BW-I Am a Linguist.Indd

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

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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 dialects 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 inheritance 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 topics, 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). It was my privilege to create a world-class teaching-and-research department of linguistics at the Australian National University, in the 1970s and 1980s (Chapters 6, 8 and 10), which trained a good number of linguists of the highest quality. During the past fifteen years I have collaborated with Alexandra Aikhenvald in organising nine International Workshops, each of which has resulted in a volume hailed as being on the cutting-edge of theoretical endeavour (Chapter 15). The greatest intellectual satisfaction of all has come from intensive fieldwork on several of the indigenous languages of Australia (Chapters 5, 6, 8 and 12), on the Boumaa dialect of Fijian (Chapter 10) and on Jarawara from Brazil (Chapters 1, 13 and 14). My everlasting gratitude is to speakers of these wondrous languages, for their friendship and their inspired instruction. I am grateful to my first great teacher of linguistics, M. A. K. Halliday for permission to reproduce, in Chapter 3, his letter to me of 24 February 1961. And thanks to Norbert Wiener for putting the idea into my head, half-a- century ago, with his memoir I am a mathematician.

Skeleton

Personal Born in Gloucester, England, on Wednesday 25 January 1939. Brought up in the nearby Cotswolds town of Stroud. In 1947, moved to the village of Bramcote, five miles from Nottingham where father was principal of the People’s College of Further Education. From 1949 until 1957, attended Nottingham High School, a day ‘public’ (that is, private) school. In 1957, gained admission to Oxford Uni- versity to study chemistry, but immediately switched to mathematics; obtained a second class honours degree in 1960. Began a PhD in mathematics at Oxford but abandoned it after a year, to go to Edinburgh and become a linguist. Married, April 1963 – January 1986. Three children — Eelsha (born Sunday 12 January 1964), a corporate treasury analyst; Fergus (born Monday 6 June 1966), an electrical engineer; Rowena (born Thursday 21 September 1967), an airline pilot for Qantas. In June 1992, at the University of Campinas in Brazil, met Alexandra (Sasha) Aikhenvald (born in Moscow, Sunday 1 September 1957). She moved to Canberra in February 1994 on being awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the Australian Research Council. Gained a de facto stepson, Michael Rudov (born Tuesday 4 Au- gust 1981), a student of Asian (and other) languages, an artist and a charity worker.

Discography Began discographical study in 1955. Joint compiler of the standard work (referred to as ‘the bible’) — Blues and gospel records, 1902-1942. First edition 1964, later editions 1969, 1982 and 1997, with coverage then having been extended to 1890 - 1943. Joint author of Recording the blues (1970, reissued 2001).

Fiction During the 1960s, published two science-fiction short stories under the name Simon Tully (and two fact pieces in science fiction magazines under my own X IVI am a linguist

name). Had two detective novels published, under the name of Hosanna Brown: I spy, you die (1984) and Death upon a spear (1986).

Linguistics Research Fellow in Statistical Linguistics in the Department of English Lan- guage and General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, July 1961 – Sep- tember 1963. Paid scant attention to the statistical side; simply became en- tranced by linguistics. From September 1963 until September 1964, employed by the Australian In- stitute of Aboriginal Studies (a most odd organisation) to undertake fieldwork in north-east Queensland. Recorded materials on ten languages, but focussed mainly on Dyirbal. Back in England, Lecturer in Linguistics at University College London from October 1964 until July 1970. Further field trip to north-east Queensland in March-April 1967; submitted grammar of Dyirbal as PhD thesis in December 1967. During 1968-9 was Lecturer on Linguistics at Harvard University. From July 1970, Professor and Head of the Department of Linguistics at the Australian National University in Canberra. Trained many first-class undergraduate and graduate students. Twenty further field trips to north-east Queensland, 1970 - 1992. Published lengthy grammars of Dyirbal (1972) and Yidiñ (1977); and shorter grammars — gathering what material I could from the last speakers — of Warrgamay (1981), Nyawaygi (1983) and Mbabaram (1991). Published texts, place names and thesaurus/dictionary of Yidiñ (1991). Together with musicologist Grace Koch, produced a book and CD on Dyirbal song poetry (1996). Wrote many papers on theoretical topics, including ‘Noun classes’ (1968, reissued 1982), ‘Where have all the adjectives gone’ (1977, reissued 1982) and ‘Ergativity’ (1979; revised and expanded into a monograph, 1994). Published general survey volume The languages of Australia (1980). Completely re-thought and revised as Australian languages: their nature and development (2002), the culmination of almost 40 years work. And popular volume Searching for Abo- riginal languages, memoirs of a field worker (1984, American edition 1989, Eng- lish reissue 2010). In 1985, six months fieldwork in a basically monolingual village on the island of Taveuni in Fiji (with further short field trips in 1986, 1989-90 and 2007) — a tropical paradise (although with no electricity or running water). Published a grammar of the Boumaa dialect of Fijian (1988). skeleton XVII

Work on analysis of my native language resulted in A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles (1991). This was revised and expanded as A semantic approach to English grammar(2005). Co-authored a study of the 400 words borrowed from Australian languages into English (1990, revised and enlarged second edition, 2006). Relinquished headship of department in December 1990 (after 20 years in the job) and at the same time (coincidentally) was awarded the first of a sequence of three five-year Senior Research Fellowships from the Australian Re- search Council. Feeling in need of a mid-life challenge, began fieldwork among the Jarawara Indians, deep in the Amazonian jungle. An intellectual wonderland, in a physi- cally testing environment. Seven field trips, 1991 - 2003. Lengthy grammar published in 2004. Selected by the Australian Research Council for a Special Investigator Award — $200,000 per year for three years (1997-9) for any research purpose I chose. Together with Alexandra Aikhenvald, created the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, at the Australian National University, in December 1996. Published The rise and fall of languages (1997) setting out a punctuated equilibrium model for language development. In January 2000, Aikhenvald and I relocated the RCLT to La Trobe Univer- sity in Melbourne, where we were at first accorded ideal working conditions. Between 1997 and 2007, we organised nine International Workshops on critical grammatical topics, each resulting in a volume hailed as state-of-the-art. Unhappy with the direction in which La Trobe University was heading, we re- signed in 2008 and relocated to the exciting new Cairns Institute, for advanced study on everything to do with human populations in the tropics, within James Cook University. In 2010, published Basic linguistic theory, Volume 1 Methodology, and Vol- ume 2 Grammatical Topics (Volume 3, Further grammatical topics, is currently in preparation). Described by the publisher, Oxford University Press, as ‘the triumphant outcome of a lifetime’s thinking about every aspect and manifesta- tion of language and immersion in linguistic fieldwork.’ The present volume was in embryo for many years — I had long planned to start it at about the age of 60. The chapters have been written here and there and wherever (in between academic tasks) between 2001 and 2009.

1 A day in the field

The word ‘linguist’ has several faces. A polyglot — someone who uses languages but does not enquire concerning the how or why. Or a real linguist, a curious person who takes a language to pieces and puts it back together, to see how it works. A blueprint is produced in two parts, grammar and dictionary. Plus a collection of texts, examples of the habitual activity of the language. The well-known languages are well enough known. Working on one is like adding a bit of shading here and there to the map of some familiar land; this is a comfortable task, which can be combined with a comfortable lifestyle. But, far away from electric power and flush toilets, there are languages of strange and wonderful mien. Writing a grammar of such a language is like exploring a new continent — rocks of a kind not imagined, plants with a leaf-shape which mocks prediction, stippled fish in an inland sea. No task is more mentally ex- hilarating than studying a language of unthought nature. There will be novel meanings — in which the culture is etched — expressed through words which can be of odd shape. The ways in which words are linked may at first appear ersatz but — once the linguist learns how to use the language in everyday exchange — are simply natural and efficient. The best way to understand something is to experience it. Come, share with me a day in the field in the mid-1990s.

The Jarawara tribe numbers about 150 people, spread over seven small villages deep in the rain forest of southern Amazonia (at about 65° W and 7° 10’ S). You go upstream from the mouth of the Amazon for about 1,400 kilometres, turn left into a major tributary, the Purús (which is longer than both the Danube and the Indus). A bit more than 1,000 kilometres upstream you alight on the left bank of the Purús, walk for about an hour through jungle to the Cainaa River, paddle up it for a couple of hours. A further walk of around sixty minutes along a narrow forest track brings you to Casa Nova, the biggest Jarawara village. Its 45 inhabitants divide into four extended families, each of which has its own hut, up on stilts. A little way off is the larger house of Alan Vogel, a missionary 2 I am a linguist

linguist from the USA who belongs to Wycliffe Bible Translators (also known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), an evangelical christian body. Alan and his family only spend a couple of months each year in the village, and his house is locked up just now. My small thatched hut (plate 2) stands on the edge of the village. The Jarawara built it for me, entirely from split timber and tying vines from the nearby forest. This was in exchange for the gift of a chainsaw, which they wanted largely for making dug-out canoes, scooping the inside from half of a giant tree trunk. It’s mid-morning, and it’s hot. I sit at the rude wooden table, made in the village, on a folding metal chair, one of three which were bought in a second-hand shop in the nearby town of Porto Velho. I’m checking my transcription of the account of a funeral which took place a few months before, playing back the tape, making sure that what I hear corresponds to what is written down in the notebook. My mind is jumping with delight at the richness of the grammar. For any statement you make in Jarawara, it is necessary to specify the evidence — whether you saw it happen yourself, or know about it in some other way (for example, you inferred it or someone told you). The storyteller says: ‘Wero got down from his hammock and went outside.’ For ‘went outside’ he uses the eyewitness form of past tense, suffix -hiri, because he saw it happen. For ‘got down from his hammock’ he uses the non-eyewitness form of past tense, suffix -no, since he didn’t actually see it happen, but just inferred it. (Wero must have climbed out of the hammock before going outside, but if you didn’t see it happen then this has to be stated — the grammar demands it.) Wouldn’t it be great if we had obligatory marking of evidence in English? Surely this would be a boon for the police force, and perhaps an embarrassment for some politicians! There’s a towel round my neck, to pick up the sweat. It’s not that I mind the heat all that much (I don’t really mind hot or cold), just that it’s hard to work when drops fall onto the notebook, making pages soggy. There’s a call from outside. Like most languages outside Europe, Jarawara doesn’t have any words corresponding to our ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. It has different kinds of speech formulas. No one will enter a house without being specifically invited. So I call out Tikijomahi! ‘You enter!’. This is made up ofti- ‘you (referring to one person, if there were more than one I’d say tee)’, -ka- ‘be in motion’, -ijoma ‘through gap (here, referring to doorway)’ and -hi marker of positive immediate imperative. ‘Ah, Mioto, do sit down!’ Just about everyone in the village comes to visit from time to time (the women and children always in groups), mostly just to be convivial and to watch what I’m doing. Everyone chats in Jarawara and corrects me if I make a mistake in replying. But about half-a-dozen of the men are my a day in the field 3

