to them directly, that can lead safely to a Ph.D. Just choose whatever theory is in vogue, and let it select the data that are relevant. But why, for crying out loud, should you want to constrain the springtime of your creativity in that way? The same path can lead you on to tenure. Cleave doggedly to some speciality, as a phonologist, as a syntactician, as a semanticist, or whatever. As if language can be carved up into modules on the model of exam papers! Better still, do not be a phonologist but (at the time I write) an Optimality Theorist; not a syntactician but, to make life easier, a Minimalist. Dogmas like these have a shelf-life long enough for you to get promoted. But do you really want to be left stranded, when their time comes and, like many linguists who have met this fate before you, you are still in middle age? The signposts to an illusory paradise surround you. But do, I beg you, follow Bob and turn away before it is too late. The steps you take may well be wandering and slow. Your way will often be solitary. But XII i am a Linguist the world of language will be all before you, where to choose how you can truly advance human understanding. Like Bob, I have no religion. But I mention this because, in his case too, it has no bearing on anything else. His picture, in Chapter 14, of the Summer In- stitute of Linguistics is one of the most balanced and detached that I have read or heard. I hope that its members will recognise that it is so. If not they will, of course, confirm the others. Peter Matthews (Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, University of Cambridge) prefaCe This is an intellectual autobiography of the author as a student of the science of linguistics, working within the university system. There is also brief mention of my lifelong involvement with discography, and of two forays into fiction- writing (in Chapters 4 and 10). Only a little information is included on private and family life. To illustrate what it is like to actually ‘do’ linguistics, in the scientific sense, the first chapter describes a day’s fieldwork in a small Indian village deep in the Amazonian jungle. Chapter 2 then explains what the science of linguistics is, and Chapter 9 contrasts this with other approaches to the study of language. Also interwoven with the memoir are fairly outspoken discussions of the role of universities (Chapter 7) and of the standards that apply in an academic or quasi-academic milieu (Chapters 11 and 14).

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