main language consultants. They’ll tell stories, help to transcribe them, explain the meanings of words and how to use them, and answer my grammatical questions. From analysis of the material I’ve collected over the past three seasons of fieldwork, I try to puzzle out how to frame a complex sentence like ‘I want to go to the Jamamadí village’ (that’s the next tribe along, speaking a mutually intelligible dialect). I construct a Jarawara sentence and put it to someone like Mioto. It may sound okay to them, in which case I ask them to repeat it to make sure they would say it exactly that way. Or else it may not be quite right. ‘I see what you’re trying to say,’ they tell me, ‘only you have to say this instead of that’, perhaps moving a suffix from one word to another. Mioto is about twenty, with high cheekbones and all his teeth; see plate 6. (Most people have a lot of gaps. When I first arrived in the village and was finding it hard to remember who was who, it occurred to me that I might achieve this by noting how many teeth each person has, and where in the mouth they are.) He is thoughtful and intelligent, really tuned in to the work I’m engaged in. The Jarawara village lies beyond the limit of social institutions in Brazil. There is no medical post, or store, or school — no one but about 45 Indians, a here-and-away missionary, and now me. But Mioto has learned to write Jarawara, with the help of the missionary’s wife. And when he comes to see me, he expects to work on the language. Just now I’m focussing on homonyms. These are words with the same sound but different meanings, like moneybank and river bank in English. Languages differ in how many homonyms they have. The first language on which I did fieldwork — in 1963 — was Dyirbal, in the rain forest of north-east Australia. (I published a 444-page grammar of the language, in 1972.) Dyirbal has virtually no homonyms. In contrast, Jarawara has absolutely oodles of them. For example, the word jifo can mean ‘hammock’ and ‘fire’ and ‘murity palm (Mauritia vinifera)’. Gender helps a bit — ‘fire’ is feminine and ‘hammock’ is masculine — but not a whole lot, since ‘murity palm’ is also masculine. Just now I’m looking at the verb taro, which can be used to describe two quite different kinds of action. Firstly, waving a hand back and forth in front of the face to clear away the insects (it’s hard to imagine any place with more biting insects than Jarawara territory; they’re much more troublesome than the heat). Taro is also used to describe kicking a football, the national game of Brazil being a major cultural importation into this region. My task is to establish whether there are two separate words taro — homonyms — or whether this is one word with two senses. I read out all the sentences from the taro page of my dictionary. ‘It’s the same word,’ Mioto is quite definite. (Later I check with other speakers and they say the same thing.) Ah 4 I am a linguist

yes — my brain clicks — now I see it. Taro describes a rather general type of activity: making something move as quickly as possible away from you, using some part of the body to do this. If the object of the verb is ‘a football’, then taro describes kicking the football (using feet); if the object is ‘insects’ then taro describes knocking them away from the face (using hands). I ask Mioto if he has a bit of time to spare, in order to help transcribe the last bit of the funeral story. Sure, he’ll be glad to. Siko, an old shaman, had been friendly and helpful to me, although his speech was punctuated by a wracking cough and expulsions of sputum. During the time since my last field trip, the tuberculosis had finally claimed its victim. The story of what happened had been recorded by Mioto’s father, Manowaree; see plate 4. Wero, his cousin, had seen Siko stagger out in the middle of the night, to go to the toilet, and not return. Wero had gone out and found him dead. They had taken off the dead man’s clothes and dressed him in new ones. A messenger was sent to fetch Siko’s relative Kowi from the village of Yemete, about an hour’s walk away. Then a decision had to be made — quickly — on where to bury Siko. Normally, a shaman is buried where he dies, with the rest of the community relocating, building themselves a new village a fair way off. This has benefits, making available new sites to clear for gardens, and a new patch of jungle to hunt in. But now there was a missionary at Casa Nova. He had built an airstrip to bring in him and his family and — most important of all for the Indians — a supply of medicines. Planes are also used to take really sick Jarawara to hospital in Porto Velho (at the missionary’s expense). Siko’s is the first death of an important person since the airstrip has been in place. What to do? It might not be such a good idea to shift the village several kilometres away. With an admirable sense of compromise, the people of Casa Nova decided to bury Siko at a former village site, three quarters of an hour’s walk away, where an old friend of his — called Boniwa — had been laid to rest. That way his spirit should be appeased, and not return to worry them. And the people did move, but only a short distance. The old village was pulled down, and a new one erected on the other side of the airstrip (next to the missionary’s house). I play back to Mioto the first part of the story. Half-a-dozen men set off in mid-afternoon, bearing the corpse on their shoulders. They pass by an old garden where there is growing kona, the tinguí vine (Paullinia pinnata), a fish poison. The previous summer I took part in an expedition to the Fahabiri River (an hour’s walk away). Kamo (plate 7), the most extrovert man in the village, had sung out as he placed a basket of pounded kona bark in the river. All the fish, stunned by the bark, floated up and were easy targets for the arrows of the a day in the field 5

men and boys. Meanwhile the women tended a fire on the bank, to cook some of the fish; others were salted for later use. It takes a couple of hours for Mioto and I to work through the remainder of the story. On reaching the old village site they dig a grave, line it with sticks, lower the body, throw dirt over it. Candles — supplied by the missionary, who had been in the village at the time — are stuck around the grave and lit. We listen to the story, phrase-by-phrase, using the pause button. I repeat what I hear, Mioto corrects (if necessary) and says what it means. I write the Jarawara on the first line, a gloss (in a mixture of English and Portuguese) below each word on the second line, and then a translation of each full sentence on the third line. The funeral party returns to Casa Nova, subdued by the aura of death and by thought of the spirit of a dead shaman. Manowaree recounts how he tells the younger men — using a negative imperative — Tee kakome rima na ‘Don’t you be afraid’. Then he uses a type of construction I’ve never heard before: Ee kakome-tee-ri-mone ama-ke. This has the reported marker, -mone, added to a nominalised clause as subject of a copula verb. Only a rather rough translation into English is possible, something like: ‘It is said that we are not the sort of people who are often afraid.’ And then the formula used to close off each story in Jarawara (rather like ‘The end,’ in English): Faja mata ama, which means ‘That’s enough for now’. Mioto shares my sense of satisfaction that we’ve finished transcribing the story. He’s ready to leave. There is a speech formula for that too. Okomabone oke, ‘I’d like to go’, from Mioto brings forth the standard response from me Tikamahi, ‘you go!’ He departs, to help clear undergrowth for a new garden. My hut differs in just one way from those of the Indians. It has close-meshed wire netting wrapped around it — under the floor, up the walls and across the space between the top of the walls and the thatched roof. Without this it would be impossible for anyone not brought up in the region to survive. The main scourge by day is swarms of piums (or buffalo gnats), two-winged insects almost too small to see. They make no noise and can go unnoticed by a linguist deep in the mysteries of Jarawara grammar. Until they bite, suck up a portion of blood, and leave a small red spot that itches like mad. By night there are swarms of carapanà, a bulky mosquito which spreads malaria. And don’t forget the mutuca, a large biting fly, or the chigger (which carries scrub typhus), a large flea that burrows under the skin and produces a small but persistent red weal. Jarawara has almost a hundred suffixes which can be added to a verb, most existing in both feminine and masculine form. There are eleven suffixes showing tenses and modalities (including three divisions of past time); about fifteen 6 I am a linguist

mood suffixes (including four used in commands, and three employed in questions); and others such as ‘only’, ‘again’, ‘still’, ‘in the water’, ‘in a clear space in the forest’, ‘upstream’ and ‘do without stopping’. One of my favourites is -mahite, which means ‘do it all along the way’. I’d first heard this used with the verb bori ‘touch bottom in a stream’. A narrative — recorded by Okomobi, the village chief — tells of a journey along a shallow stream where they could touch bottom bori( ) with an outstretched paddle all along the way (‑mahite). The suffix has come up in other contexts: people talking to each other all along the path, or laughing all the way home. It strikes me as a novel and useful bit of grammar. A scuffling noise outside. Three children have come to call, the eldest helping her younger brother clamber from rung to rung up the short ladder leading to my front door. ‘Hey, close the door before too many piums come to visit too!’ ‘Yobeto,’ they ask (the name Robert becomes Roberto in Portuguese and then Yobeto in Jarawara) ‘where’s nikiniki?’ A couple of years back I brought to the village a squeeze torch (or flashlight to North Americans). This has no battery — just a small handle that you squeeze and squeeze again, powering a little motor that lights up the bulb. Pretty handy in case one happens to run out of batteries for the regular torch. The fascinating thing was the way in which the Jarawara devised a name for the squeeze torch. There’s a regular process in the language of forming the name for an object from a verb which describes what one does with the object. This involves repeating all or part of the verb. A type of trumpet is calledhohori from the verb hori ‘to blow’; a whip is called kokosi from the verb kosi ‘to whip’. Now the verb niki ‘squeeze’ describes what you have to do to the squeeze torch to light up the bulb. When I first produced this new object, some people called it niniki but others repeated the whole verb (not just the first syllable) and said nikiniki. I watched what happened, as these two labels — niniki and nikiniki — competed with each other in the mouths of speakers. Within a few days, nikiniki won out (maybe because the torch has to be squeezed an awful lot) and is now the established name used by everyone. The squeeze torch has become something of a symbol. When relatives from other villages come to call they will often be brought to inspect my nikiniki. The ritual of playing with nikiniki having been completed, the children take out some large illustrated books that I keep for them, and chatter over the pic- tures. There’s one of a large jetliner. They ask a question we’ve had before, but it’s good to go over it again. ‘How big?’ I explain that there’s room in a Boeing 747 for all the Jarawara people, plus all members of two adjoining tribes, the Jamamadí and the Banawá. a day in the field 7

‘Hey, make a bit less noise,’ I have to say, ‘Jama hani rawi o-ke, I’m writing.’ Trying to puzzle out the secrets of verbal suffixes. Let me try to explain a bit of what I am doing (simplifying things rather a lot, since the system is pretty complex). Onto any verb root — for example ka- ‘be in motion’ — one can add many kinds of suffix. With suffix -waha ‘now’ you get ka-waha ‘be in motion now’. With suffix -ke ‘coming’ you get ka-ke ‘come’. And with -ma ‘back’ you get ka-ma ‘move back, return’. Now a verb can take a whole string of suffixes and I am looking for the principle (or principles) which determine in what order they occur. The first thing is to gather together all the examples in my data. There are quite a few examples of -waha followed by -ma and of -ke followed by -waha. But I’ve also found a few instances of -waha followed by -ke. According greater weight to the larger number of examples, this part of verb structure appears to be:

verb root, plus -ke ‘coming’, plus -waha ‘now’, plus -ma ‘back’

There are a couple of other suffixes which appear to go in the same slot as -ma; they are -make ‘following’ and -wite ‘away’. A verb can only include one of -ma, -make and ‑wite. The formula for erbv structure can now be revised:

verb root, plus -ke ‘coming’, -ma ‘back plus -waha ‘now’, plus one of -make ‘following’ { -wite ‘away’

Or, since I have noted examples of -waha preceding -ke, would it be more appropriate to have -waha preceding -ke in the structure? This-waha is a curious suffix; it seems to be able to move around in a verb, with slight differences in meaning. The whole thing is a bit of a puzzle. There’s a shout from the other side of the village which I can’t quite make out. ‘Okomobi kake,’ the children tell me, ‘Okomobi has come.’ Good, we can now find out what’s been happening. About a week ago, Izaki had come to visit. He’s the local official — from the nearby town of Labréa — of the Fundação Nacional do Indio (FUNAI), the Indians’ protection agency. Izaki had heard reports of some Brancos (non-Indians) fishing within the territory assigned by the Brazilian government for the sole use of Indians. He’d gone off with Okomobi (as village chief) to accost the fish poachers. It seemed to me — and to other people in the village — a rather dangerous kind of expedition, and it was certainly good to hear that Okomobi had returned safely. 8 I am a linguist

I’d visited Casa Nova briefly in 1991, recorded just a few words, met the people and — with their permission — decided that I wanted to return to work intensively on Jarawara. Over the next year (back in Australia), I learnt a bit of Portuguese and went through the cumbersome process of obtaining a research visa from FUNAI (being sponsored by Professor Lucy Seki of the University of Campinas, who is the leading Brazilian scholar working on indigenous languages). In 1992 I arrived back in Casa Nova and the first morning wandered down to Okomobi’s house, wondering how to start on the work. He was sharp- ening an axe. Now by one of those strange coincidences, the name for axe in Jarawara is bari, the same as its name in Dyirbal, the Australian language I’ve done lots of work on. So I remembered this word, which broke the ice. ‘I don’t speak much Portuguese,’ I said, in that language. ‘Neither do we,’ grinned Oko- mobi. Then and there he recorded a short text in Jarawara, helped transcribe it, and began on the serious business of teaching me his language. Just about everyone else in the village joins in, but Okomobi is my main advisor. That’s another reason it’s good to have him back. I continue working on suffixes, the children comparing notes on picture books. Then the dogs around my hut start yelping. Okomobi‘ , tikijomahi (Oko- mobi, come on in),’ I say. He sits in a chair next to me. Okomobi has the de- meanour of a chief — thoughtful, articulate. Aged in his early forties (at a guess), a slight moustache, hair beginning to recede at one side, and only a few teeth missing; see plate 6. In fact the office of chief is a recent innovation, and the title, ‘towisawa’, comes from Língua Geral, a creole used until a generations ago for contact between Brancos and Indians. The job of a towisawa is not to tell people in the village what to do, but just to be their representative in dealings with Brancos — with FUNAI, and for trading with Brancos living on the Purús, who buy manioc flour, salted meat and rubber from the Indians and sell them in exchange (at inflated prices) sugar and salt, clothing and batteries, and suchlike. Okomobi has the most perspicacious mind of all my friends at Casa Nova. Mioto and the others are good. They will spend long hours transcribing stories, answering questions about words and about grammar, explaining the language to me. But Okomobi is the tops. Whenever he goes away I accumulate a little store of unsolved problems; when he returns, a couple of hours serves to sort them out. If he’d been brought up in the same environment as me, Okomobi could be a professor of linguistics. As it is, he’s just trying to guide his people, at the edge of an expanding European-style culture, trying to help them survive as an ethnic group for a few decades more. a day in the field 9

‘It was Nonatoboto and his mob, stealing our fish. Izaki sent them away, took the fish.’ ‘Will you tell me the whole story,’ I ask. ‘Oh yes, I want to record every bit of it. Tomorrow we’ll do it. I need to go home and rest now.’ Lunchtime for me. Two cream crackers spread with peanut butter, two with cheese, and the last tomato sliced on top. Food for a field trip needs planning. I can’t expect the Indians to share their food with me, often they scarcely have enough for themselves. But if they offer any meat or fish or fruit, I’m a will- ing buyer; there’s a banana to round off this meal. My field trips to Casa Nova last for between three and eight weeks. Towards the end it’s dried food and tinned stuff, but that’s no reason not to indulge in something a bit fresher at the beginning. In the intense heat, with no fridge, one learns by experience how long each item will last. Just four days for a cucumber, but it’s great to enjoy it for that time. If I can find really green, hard tomatoes in the market at Porto Velho, these can last for up to 13 days. Really hard carrots are good for 15 days. If a tray of eggs has never been in a refrigerator, they can last for a month or more. It’s good to turn them over every couple of days. (And don’t mind the big black cockroaches who seem attracted to egg containers; at least they can’t get through the shell!) One learns to buy the best lasting brands. Qualy margarine keeps well in the jungle (its competitor tends to separate out into sundry components) and Queijo Prato is the only cheese I know that’ll survive for a month or more (Reggio being a good brand). I’ve been working for six hours or so. Besides translating stories, checking words and ordering suffixes, there are phonological rules to formulate and then check, half-a-dozen varieties of subordinate clause constructions to untangle. It’s nice to pull down the hammock and swing lazily with a novel. Then drop off to sleep — well, for a little while. ‘Yobeto, are you asleep?’ a group of youths call out a friendly greeting as they pass (my wall has gaps between the uprights and anyone can see in). ‘Yes, I’m asleep,’ I reply. Or I was until you wakened me by asking whether I was! Oh well, that’s life in the village. Better get back to work. Go over a fascinating story relating to Jarawara religion, told by Okomobi’s father João. (Almost everyone in the village is a child or child-in-law or grandchild of João.) He’s the only shaman left in Casa Nova, now that Siko is gone. During the first two fieldtrips I was able to record lots of stories but they were all about everyday events. Only during the third year did people feel they knew me well enough (or so I infer) to talk about matters religious. As in many societies in the world, death is seldom attributed to natural causes but is thought to be the result of sorcery. A shaman can call 10 I am a linguist

up his ‘spirits’ (for want of a better word in English) who can take a person’s ‘soul’ (again, for want of a better word) away into the depths of the jungle, and confine it there. The body will grow weaker and weaker and die, unless the soul can be returned to it. The only hope is to engage a rival shaman, who will enjoinder his spirits to free the soul and return it to its body. When one Jarawara meets another, an habitual greeting goes: ‘Is it really you?’ What this means is — is it your soul in your body and not just body alone? ‘Yobeto! Maka!’ A child, standing in the middle of the missionary’s airstrip (just opposite my hut) is calling. A snake! I hastily put on shoes and hat and roll down sleeves — against the insects — and go to see. A brightly striped speci- men wriggles in the middle of the airstrip. Other people come. Kamo and two youths walk single file from their house. (Used to narrow paths in the jungle, Indians always walk in single file, even on a twenty-metre-wide airstrip.) I call Kamo the ‘Marlon Brando of Casa Nova’ — rippling muscles with an absolutely no-nonsense attitude. (If ever I had some position where I needed a bodyguard, Kamo would be first choice for the job.) Kamo picks up a stick and breaks the snake’s back. ‘It’s called “makakora”.’ And, in reply to my question: ‘Oh yes, it’s dangerous alright.’ Back at my desk, looking over a story Okomobi recorded a while before about religious life. How his uncle, Wabao, took Okomobi through the first stage towards becoming a shaman. Training him with a sacred stone, sucked out of his own body and pressed against the initiand’s arm. When the whole process was finished, Okomobi would be able to communicate with the spirit world. He would be able to see an extra dimension, beyond the ken of normal men. But — for some reason — the initiation was never completed. João is now the only shaman in the village and he’s old. What will happen when João is gone? ‘Hey, Okomobi, there you are!’ The chief appears in the doorway: ‘I think I’ll record the story now, while it’s fresh in my mind.’ I slip a new tape into the cassette, check the recording level. Okomobi speaks without stopping for more than half-an-hour. (When we come to transcribe it — over a period of days — the story takes up 56 pages of my notebook, and I do write fairly small.) I understand the gist, as he speaks, but the full import only becomes apparent when we go over it later, sentence by sentence. Okomobi starts off by describing how he was mending his broken tape recorder. Twenty sentences about a tape recorder! What, I think to myself, does this have to do with catching fish poachers? In fact — as soon became clear — it is highly relevant. The year before, the Brancos had given this recorder to a day in the field 11

Okomobi as payment for one year’s fishing rights in Jarawara waters. But that is now past. Okomobi has told them the lease is not to be renewed. Anyway, he was working on his tape recorder when the dogs began to bark, announc- ing the arrival of Izaki, the FUNAI official from nearby Labréa, who brought news of the poaching. Okomobi finished the repair, and then they talked. The following day he and his younger brother Motobi (plate 8) went off with Izaki. Eventually, they found traces of the poachers — a canoe, and a sloth rotting on the ground. A dead alligator had been propped on a tree stump in the flooded river, looking from a distance as if ready to pounce. (I went down to the main river with Okomobi a few days later and saw this alligator corpse — a bit scary, until you realised that it was dead.) Some gill nets were found tied across a portion of the lake; they gathered these up. Two pirarucu lying on the bank — this is the largest freshwater fish in the world. The two specimens here were each a couple of metres long and must have weighed about 100 kilos apiece, enough to feed a whole village for several days. Then they came upon the Brancos, cooking smaller fish. Izaki told Okomobi: ‘Their camp is over there, you go and gather all their shotgun shells, so they won’t be able to shoot at us.’ It’s a long story; the whole adventure took several days. The Brancos blustered, Izaki warned them, impounded the pirarucu: ‘Thanks for catching them for us, they’re our fish.’ I play the story back to Okomobi — as I always do after any recording — then he can listen to what he’s said. The chief nods, satisfied: ‘We’ll have a try at writing that down tomorrow.’ We speak mostly in Jarawara, with a bit of Portuguese thrown in. The men at Casa Nova have a little competence in this language, from contact with Brancos (the women hardly at all). Okomobi now uses the word experimentar ‘try’. It always tickles me to hear Indians use what is of course a very common word in Portuguese but one whose English cognate, experiment, is a rather high-flown item, which would never be used by anyone with Okomobi’s level of competence. Just as Okomobi departs, the almost-daily rainstorm sets in, with an intensity that is unimaginable to anyone who has never lived in the tropics. I can’t play any tapes; they just wouldn’t be audible. The storm batters against my hut, wetting the floor at one side for about half a metre in. (Nothing is kept there, for this reason.) When it eases, after about three-quarters of an hour, I can hear a hullabaloo from the other end of the village. Better go and see what’s happening. Activity is centred on the verandah of the house Okomobi shares with his parents, brothers, sisters, brother-in-law (Kamo), nieces and nephews. To one 12 I am a linguist

side a sister is squeezing leached manioc through a tipiti (a woven cylindrical press), thump, thump, thump. On the other side — it’s pirarucu time. One huge fish is laid out along the verandah and Okomobi’s elder brother, Bakoki, is butchering it; see plate 3. ‘Yes, I would like a small piece,’ I respond to the offer from a sister. Everybody watches — dogs, children, women, all the other men. I feel a slight shiver. A few years back, Bakoki had got drunk and knifed a girl to death; it was someone he fancied who preferred another (now that man is wife-less, and probably always will be). There’s no police presence in this part of Brazil. And if there were they might investigate the death of a Branco but not that of an Indian girl. Bakoki disappeared into the jungle for a few months and then sheepishly returned to the village. (In one of the other Jarawara villages there’s a man who killed his own brother. Two murderers out of a tribal population of about 150!) Anyway, Bakoki is friendly towards me, in a surly sort of way. And he certainly knows how to dissect a pirarucu. Occasionally I go out for the day with my friends — visiting another Indian village, or down to the main river to trade with Brancos. But mostly I sit at home, working on this wonderful language. I’ve never taken drugs, but the mental ecstasy I experience from recognising problems of analysis, putting forward competing solutions for them, choosing the best solution — all this may be a bit like what a drugee feels. Only my high is natural, and useful (see chapter 2). People are always popping in to see me. But one can’t just sit at home all day. So, if nothing else has happened, I like to go out for a late afternoon walk. There are five paths leading out of the village — to the river, to other villages, to a lake. I choose one of them (a different one each day), walk down it for about twenty minutes, and then another twenty minutes home. However, someone not used to living in this area doesn’t just ‘go out’, like that. The Purús River basin is one of the most unhealthy places in the world. Before leaving Australia I have just about every shot known to humankind — typhoid, tetanus, yellow fever, cholera (although people say that this inocula- tion isn’t all that effective), several types of hepatitis. I swallow pills against malaria. Every field trip, the GP back home provides a course or two of antibiot- ics, in case of emergency. I always do have to use them — a rash on my back, or a boil on the leg that turns nasty, or something like that. In order not to get skin covered with lots of nasty, itching, red spots, I take precautions before leaving my mesh-encircled hut. It’s really hot, but too bad. Long trousers, long-sleeved shirt, socks and shoes, hat— and insect spray on all the still-exposed parts (neck, ankles, wrists and hands). a day in the field 13

No one else in Casa Nova ever goes for a walk hine jaa ‘for nothing’; there’s always a purpose to it. But they’ve got used to my ways by now. Kamo is sitting in the doorway of his house. ‘There’s a jaguar lurking down that path,’ he warns, with a grin. This is part of the play-acting we’ve evolved. The path threads through a garden for a couple of hundred metres, weaving around fallen tree trunks, and then immerses itself in the solitude of the rain forest. I only realised it after the event, but all of my linguistic fieldwork has been in jungle like this. There’s a few thousand square kilometres of dense rain forest in the north-east of Australia and that’s where I’ve worked (continuously since 1963) on Dyirbal and other languages. Then in the mid 1980s I went to the island of Taveuni, in Fiji, which is all rain forest. And now here. I get to Casa Nova in a single-engine missionary plane, chartered a couple of months in advance. It’s about an hour’s flight from Porto Velho and the view from the plane is unvarying — the tops of thirty-metre high trees and sometimes the wiggle of a river (in the wet season the forest glistens on either side, as the Purús floods from its normal width of about two kilometres to perhaps twenty kilometres). The forest, on my walk, is dark and eerie. Dull silence, interrupted by the call of a bird or — just occasionally — by the higher-pitched dialogue of a confabu- lation of monkeys. Path just wide enough for one person, and just high enough for the average Indian, who is a lot shorter than me. I can duck under branches but it’s hard to see spider webs stretched across the track at about the height of my head. One solution is to carry a stick vertically in front, to counter them before they encounter me. There’s no need for sunscreen; all light is filtered through tiers of leaves and branches. And the only reason to wear a hat is to buffer the blow if one’s head comes into contact with a low branch. The track along which I walk — jumping over a rivulet — is a tunnel of serenity. Linguistic ideas tossing around in my mind are soothed into order; a shaft of clarity illuminates a principle for the organisation of possessive constructions. Need to step aside to let pass Soki, Mioto’s younger brother, and Manowaree, their father, returning from a fishing expedition. Each has on his back a basket of fish. ‘What sort?’ ‘Piranha.’ Lots of tiny fish, their jaws now permanently closed, for the evening stew. ‘Are you coming back?’ they enquire. ‘No, I’ll just walk on a bit — hine jaa, for no reason.’ There’s a stream ahead with a fallen tree for a bridge. A Jarawara would trip lightly across it like a circus performer. I left a stout stick on the bank on my last walk, and this helps maintain balance while crossing. There are footprints in the soft mud — probably of an agouti (called sinama in Jarawara), a rodent about the size of a rabbit. Not of a jaguar. 14 I am a linguist

Jaguars do roam this forest. Last year I walked five hours through the jungle to the main village of the Jamamadi tribe. Crossing a muddy place, there were large feline footprints. ‘Jaguar?’ I asked my guide, Motobi. ‘Yes, jaguar.’ ‘Are they recent?’ ‘Maybe half-an-hour ago.’ Jaguars are said not normally to attack people. When they do, it makes a good story. (I’ve recorded a couple.) But what would I do if a jaguar did happen to appear on the path? I really don’t know. Back in the village, Kamo is still sitting on the verandah, fashioning an arrow head out of a large nail. ‘Did you see any jaguars?’ He doesn’t expect a serious reply (my joking acts as counterpoint to the missionary’s studied seriousness). ‘Yes, I killed one with my bare hands and ate it raw,’ I say, careful to use a feminine affix on the verb, agreeing with the first person subject pronoun. In pre-feminist English, the masculine pronoun, he, would also be used in a general sense, to refer to any person (in linguistic terminology it was ‘unmarked’), whereas the feminine pronoun, she, could only be used to refer to women. In the 1960s I heard Eugenie Henderson present an inaugural lecture in the University of London and she said: ‘When a new professor of phonetics is appointed, he must first ....’ She was referring to herself as a person, not as a woman, and used the pronoun he. In those days, I — as a man — used to feel short-changed. Women had a pronoun, she, to themselves; he could refer either to men or to everyone. However, women felt differently, and they engineered the linguistic change whereby the generic sense of he was eliminated from the language. The pluralthey can now be used with a singular meaning (just as the erstwhile plural pronoun you has changed its meaning, replacing the original singular form thou); or else the ugly ‘he or she’ or ‘she/he’ or ‘(s)he’ has to be employed. Jarawara is, superficially, the opposite of pre-feminist English. There are two genders and feminine is the unmarked one. Ask ‘What is it?’ with no idea of the gender of the thing asked about, and the verb must take a feminine suffix. ‘They’ is treated as feminine, and so are all pronouns — ‘I’ and ‘we’ and ‘you’. If someone talks about me, in the third person, ‘Yobeto’ counts as masculine. But if I talk about myself, using ‘I’, then feminine is required on the verb. This took some getting used to. So, is Jarawara society really a feminist’s dream? You wouldn’t think so. The women get treated just like in most other societies in the world. (In the vast majority of languages, masculine is the unmarked gender, as it used to be in English.) Ostensibly, they have a background role; but — as everywhere else — the power behind the scenes is likely to be most influential. a day in the field 15

There’s another aspect to gender in Jarawara. After I thought I’d mastered the system, I occasionally heard a woman being referred to with masculine gender; this happened in stories and in conversation. No, it turns out, it’s not a mistake. A man can refer to a woman with masculine gender if she is particularly close to him; most often he will use masculine of his wife. In short, masculine is a rather exclusive gender, confined to men (and certain animals and plants and artefacts). Feminine is used for everything else. But masculine may be employed by a man to refer to a woman — as a special mark of affinity and respect. Dusk falls abruptly in the tropics. Back home, my wet shirt clings like a limpet, a natural consequence of going for a walk in this heat and humidity. I change it, and light the mantle which is attached to a small cylinder of bottled gas; this provides light to work by. Time to cook, over a two-ringed primus stove, fed by another small cylinder of bottled gas. (This is something I have which the Jarawara lack, brought in on the plane from Porto Velho.) And it’s also time for the women to visit. The women of Casa Nova divide into two groups, each ever so slightly hostile towards the other. Most nights I get a visit from one lot, never both at once. Ah good, tonight it’s Okomobi’s mother and sisters, whose children are quite a bit better behaved — slightly less noisy — than the other mob. It’s nice to listen to music while one cooks. If I’m alone, it might be Bessie Smith or Jelly Roll Morton. But the women request a tape of Ajaka. This is a type of song which must be performed outside (never inside a house) and can be accompanied by dancing in a ring — holding hands — around an upright post. The song leader intones a line: faha jaa jama, kananini ‘a spirit animal in the water, running along’; and this is repeated as a chorus by everyone else. Ajaka is a religious ritual, describing the habits and exploits of spirits. I’ve attended a few long evenings of Ajaka, keeping quiet at the beginning and recording it (because I don’t want to record myself). Then, when the tape runs out, I join hands in the ring and sing out as a member of the chorus. Women listen, children play, and I cook. The slice of pirarucu, coated in fish marsala (bought from an Indian store in Australia), lightly fried. On the other ring of the primus, rice with slices of carrot. (If you don’t have room for a pan for each, carrot will cook fine in the water that’s being absorbed by the rice; a fieldworker finds out this sort of thing by trial and error.) I sit at the table and read a novel while eating; this is a time of relaxation. There are plenty of people in the hut, some watching me, some talking among themselves. They’re used to my ways. Only very occasionally, if my ears pick up some really interesting sentence, do I exchange fork for pen. 16 I am a linguist

The dirty plate and pans are put into a plastic bowl in the corner (ants and cockroaches don’t seem to be able to get into the bowl). At first, I’d go outside and wash up — in cold water, fetched in a bucket from the nearby stream — at night. But this was following up on my meal by providing me as a meal for the mosquitoes. I came to realise that it’s much more comfortable to delay washing up until early morning. Everyone goes home for their own supper. Refreshed by walk and meal, I dive again into verbal suffixes. There’s a new one that has come up recently, -hite. Okomobi’s father João (the old shaman) had told me a story concerning the origin of crops. An olden-days hero had played a magic flute, lit vital fires, and (to cut a very long story short) lots of edible plants then appeared — manioc, sugar-cane, taro, pineapple, yams. Within this story was an account of how the hero set fire to all the trees along a side of the forest. This sentence includes a verb ‘burn’ with suffix -ke ‘coming’ plus -hite ‘all along the side’. In the same story there’s another instance of -hite with ‘burn’, this time together with the suffixwite - ‘away’. And a third example, with the verb hiyara ‘talk’, plus suffix-make ‘following’ and -hite; this was explained to me as ‘they talked as they walked, following on’. The new suffix -hite seems to mean ‘all along the way’. But this is similar to the meaning of a suffix I’ve been aware of for a couple of years (and was thinking about this morning), -mahite ‘all along the way’. I wonder ... No more time to wonder. Their meal finished, Kamo and Mioto and three more men pop in for a post-prandial chat. Too many for my three chairs, we sit around on the floor, recounting what everyone has been doing during the day. And plans for tomorrow. Motobi intends to go out hunting peccary (a kind of wild pig). Mioto says he’ll be heading to the Cainaa river for some fishing. Kamo plans to work on his new garden. First one uses a sharp knife to slash down the small trees. Then an axe to fell the larger ones, planning things so the one big tree falls against several slightly smaller ones and takes them with it. Leave it to dry for a few weeks. Then — a week or two before the new rainy season commences in earnest — set fire to the garden site. The small stuff at the bottom acts as kindling to burn middle sized trees. The largest trunks continue to lie there, just charred, and a garden is planted around them. Everything in my hut is fair game for Jarawara curiosity. ‘What’s in that bag?’ Mioto indicates a zip-up plastic hold-all. ‘Dirty clothes, do you want to wash them?’ ‘No, I’m not a woman,’ Mioto replies. Kamo considers for a moment. ‘My wife will wash those for you tomorrow.’ ‘Thanks, that’ll be great.’ I stretch back for my notebook to write down what Kamo just said; he’d used the a day in the field 17

suffix -mina ‘in the morning’, with future tense, on the verb soki ‘to wash’. It’s good to get another example of the rather unusual ‘in the morning’ suffix. I can see to write by the light of a torch (of French manufacture) on a strap around my forehead, leaving both hands free. It is called ‘nikiniki fati’, and there’s a story behind that. One evening, a couple of years earlier, Manowaree had enquired about the whereabouts of the squeeze torch which — you’ll recall — the Indians had dubbed nikiniki. ‘Nikiniki forehareka oko jobe jaa,’ I replied ‘Nikiniki is lying on a shelf in my hut.’ Manowaree looked askance. ‘Is that alright?’ I asked. ‘It’s okay if nikiniki is a man,’ he replied. Oh dear, in error I’d used the masculine form of tense and declarative markers (masculine -hare and -ka, rather than feminine -hara and -ke), with the verb fore- ‘lie on a raised surface’. I should have remembered that all fires and lights and torches are feminine in Jarawara. ‘Yes, sure, nikiniki is a man,’ I replied, brazening it out. ‘What about that one,’ Manowaree continued, pointing to the French torch strapped around my forehead, ‘is that a man too?’ ‘No,’ I responded, ‘that’s “nikiniki fati” (which means “nikiniki’s wife”).’ And so it’s been ever since. The children even put nikiniki and nikiniki fati next to each other on my table (you never know what might happen). A shrill sound pierces the night. I listen hard. ‘Hey, isn’t that the women singing, Jowiri style? Let’s go and see.’ There’s a fire on the ground outside Mioto’s house. His mother and sisters — together with some of the women from other houses — are sitting next to it. Yes, they are happy for me to record. Unlike the Ajaka style, which can be sung by men or women, Jowiri is confined to women. In Casa Nova the women’s voices are very high pitched even in everyday conversation, and they speak faster than men. (I can understand the men’s talking, but scarcely ever the women’s unless they take pains to speak slowly at me.) The pitch is raised further in Jowiri singing, almost like a knife squeaking against another piece of steel. One person intones a phrase, others join in. Now they stand up, join hands, move round in a circle, just like Ajaka. And, just like Ajaka, the words relate to spirits. This is a religious performance. One of the men listening with me looks up at the full moon. Then he looks at me. I’ve told them that I come from Australia, the other side of the world, a day and a half away in the fastest aeroplane. ‘Yobeto,’ he asks, ‘do you have the same moon in your home village?’ A Jowiri performance doesn’t go on for as long as an Ajaka one, but when the women go home it’s time for me to sleep. I relax in a hammock at odd times during the day but, unlike the Indians, I prefer to sleep on the floor. Well, on a 18 I am a linguist

rubber mattress, placed on a sheet of black plastic; this is effective in keeping the insects off. To see to lay out my bed I have to put on the gas light, and — unfortunately — this illuminates the creatures that inhabit my hut in the dark. Well, I do see a few cockroaches around in the day, but now there are myriads. Crawling over the plastic containers in which my foodstuffs are tightly sealed (against cockroaches and against the omnivorous ants), on the walls, on the roof, on the table. Large, fat, evil, black monsters. I pick up a shoe and hit a couple. Within twenty minutes there’s no trace of the carcasses, a squadron of ants saying thanks for the repast. As I fall asleep, those suffixes revolve in my head. There’smahite - ‘all along the way’, a suffix I’ve studied and think I understand. And now -hite, with a similar meaning. How does it all fit together? Sleep comes. And then sleep departs. ‘Who-are-you? Who-are-you? Who-are-you?’ The call comes from the top of my thatched roof. A full moon encourages this damned bird to sit there, calling out at the top of its voice. I answer the question, but it continues. Actually, the Jarawara tell me, it doesn’t really say ‘Who- are-you?’ but rather ‘Too-bee-roo, Too-bee-roo, Too-bee-roo’. It is saying its name, ‘tobero’. (It is a kind of night hawk or nightjar.) Who was it said that living in the jungle is a quiet and peaceful affair? Anyway, I pop in some ear- plugs (always a useful thing to pack), which helps me sink back into the arms of -mahite and -hite. With a bit of luck, it is possible to sleep fairly well. Just before dawn it can get cool. Pull up a blanket for half-an-hour of dozing indulgence. My brain has carried on working through sleep and I do believe that things have fallen into place — all those suffixes. I must write it down. After the morning ablution. There’s no point in getting up too early. The overhanging thatch of my roof doesn’t allow in enough light to write by until about a quarter to seven. So I arise at around six or six fifteen. There’s a toilet at the back of the missionary’s house. Just squat over a pit, but there is a wooden frame covered with black plastic sheeting around it. (The Indians have an ijo hawi — literally ‘shit path’ — just behind the village, solely for this purpose.) The question of when in the day to bathe has been a bit of a problem. The ideal time would be evening, when I’m saturated with sweat. But I’ve given up on that. A couple of hundred metres from the village there’s a small stream which is used for everything — leaching bitter manioc, fetching water, bathing (just downstream from the fetching place). The trouble is that it’s busy in the evening; there always seems to be a group of women down at the stream, washing themselves and children and clothes. Too hard to try to fit in between. a day in the field 19

So I’ve taken to bathing at dawn, when there’s no competition. And there is one other reason. The insects have been mentioned. William Chandless, an Englishman exploring the Purús in 1864, wrote ‘between pium flies all day and mosquitoes all night, rest is almost impossible, and one is driven to and fro as if between the gates of Hades and Acheron’ (that’s the river of the dead, in Greek mythology). One early missionary was able to stomach life on the Purús for only a couple of weeks; he said that no normal person could survive there. They are right, with one exception. The ‘changing of the guard’ at night is abrupt; it may be that mosquitoes overlap with piums. But in the early morning there is a definite lull. As I walk down the path, almost slide down the steep bank to the bathing spot, mosquitoes have largely retreated (they never go away entirely) and piums are only just beginning to wake. The stream is thigh- deep; I immerse myself, soap in hand. If I position eyes at water-level, there are small flying fish, jumping up and snatching piums that hover just over the surface. Yesterday I was fifteen minutes earlier and the floor show hadn’t yet commenced; it was during those magical moments that are post-mosquito and pre-pium. (It takes about an hour for the piums to get fully active.) A few people are around in the village. ‘Have you been for a bathe?’ ‘I’ve been for a bathe.’ (In Jarawara one answers with a full sentence, not just ‘yes’ or ‘no’.) ‘Was it cold?’ ‘It was a bit cold, but it was lovely.’ The time of day when I feel cool and refreshed. Ready for an hour’s work before breakfast, the most productive part of the day (also, no one comes to visit me before about eight o’clock). Now I see the pattern in verb suffixes. My old friend -mahite is in fact a sequence of two suffixes, -ma ‘back’ and -hite ‘all along the way’. I look again at the examples of ‑hite. In each sentence it is preceded by a suffix indicating direction of motion — by -ke ‘coming’ or -make ‘following’ or -wite ‘away’. Or (now I can add) by -ma ‘back, returning’. It looks like -hite must be preceded by one of these four. The grammar of Jarawara appears to require a speaker to specify whether something done ‘all along the way’ was done while coming or following or going away or returning. This is a hypothesis which must be checked. Well, there’s plenty of people around to check it with. Once you solve one problem in linguistic analysis, it often provides the clue to another. Yesterday, I was worrying about where -ke ‘coming’ is placed in the string of suffixes which can be added to the verb, Recall that I’d played with: 20 I am a linguist

verb root, plus -ke ‘coming’, -ma ‘back’ plus -waha ‘now’, plus one of -make ‘following’ { -wite ‘away’ But I hadn’t been happy with this. There are some examples of-ke after -waha, alongside quite a few of -waha after -ke. Now I see it more clearly. The suffix -ke must surely be placed in the same slot as -ma, -make and -wite. A verb can only include one of these four, and one of the four must be included before -hite ‘all along the way’. That gives:

verb root, -ke ‘coming’ plus -hite plus one of -ma ‘back’ ‘all along the way’ -make ‘following’ { -wite ‘away’ }

(In fact, all suffixes are optional; a verb root can be used alone.) This does leave -waha ‘now’ to be accounted for. But I have lots of odd exceptions involving -waha. It seems — and later work confirms this — that-waha is something of a wandering suffix. Just about all other suffixes generally occur in a fixed order, but ‑waha can move around, popping in at different places in the order (and with a difference of meaning depending on where it does go). This needs to be thoroughly investigated. That’s good. Now, time for breakfast. The menu is a variant on what I’d eat back home. A bowl of muesli (what North Americans call granola) — brought from Australia — sprinkled with powdered milk and water and then all mixed up. A couple of cream crackers with margarine and home-made Seville mar- malade (home-made by me, and put into a plastic jar suitable for travel). And, first of all, an orange. Bought very green in Porto Velho, oranges will last for a month or more. As a field trip nears its end, I ensure that there are just enough oranges left for one each day at breakfast. Count them now, pick out the rip- est. Nine left — that’s nine days until the chartered missionary plane comes to take me away. I settle down again to the-hite analysis. Work out sentences to ask, in order to check that the hypothesis is correct. Almost finished preparing them when the first visitor of the day arrives — Soki, Mioto’s very bright younger brother. Yes, it does check out. Everything I predict one should be able to say is accepted by Soki; he repeats the sentences back. The things I predict shouldn’t be possible are rejected; or rather, he offers a correction which accords with my analysis. a day in the field 21

Then, around mid-morning, the boss arrives — Okomobi. I check it out again with him. The first sentence I ever heard withma-hite - involved the verb bori ‘touch (bottom of the river) all the way back’. Is it okay to miss out-ma and just have -hite? No, that’s not a good sentence. What about using -make ‘following’ or -wite ‘away’ in place of -ma, before -hite ‘all along the way’. Oh yes, that’s fine — Okomobi repeats the sentences back exactly as I had them. And what about -ke ‘coming’ followed by -hite? I put to Okomobi the sentence I’ve constructed. He nods and says it back: Wami bori o‑na‑kiti‑hara o-ke ‘I touched bottom all along the way, coming’. (Wami is ‘bottom of river’; bori is ‘touch’; o-, which comes in twice, is ‘I’; na is an auxiliary verb; ‑hara is immediate past tense in eyewitness evidentiality, feminine form; and -ke is declarative mood, feminine form.) But Okomobi has -kiti whereas I’d said -ke-hite (-ke ‘coming’ followed by -hite ‘all along the way’). What’s wrong? Then it clicks. There’s an abundance of phonological rules in Jarawara (fourteen in all). In terms of the rules I’ve already worked out, the suffixes -ke and -hite become -ki and -hiti when the accent falls on the e, as here. And an unaccented syllable -hi- drops after i. So -ke-hite becomes -ki-hiti- which becomes ‑ki‑ti. Hey presto, it works! I ask Okomobi about behe, a rather wonderful verb from the dictionary. It can describe a canoe that overturns in the current. Or a plate or book which is face down. Or putting on a shirt inside out. I read out all the example sentences I’ve written down with behe, from conversation and from recorded texts. ‘Yes, that’s all one word,’ Okomobi tells me. Great, the verb behe must mean something like ‘turn the opposite way from normal orientation’. Then we settle down to transcribe the fish poachers story, phrase by phrase. It’s exciting but, eventually, tiring. After about three hours my mind feels like a sieve. ‘Shall we stop now?’ ‘No, let’s do a few more pages,’ Okomobi urges. We do, but the whole story will still take several more days to complete.

You’ve now spent a bit more than a day in the field with me. Isn’t it fun? Sure, there’s the heat and the insects, and no running water and no electricity. But all of that fades under the intellectual zip of discovery, of taking to pieces a previously undescribed language and putting it together again — writing a manual (called a grammar) of how to do it.

Before leaving, maybe I should explain a little about the life of the Jarawara. Their first contact with European-type people would have been around the middle of the nineteenth century when steam vessels came up the Purús. Then there was the rubber boom, with an infestation of foreigners (rubber is particu- 22 I am a linguist

larly good on the Purús). This fell away when the price dropped, by about 1910. The tribe calls itself, to itself, Ee jokana, which translates as ‘we, the real people’. Jarawara is a label applied to them by Brancos, which they answer to nowadays. One can’t be sure of the etymology, but in Língua Geral — the old trade language of the region — jara is ‘white person’ and wara is ‘eat’. ‘Eating white people’, one presumes. Like indigenous peoples all over the world, the Jarawara have experienced their ideas and customs and language — and themselves — being ridiculed by the Branco invaders. They’ve adopted some Branco customs, such as wear- ing clothes (I always take a big portmanteau full of old clothes when I come to visit). A generation ago, the whole village would live in one large conical building (a ‘maloca’). But now each family has its own rectangular hut, on stilts, just like the Brancos on the main river. Okomobi and a couple of the other men each has his own rubber trail, which provides some cash. If a large animal like a tapir or a deer is killed, some of the meat will be salted and sold down on the Purús. For clothes and matches and batteries (for torches and radios) and sugar and salt. Oh yes, and for cachaça (cane whisky). But the Jarawara are self-sufficient as regards housing and food which are — after all — the main requirements in living. Protein is generally fish, occasionally augmented by peccary and a number of other mammals. Gardens supply bitter manioc — the staple food — and also sweet manioc, maize (sweet corn), sugar cane, yams, sweet potatoes, taro, pineapples, peach palms, onions, ginger and various kinds of bananas and plantains. The missionary, Alan Vogel, arrived in the late 1980s. His goal is to translate the New Testament into Jarawara and convert the people to be evangelical christians. This hadn’t begun on the day we’ve just lived through, which was in the mid-1990s. At this time the language is absolutely alive and well; everyone in the tribe speaks it. The little Portuguese known by the men is used just in contact with outsiders. There is as yet no medical post in the village; they rely on Alan Vogel bringing in cures for malaria (which is bad), dysentery and other ailments. But, by the end of the century, things will change. A medical post will be established, which is a good thing in itself. However, the nurse speaks only Portuguese and the women must learn it to converse with her (she is unlikely to try to master Jarawara). And the missionary will have some converts. I’ll say more in chapter 14 concerning future prospects for the Jarawara and similar peoples across the world. Before commencing on the autobiography proper, it is appropriate to explain just what this science of linguists is, in the next chapter. 2 What is linguistics? — a journey of discovery

The productive use of language is what distinguishes humankind from other animals. Language is our means for describing what has happened, for imparting instructions, for expressing wishes and requests, for mulling over the nature of things, for passing judgement, for organising a team (of workmen, or administrators, or scholars, or sports people). Language can have strength and beauty. Many forms of artistic expression entail language — stories, plays, poems, songs. In essence, language is the most precious of human resources. Each individual language functions as an emblem for the ethnicity of its speakers. It encompasses history and tradition, laws and aesthetic values, a way of viewing the world — and of classifying people, animals, plants, natural phenomena. Investigating a new language in a cultural milieu quite different from one’s own is like being led through a wonderland of unfamiliar ideas and attitudes. To be properly understood, a language must be studied in a community where it is spoken. Suppose that — to avoid the rigours of fieldwork — a linguist brought a single speaker of Jarawara to Los Angeles for a month or so. The linguist could record texts and ask about the names of things. They could compile a list of words and examine some grammatical constructions; but they would not be able to fully comprehend how these are used, and their cultural implications. The linguist has to immerse themself in the language community in order to appreciate and describe the true nature of a language. For example, if Manowaree had asked in English — supposing he knew this language — concerning the location of nikiniki (the squeeze torch), I would have replied Nikiniki is in my hut, using the verb be in present continuous form. But he asked in Jarawara, and the appropriate response was Nikiniki fore-hare-ka oko jobe jaa. The phrase oko jobe jaa is straightforward, ‘my hut in’. Nikiniki is subject of the verb. The fascinating thing here is the verb and its suffixes. Jarawara does have a verb ama ‘to be’, but it would not be used for stating the location of a thing. Instead, one must employ a verb of stance — ‘sit’, ‘stand’ or ‘lie’. Which of these is chosen depends on the orientation of 24 I am a linguist

the object. For a torch on its side, ‘lie’ is appropriate. And in this instance I had to use fore- ‘lie on a raised surface’, since the torch was on a shelf in my hut (the alternatives are homa- ‘lie on the ground’ and hofa- ‘lie in water’). In the English sentence It’s in my hut, the verb is in present continuous form. But in the Jarawara sentence the verb must take the immediate past tense suffix in eyewitness evidentiality (masculine form, -hare, agreeing in gender with the subject) since I saw the torch on a raised surface in my hut in the immediate past — a few minutes ago — when I left home. The sentence is completed with declarative suffix (in masculine form), -ka. The moral here is that this kind of information can only be obtained by actually living in terms of the language, using it in everyday interaction. It would be unlikely to be revealed by just asking questions — say, taking some sentences in Portuguese and asking how they would be rendered in Jarawara. Just as a language can only properly be understood in terms of its cultural context, so each sentence must be considered in terms of the context in which it is uttered. Consider the different implications of I’m bored with this, when whispered to a friend in the middle of a movie, when said to your spouse as they are telling you the events of their day at work, or when addressed to the members of a committee interviewing you for a job. The pragmatic effect would be quite different in the three situations.

What is linguistics? It is the scientific study of the nature of human language. (The status of linguistics as a science is discussed in Chapter 9.) Linguistics aims to discover what is common to all languages, and the ways in which languages may differ. What sort of tense systems do languages have? There may be several past tenses (Jarawara has three — immediate past, recent past, and far past); there may be several future tenses. But no language is known which has more divisions in future time than in past. Then there are some languages which have no tense marking at all; linguists investigate what other means these languages have for showing the time of an event. Linguistics is in some ways similar to pure mathematics. Pure mathematics provides a central store-house of results and methods concerning number. These can be drawn on by empirical disciplines such as engineering (in all its varieties), physics, astronomy, cartography, statistics. In similar fashion, linguistics provides a characterisation of the nature of human language — a set of results and methods that can be drawn on by related disciplines. These include language teaching, translation, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and literary study. what is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 25

Linguistics may be the oldest scientific discipline (the only contender would be astronomy). Pāṇini’s description of Sanskrit from around the seventh century BCE is a model of understanding and concision, one of the finest of all grammars. Yet linguistics has languished, while other disciplines raced ahead. It was — and, in many ways, still is — tied too tightly to the structures that recur in the familiar languages of Europe. The essential nature of linguistics as the study of an aspect of human behaviour has often been abjured, as some quasi-practitioners try to view it as a branch of mathematical logic, looking for ‘formal properties’ instead of cultural correlations. (More on this in Chapter 9.) Language permeates every aspect of human life. To understand the way in which language functions is to go a fair way towards understanding the nature of the human mind. Linguistics poses the most exciting challenge of any branch of study today. This is an under-developed discipline; there is work of the highest importance waiting to be done — insights to be achieved, discoveries to be made, a whole new window of understanding to be fully opened. In the remainder of this chapter I will outline the essential nature of scientific linguistics. We need to pose questions involving ‘how’, and for each of these there is a question involving ‘why’. Predictions must be essayed. And there is need for comparative evaluation of the worth of different languages.

The ‘how’ questions The most fundamental task in linguistics is to investigate how each language is organised, both within itself and in relation to the situations in which it is used. Following on from this, linguists attempt to explain the ways in which languages differ. Each language has a distinct set of components, as it were, and varying levels of sophistication for each component. For example, Hungarian has no genders, French and Jarawara have two, German has three, Dyirbal has four, and Swahili has eight. In English there is just one word you, referring to one or to many people. Jarawara has two forms, ti- ‘you (one person)’ and tee ‘you (more than one person)’. Dyirbal has three, nginda ‘you (one person)’, nyubala ‘you (two people)’ and nyurra ‘you (more than two people)’. And Fijian has four, o ‘you (one person)’, omudrau ‘you (two people)’, omudou ‘you (a few people)’ and omunuu ‘you (many people)’. It was mentioned in the last chapter that in Jarawara every event related in a past tense must be specified for one of two evidentiality values — either eyewitness (you saw it happen) or non-eyewitness (you didn’t actually see it). 26 I am a linguist

In Tuyuca, a language spoken on the border between Colombia and Brazil, a choice must be made from five evidentiality values — seen; heard; inferred (based on indirect evidence); reported (someone told you about it); or assumed (something that generally happens and can be assumed to have happened again). Other languages — including the familiar languages of Europe — lack any evidentiality specification in their grammar. Each of these grammatical systems is most useful in the languages in which it occurs. An interesting question now arises. Why can’t a language have all of them, in maximally articulated form — eight genders, like Swahili; four numbers on pronouns, like Fijian; three past tenses, like Jarawara; five evidentiality values, like Tuyuca? This is not a question which has received much attention. My tentative answer is that the human brain can only handle a certain amount of information. To put together in one language the fullest forms of all the grammatical categories found across human languages would be just too much for a mind to deal with. It is as if there were a universal treasure chest of grammatical categories, and each language is permitted to make a limited selection from it — if you have six genders you may only take two tenses and no evidentiality. Except that it’s not like that. Almost nothing in life is arbitrary. There must be areason for Swahili having eight genders and Tuyuca five evidentials. We’ll return to this shortly. It is also important to study how each language is used by its speakers. For example, many languages have a passive construction (saying The meat was eaten by the dog, rather than The dog ate the meat, which is an active clause), but they use this in different ways. For example, scientists in western countries follow the convention of couching any statement in the passive (An experiment was devised to investigate ..., rather than I devised an experiment to investigate … and It was observed that ... rather than We observed that ...). Taking the agency out of an action is supposed to make the science more objective. Other varieties of English freely use active sentences, with the participants taking personal responsibility for what they do. All languages have ways of asking questions, but the actual use of questions varies a lot. In English, a question can be used as a mild form of command; for example, Would you mind opening the window? In Russian and in Danish, a negative question is more polite than a positive one, and is generally preferred (one would ask ‘Isn’t there any bread?’ rather than ‘Is there any bread?’). In Aboriginal communities of Australia, people tend to avoid direct questioning of a visitor (‘Where are you from? Are you married? How many children do what is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 27

you have?’). Instead, an interlocutor might volunteer this kind of information about themself, and the visitor would then be expected to reciprocate. Every child has an in-built capacity to learn any language, without effort. Place a young Finnish child in a Chinese village, a Chinese child in a Hausa township in Nigeria, a Hausa child on a farm in Finland — each will perfectly master the language of the social environment in which they grow up. The way in which children learn languages is a fascinating study. For example, Aleka Blackwell has found that American children learn to use adjectives relating to dimension (such as big, small), age (new, old), value (good, bad), colour (red, blue) and speed (fast, slow) firstly as modifier to a noun, as in a little pencil, a red book. In contrast, adjectives referring to physical properties (such as hard, smooth) and human propensities (jealous, happy) tend to be used first in copula clauses, as in The knife is sharp, The boy is clever. Interestingly, this correlates with other properties of adjectives. Many languages are like English in having a large class of adjectives. Others have a small class with just a few members; such classes are generally confined to dimension, age, value and colour terms. Alongside study of how children learn languages, there is the rather different question of how adults come to master a foreign language. Some aspects of language structure appear to be relatively easy and others rather difficult. And whereas a child acquires a language simply by exposure to it, research has shown that adult learners are much more likely to attain fluency if they explicitly study the grammar of the language, rather than just trying to pick it up from hearing the language used around them. No language is ever static. Each generation speaks it in a slightly different way from the one before. However, the changes are always gradual enough so that the oldest living speaker can understand the youngest, and vice versa. How languages change over time is a most fascinating question. Basically, there is a constant see-saw between two factors. One is the inherent laziness of speakers, which leads to saying things in as easy a way as possible. For example, the prefix in- (as in inapplicable, indubita- ble) becomes im- before p- (as in implausible) simply because -mp- (both sounds being made with the lips) is easier to say that -np- (a tongue sound followed by a lip sound). As another example, want to is reduced to wanna in certain environments. In Old English, each noun had endings showing case and number. A final nasal ceased to be pronounced, and then the preceding unaccented vowel (which had now come into word-final position) was dropped. Originally we had 28 I am a linguist

forms like nominative singular nama (used for subject function) and accusative singular naman (used for object function). Both of these reduced simply to name (pronounced [neim]) in modern English. The failure to pronounce final segments of words led to the loss of case and number marking on nouns. The other factor relates to the need for efficient communication. To achieve this, certain fundamental distinctions must be maintained. In south-western France, sound changes occurred such that some words came to have the same form; both ‘cock, rooster’, from Latin gallus, and ‘cat’, from Latin gattus, became gat. This homonymy might lead to confusion. To avoid it,gat was kept for ‘cat’ but replaced in its meaning of ‘cock, rooster’ by pul; this is a development from Latin pullus ‘chick’, and is here shifted in meaning to fill a lexical gap. When the erosion of word endings in English led to the loss of cases, new ways had to be found for indicating the function of a noun phrase in a sentence. Object function, previously shown by accusative case ending, was now indicated by placing the noun phrase immediately after the verb; benefactive function, previously shown by dative case, came to be marked with the preposition to (as in John gave a book to Mary). The evolution of a language is a constant balance between laziness, which tends to lose contrasts, and the need for clear communication, which requires distinctions to be made between words, between grammatical specifications, and between types of sentences. Everyone likes to know their history — parents, grandparents, and so on— as far back as possible. So it is with languages, except that here there is a single parent with many children. More than a hundred languages of the Indo- European family — centred on Europe, west Asia and north India — have been shown to be all descended from a single ancestor, which is dubbed proto-Indo- European. This was spoken thousands of years in the past, long before written records began. We cannot be certain of every aspect of the structure and vocabulary of proto-Indo-European, but we do know a lot about it, through comparing cognate words and grammatical forms in the modern languages (and from early writings in Sanskrit and Greek, dated at about three thousand years ago). In similar fashion, a group of about twenty-five languages in India (including Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada) have been shown to make up the Dravidian language family; they are all descendents of a single ancestor, called proto-Dravidian. Similarities between languages can be of various kinds. There are some universal tendencies; for example, the word for ‘blow’ very often begins with p or b and includes a vowel o or u (the word sounds like the activity referred what is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 29

to). There can be chance similarities; in the Australian language Mbabaram, the word for ‘dog’ is dog, which evolved from an earlier form gudaga (the Eng- lish word dog goes back to an earlier docga). Universal tendencies and chance similarities account for only a small number of the instances where languages resemble each other. There are two major sources for similarities. The first is when two languages are genetically related, with each inheriting similar forms from a common ancestor; compare the irregular paradigm good, better, best in English with gut, besser, best in German. The second is when the speakers of two languages are in social contact and borrow features from each other. For example, English has taken thousands of words from French, and also some suffixes. Amongst the earliest words borrowed were comfort, accept and agree; and also comfortable, acceptable and agreeable. The suffix‑ able was then generalised to also apply to native English words, giving understandable, believable and readable, among others. If a group of languages is in contact — with speakers of one language knowing something of the others — in a given geographical area (called a ‘linguistic area’), for a long time, they tend to swap some words and affixes and many grammatical patterns (ways of saying things). The languages will tend to con- verge on a common grammatical pattern. For example, within the Indian linguistic area, the structures of sentences are very similar between languages. To translate from Bengali (a language of the Indo-European family) to Tamil (which belongs to the Dravidian family), one basically only needs to substitute Tamil words and grammatical elements for those in Bengali; the grammatical organisation of the sentence stays almost unchanged. We do, of course, still have quite separate languages since the actual forms used (the words and affixes) are different. One important question in linguistics is how languages influence each other. Are some aspects of grammar more likely to diffuse between languages than others? The answer appears to be ‘yes’. If a language without tones comes into contact with one or more languages with tones, it is likely to develop its own system of tones. Similarly for genders. In contrast, complex systems of tense marking tend not to diffuse to the same extent. It has sometimes been suggested that all language development is on the ‘family tree’ principle. That is, proto-Indo-European and proto-Dravidian (the top nodes in the family trees of these families) are assumed to be the bottom nodes of earlier family trees, and so on. This is an implausible scenario. It is more likely that during the period in which humankind has had language 30 I am a linguist

(thought to have been at least a hundred thousand years), there have been long periods of equilibrium, during which the languages of a given area have borrowed features back and forth and converged on a common structural pro- totype. Just occasionally, the equilibrium will be punctuated — perhaps by an empire-building leader, or through some material advance such as the innovation of agriculture. In these circumstances, one political group — and its language — will expand and split. Such a period of punctuation will give rise to the rapid creation of new languages, whose relationships to each other can be modelled by a ‘family tree’ diagram. After a while, a new period of equilibrium will come into being.

The ‘why’ questions There is, naturally, a ‘why’ question associated with each ‘how’ question. Why is a given language organised in the way that it is (and not in some other way)? Why do languages differ in the ways that they do (and not in other ways)? Why do languages change in the ways that they do (and not in other ways)? Why do languages in contact influence each other in the ways that they do (and not in other ways)? And so on. Let me illustrate two of the kinds of answer that can be offered for specific ‘why’ questions. Firstly, why does Lahu (a language of the Tibeto-Burman family whose territory spans the borders of China, Burma and Thailand) have five spatial demonstratives, translated as ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘way over there’, ‘up there’ and ‘down there’, whereas Chinese and English have just two, ‘here’ and ‘there’? As a corollary, we can ask whether Chinese or English might develop a system similar to that in Lahu. Well, the Lahu speech community lives in scattered villages in mountainous country. Whether something is ‘up’ or ‘down’ with respect to the speaker is — in this community — as relevant as how far they are away (shown in ‘here’, ‘there’ and ‘way over there’). The grammatical coding of the height of a thing referred to thus assists efficient communication. It is unlikely that Chinese or English would develop a similar system, simply because these languages have hundreds or millions of speakers living in every kind of terrain. That is, a grammatical feature relating to a particular aspect of the environment could not be adopted into a non-local language. The second specific ‘why’ question demands a different kind of explanation. Why does the ‘Pennsylvania German’ dialect spoken by Old Order Mennon- ites in Canada differ from standard German in that the verb wotte ‘want’ has what is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 31

changed its grammatical profile so that it can no longer be used in constructions like ‘I want to come’? Well, the Old Order Mennonite community has strong religious beliefs, which subordinates self to the will of God. The idea of an individual wanting something for themself is in direct conflict with their faith. This would seem to have motivated the change wherebywotte ‘want’ can no longer be used with an infinitival complement, as in ‘want to come’. Some parts of the dictionary and grammar of a language have meaning in terms of the world at large. For example, the ideas of male and female, and of laughing and crying, are worldwide. But others have a meaning in terms of some particular aspect of the life of the speech community for this particular language. It is the belief system (the religion) of Old Order Mennonites which determines that their dialect cannot have ‘want’ with an infinitival complement. And it is the geographical environment in which Lahu is spoken that motivates this language having demonstratives ‘up there’ and ‘down there’, in addition to the standard ‘here’ and ‘there’. A grammar is only likely to include reference to vertical height if its speech community inhabits ‘up-and-down’ country. In Lak, a language spoken in the mountains of the Caucasus, there are three demonstratives: aha ‘close to speaker’, hava ‘further from speaker, but on the same level’ and ho ‘higher or lower than the speaker’. The territory in which Dyirbal is spoken — in north-east Australia — has a high rainfall with many rivers running down the mountains. Here each noun can be accompanied by a marker specifying whether its referent is ‘uphill’, ‘downhill’, ‘upriver’, ‘downriver’, ‘across the river’ or ‘way out’, and — if up or down — whether a long, medium or short distance up or down. This sort of information would not be coded in the grammar of a language spoken in flat country. However, not all languages spoken in hilly country code ‘up’ and ‘down’ in their grammars. Why is this? How can we explain that some languages which have the possibility of including a certain distinction in their grammars take up this possibility while others appear to shun it? This is one of the questions that linguists have yet to find an answer for. In fact, only a few of the ‘why’ questions can be provided with an answer, at this early stage in the development of linguistics. For example, I mentioned above that Hungarian has no genders, French and Jarawara have two, German has three, Dyirbal has four, and Swahili has eight. Why? I have absolutely no explanation. Another question concerns why Jarawara has three past tenses (one extending from a few seconds to a few months ago, another from a few months to 32 I am a linguist

a couple of years in the past, and the third from a couple of years back to the beginning of time), while Russian just has one past tense? Again, I have at the present time nothing to offer in response to this question. Note that there are other languages used by a small speech community (with just a few hundred members) which have a single past tense. And there are languages with millions of speakers that have several past tenses (for example, Swahili). A third question is why Igbo (spoken in Nigeria) has a small class of just eight adjectives (they are ‘large’ and ‘small’, ‘new’ and ‘old’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘black, dark’ and ‘white, light’), whereas Korean has a large open class of adjectives? I am able to proffer no explanation of the size of adjective classes in different languages. There are hundreds of other ‘why’ questions concerning the nature of language, which are simply waiting to be studied by future generations of linguists. Just a few more may be mentioned here. Why does every language have pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’? (I can imagine a language lacking these.) Why is it that some languages have a comparative construction (on the pattern ‘Bill is bigger than Tom’) whereas others lack this? (One just has to say ‘Bill is big. Tom is small’ or ‘Tom is big, Bill is very big’.) Why is it that some languages (including English) have a single way of marking all types of possession, whereas others have different mechanisms depending on the type of possessive relation that is involved? For example, Fijian uses a suffix — such as -qu ‘my’ — for part possession, as in liga-qu ‘my hand’, but a separate word — such as qou ‘my’ — which comes before the possessed noun, for other kinds of possession, as in qou waqa ‘my boat’. On some questions, one can get a feeling for what the explanation might be, without being able — at this stage — to formulate it satisfactorily. For example, a scattering of languages around the world (some in South America, some in North America, some in south-east Asia, a few in New Guinea) are like Jarawara in employing obligatory grammatical marking for the evidence on which a statement is based — whether the speaker observed it themself, or was told about it, or inferred it, and so on. It appears that such communities place particular value on accountability and responsibility. What is needed are some independent reasons for postulating that these communities have such values, which might correlate with the occurrence of grammatical systems of evidentiality. That is, fundamental research is required on this matter by psy- chologists. But such research is currently lacking. what is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 33

Prediction The basic profile of a scientific discipline is to describe, to explain, and then to predict. For example, in 1915 it was suggested by Percival Lowell that per- turbations in the orbit of the planet Uranus could be explained in terms of the gravitational attraction of an outer planet in a certain position. The prediction was confirmed when Pluto was actually observed, in 1930. There are a number of ways in which linguists can put forward predictions about language, which might be confirmed or falsified. I will briefly mention three. Firstly, it may be possible to predict the meanings associated with some part of a grammar. I have mentioned that there are languages which have an adjective class that has a rather small number of members. Empirical research has shown that the most common members of a small adjective class are words referring to dimension, age, value and colour. The small class of adjectives in Igbo (mentioned above) has just two words from each of these semantic types — ‘large’ and ‘small’ (dimension), ‘new’ and ‘old’ (age), ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (value), and ‘black, dark’ and ‘white, light’ (colour). Slightly bigger classes may include more words from these semantic types (for example, ‘long’, ‘short’, ‘red’) and also some physical property items (for example, ‘raw, green, unripe’, ‘heavy’, ‘light’, ‘sharp’, ‘hot’). Only when an adjective class is much bigger (with a least a few score members) is it likely to include terms referring to human propensities (for example, ‘happy’, ‘jealous’, ‘kind’, ‘clever’). Note how this interrelates with observations on child acquisition of adjectives, summarised above. Words from the dimension, age, value and colour types (and also from the speed type) tend to be used first as modifiers to a noun (as in a little pencil) while physical property and human propensity adjectives tend to be used first in copula clauses (such as The knife is sharp). That is, the four canonical adjective types — dimension, age, value and colour — provide the core members of small adjective classes and are, in English, first used in modifier function. If you tell me that, working on a previously undescribed language, you have recognised a small class of, say, fifteen adjectives, I will be able to predict what their meanings are likely to be. I wouldn’t expect my predictions to tally exactly, but I would expect to have a high measure of success. The second kind of prediction relates to dependencies between parts of a grammar. All languages have a system of what is called ‘polarity marking’, positive versus negative. Most languages have a tense system. Now in most grammars there is no association between polarity and tense; that is, the same 34 I am a linguist

tense possibilities apply in positive and in negative sentences. But in some languages there is a dependency between the systems — fewer tense choices are found in one polarity value. If you come across a language like this, then I predict that the smaller number of tense choices will be found in negative sentences (never in positive ones). As an example, in Amharic the verb of a positive sentence has separate forms for past (‘did’) and for preterite (‘has done’); in a negative sentence, one form covers both past and preterite meanings. As a further instance, study of already-described languages shows that the number of gender specifications available may depend on the tense that is chosen, but we never find the number of possible tense specifications depending on the gender that is chosen. Generalisations of this nature can be the basis for predicting what is likely and what is unlikely to be found in the grammar of a newly-discovered language which has yet to be analysed and described. Finally, perhaps the most exciting kind of prediction concerns the ways in which languages are likely to change over time. The types and rates of change depend on many factors; these include the social circumstances in which a language is used, the languages it is in contact with, and the speakers’ attitudes towards their own and towards other languages. I will here just outline a couple of rather simple predictions for the future development of English. Old English had a rich array of irregular verbs, and also some irregular nouns; these are gradually being replaced by regular forms. The plural of cow used to be kine and has been replaced by cows. The plural of brother was brethren but has now been replaced by brothers (the form brethren is retained just for members of a religious order). In due course, oxen will certainly be replaced by oxes and I predict that eventually — not in the next couple of generations, but in the next couple of centuries — children will be replaced by childs. Irregular verbs are also gradually being regularised; for example, dreamed is now often used in place ofdreamt , kneeled in place of knelt, lighted in place of lit. Occasionally a new irregular verb is introduced (for instance, dove can be used in American English in place of dived, on the pattern of drive and drove, ride and rode) but the overall tendency is towards reducing the number of irregularities. It takes little imagination to suggest that this trend will continue, and only a little more to suggest which irregular forms may fall out of use over the next century or so. My predictions include: crept will be replaced by creeped, bled by bleeded, flung by flinged, swore by sweared, and blew by blowed. what is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 35

Let’s be a little more venturesome and predict another kind of change which has not yet (to my knowledge) commenced. English is replete with what are called ‘phrasal verbs’; these each consist of a verb plus a preposition, but with the combination having a meaning that cannot be inferred from the meaning of its parts. For example, take after, as in She takes after her mother; pick on, as in The teacher picked on John; and sum up as in He sums up the situation in one sentence. At present each of these is one lexeme (one dictionary entry) which consists of two words. The tense is shown on the first word, the verb. I predict that — in the not too distant future — these may be reanalysed as each being a single complex word, with tense added at the end. That is, instead of He sums up the situation we will hear He sum‑up-s the situation; and also She take-after-s her mother, and then — eventually — things like The teacher pick-on-ed John.

Evaluation Every discipline must be able to provide evaluations. For example, which is the superior one of a number of economic systems? Which is the ideal political system? Which forest plants are most suited for adaptation to agriculture? Similar questions can be asked about languages. But with caution. The reason is that there have in the past — often, continuing into the present — been prejudiced and totally wrong evaluations by non-linguists concerning the worth of different languages. The white race was originally confined to Europe and adjacent parts of Africa and Asia. But its self-aggrandisement led to a colonisation of almost the whole world. By 1910 the only countries that were not governed by white people were Liberia, Ethiopia, Thailand, China, Tibet, Japan and Korea. The situation began to reverse after the Second World War, when the indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands re-established their own control over their territories. (This reversal happened too late for the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, where the white invader had established a superiority of numbers, with the indigenous peoples being left as a marginalised minority.) Hand-in-hand with this political imposition came a total lack of respect for the religions, laws and customs of the indigenous populations. And, most especially, for their languages. It was believed (as an article of faith) that the languages of non-white people — whether in Africa, in Brazil, in New Guinea, or in Australia — were simple affairs, with just a few hundred words and a paucity of grammar. These were looked upon as primitive peoples, and it was natural that they should speak primitive languages. 36 I am a linguist

Attitudes of this sort persist today. In Australia, for example, people talk of Aboriginal ‘dialects’ but of European ‘languages’. They evince surprise and disbelief when told that there were originally about 250 distinct languages spoken in Australia, as different from each other as are French and German. When I began fieldwork on Dyirbal, in 1963, a white farmer asked what I was doing. ‘Writing a grammar of the local Aboriginal language’ brought the response ‘That should be pretty easy.’ When I enquired why, he replied: ‘They haven’t got any grammar’. (My published grammars of two of the languages of that region — Dyirbal and Yidiñ — run to 444 and 586 pages respectively.) In fact there is no such thing as a primitive language in the world today; all languages are roughly equal in complexity. TheOxford English Dictionary may comprise half-a-million words but many of them lie in specialised fields (such as law and medicine) or are archaic. It is likely that the average adult speaker of any language (whether English or Chinese or Lahu or Jarawara) has about the same size working vocabulary — about ten thousand words. And the grammar of every language has about the same level of complexity; it takes about three to six hundred pages to explain the grammatical organisation of any language, in moderate detail. Some languages do, of course, have complex word structure while others have rather simple word structure; but those with simple word structure tend often to have complex sentence structure, and vice versa. The areas of complexity differ from language to language but the overall level of complexity is about the same. There are no primitive languages. So, all languages are roughly equal in complexity. But are they all exactly equal? Plainly not — some must be a little better than others (perhaps ten or twenty percent better), in certain ways, and for certain purposes. But, as I said above, there is need to tread cautiously. One must be careful to make clear that such a systematic evaluation is in no way a retreat to the bad old colonial attitudes that all languages spoken by dark-skinned people (or all languages spoken by people who do not worship a single god) are inherently inferior. The primary function of any language is to convey meaning from speaker to hearer. If there are four genders or three past tenses or obligatory specification of evidence, these all serve to provide more information in the message. But some kinds of grammatical complication carry no meaning at all. Consider irregular verbs, which occur in English (and in some — but by no means in all — other languages). Rather than just learning that past tense is formed by adding -ed to a verb, anyone wishing to speak English properly has to master the irregular forms of more than a hundred verbs: felt, in place of what would be the regular form feeled, sang in place of singed, stood rather than standed, and what is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 37

so on. This is, from the point of view of efficiency of communication, a useless complication. A language without irregular forms of verb and noun inflection is plainly better than one which retains this historical residue. (Indeed, this is why languages tend to eliminate irregularities, as discussed above in the section on Prediction.) There are many other factors. Some languages are easier to learn than others; surely this is a good thing? Some languages have most of their words short and sweet (just two or three syllables) while others have lots of long words. Surely short words are easier to handle than long ones and are a good thing? Some languages have lots of near synonyms which makes for more detailed nuances of meaning. Surely this is a good thing? Some languages have particularly well-articulated instances of certain grammatical systems — for example, four ways of saying ‘you’, depending on whether one, two, a few, or many people are being addressed. Surely this is useful, and thus good? When we compare two languages, X and Y, it is likely that X will be better than Y in certain ways and Y better than X in other ways. One has to sum up the pluses and minuses over the whole language. This is an area of investigation which has as yet been little explored. There is tremendous scope for careful and systematic work on the evaluation of the relative worth of different languages. It is likely to have further implications, perhaps helping to explain why — under similar circumstances — some languages prosper while others fade away. And the value of a language can have consequences for the people who use it. Suppose that there are two small communities, A and B, at the opposite ends of a large island with other communities between them. In each of A and B, a charismatic leader emerges who is determined to conquer all other communities and rule the entire island. But whereas A has a language with complex word structure, considered difficult to learn by outsiders, B has a language with simple word structure, similar to that of most other languages in the island and considered easy to learn. Which leader is more likely to succeed in controlling the island? Plainly, many factors will be involved — weapons available, military organisation and strategy, how conquered groups are treated and whether they will ally themselves with the conqueror and join his army. But language will be one factor. The greater accessibility of the B language, in this particular situation, will provide the leader of the B people with a definite advantage.

At the beginning of this chapter I mentioned that linguistics is, at the present time, a fairly undeveloped discipline. Most practitioners deal with some of the ‘how’ questions but seldom enquire ‘why’, and wouldn’t ever contemplate 38 I am a linguist

an attempt at prediction or evaluation. (There is further discussion of this in Chapter 9.) The subject is wide-open. There is no field of enquiry which offers greater opportunities for discovery, for advancing knowledge, and for achieving an understanding of what it is that makes us human beings — the faculty of language. So, how does one go about becoming a linguist? Well, the only way to become a competent practitioner in any craft or discipline is to actively engage in it. A watchmaker must actually make and mend watches, a surgeon must perform operations, a geologist must examine rocks (both in the field and in the laboratory), an organic chemist must conduct experiments in the laboratory. In the same way, a linguist must describe languages. The prospective linguist should, first of all, learn the foundations of linguistic description by attending carefully-selected courses and by studying the classic textbooks, grammars and research reports. They must learn to recognise, make and transcribe every sound that occurs in the world’s languages; learn how to divide up words into their meaningful components; learn how to analyse grammatical constructions; learn how to formulate statements of meaning and to construct dictionary entries; learn about the ways in which languages change; learn how to reconstruct past stages of languages; learn how to investigate the social conditions of language use and the social correlates of the employment of different styles of language; learn the ways in which languages influence each other; and learn about the kinds of things that get borrowed (and why). After this preliminary instruction, the real apprenticeship begins. This will involve fieldwork on some previously undescribed (or scarcely described) language — recording, transcribing and analysing texts; observing how people use the language in the daily round; writing a grammar and phonology; compiling a dictionary; and publishing a volume of annotated texts. Once a linguist has mastered the fundamentals of the discipline in this way, they are equipped to go on to the next stage, comparing languages and working out the general principles which underlie the nature of human language. Suppose that you want to study systems of evidentiality, methods of marking the evidence on which a statement is based (for example, whether seen or heard or inferred or assumed or reported). First you would study the grammars of a selection of languages which show this system, working inductively and infer- ring the theoretical parameters involved. You would also look at what else in the grammar may relate to the system under study; for example, there may be more evidentiality choices in past tense than in present, and none at all in the future. A generalisation will be formulated about the various types of eviden- what is linguistics? — a journey of discovery 39

tiality systems, and their possibilities of variation. This is a hypothesis, which must be thoroughly checked by examining as many languages as one can (not, at this stage, just a sample of languages) which have an evidentiality system in their grammar. The linguist will share their insights with colleagues who have expertise in other languages and are working in other areas of typology. In this way there can be pooling of ideas and results leading to serendipitous advances in knowledge. A community of scholars of real linguistics will — in the fullness of time — achieve an understanding of the nature of human language. It will be a grand journey of exploration.

SOURCES

The ‘how’ questions. For pronouns ‘you’ in Jarawara see Dixon (2004, pages 76-8); for those in Dyir- bal see Dixon (1972, page 50); and for those in Fijian see Dixon (1988, pages 54-5). These are in the list of my major publications at the end of this volume. The five-term system of evidentiality in Tuyuca is described in Janet Barnes, ‘Evidentials in the Tuyuca verb’ in the International Journal of American Lin- guistics, volume 50 (1984), pages 255-71. Information on children’s acquisition of the syntax of English adjectives is from Aleka A. Blackwell, ‘On the acquisition of the syntax of English adjectives’, Chicago Linguistic Society Papers, volume 36 (2000), part 2, pages 361-75. The example concerning ‘cat’ and ‘rooster’ in French is from Leonard Bloomfield,Language (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1933), pages 396-8. The development of dog in Mbabaram from an earlier gudaga is described in Dixon ‘Mbabaram’ in Handbook of Australian languages, volume 4, edited by Dixon and Barry J. Blake (Oxford University Press, 1991), pages 361-3. The ‘punctuated equilibrium’ model of language development is set out in Dixon (1997).

The ‘why’ questions

Information on Lahu is from James A. Matisoff, The grammar of Lahu (Uni- versity of California Press, 1973). That on Pennsylvania German is from Kate 40 I am a linguist

Burridge, ‘Changes within Pennsylvania German grammar as enactments of Anabaptist world view’, pp 207-30 of Ethnosyntax: explorations in grammar and culture, edited by N. J. Enfield (Oxford University Press, 2002). Reference to vertical height in Lak is described by S. M. Khaidakov, ‘The dialect-divisions of Lak’, Studia Caucasica, volume 2 (1966), page 12; and that in Dyirbal is in Dixon (1972, page 48). The adjectives in Igbo are set out by William E. Welmers and Beatrice F. Welmers, ‘Noun modifiers in Igbo’, International Journal of American Linguis- tics, volume 35 (1969), pages 315-22.

Prediction Generalisations concerning dependencies between grammatical systems are given in Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon, ‘Dependencies between grammatical systems’, Language, volume 74 (1998), pages 56-80.

A typological study of the grammatical category of evidentiality is in Alexan- dra Y. Aikhenvald, Evidentiality (Oxford University Press, 2004). 3 Getting there

I received a warm but dull middle-class upbringing. My parents had striven to reach that niche, and valued it. Great-grandfather William Dixon (born about 1844) had been a labourer at the time of his marriage in 1867 to Agnes Walton, a farmer’s daughter. He then worked in the iron ore mine at Askam, in the Furness district of north Lancashire. Coming home each night covered in red dust didn’t overly appeal to his five sons (there were also three daughters); two became policemen in Yorkshire and two emigrated to Canada. My grandfather — the second son, born 1870 — was also called William Dixon. He wasn’t quite tall enough for the police force and did the next best thing, becoming a Warder at Preston Prison. In 1902 he married Mary Ann Ward who worked as a warper in a cotton mill. On Saturday 30 April 1904, father (see plate 9) was born, being named William Ward Dixon, the ‘Ward’ in memory of his mother, who died seventeen days later of puerperal septicaemia. (Grandfather retired — now Head Warder — in the late 1920s. He married, took a smallholding, and died in 1938, the year before I was born.) Father was brought up in Askam by his grandparents. He became the literate one in that household, and by the age of eight was writing letters for the family. Besides visiting his father in Preston each year, he wrote regular letters, which the warder returned, spelling and grammatical errors corrected in red ink. When father was about twelve, his grandparents died and he moved in with Aunt Agnes (also in Askam) who gave him something of a hard time. Ap- parently she didn’t appreciate father being much better at school work — and at sports — than her own two boys. He gained a scholarship to Leeds University and was awarded a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, with Second Class Honours, going on to do a Master of Science. Unable to get a job as a chemist, he taught mathematics at Ducie Avenue Central School in Manchester from 1926 until 1929, and then did obtain a position as chemistry master — at the small technical college in Stroud, Gloucestershire. 42 I am a linguist

I know less about mother’s family. Grandfather Robert William Greenhalgh (born about 1879) had stopped attending school by the age of eleven, when his father died, in order to support mother and sisters by conveying goods from village to village on a handcart. He was tall enough, and served as police officer in towns around north Lancaster before being promoted to Sergeant-in-charge at Askam. His wife, Jane Alice Duckworth, had received only a little schooling (she used to recall how school cost a penny a day, and her mother sometimes didn’t have a coin to spare) but she had a sharp mind and looked after the pa- perwork for the police station. Grandfather would have become an Inspector on the basis of police skills but he just couldn’t pass the written exam (unfortunately, grandmother wasn’t allowed to sit it in his stead). Mother, Isabel Greenhalgh (see plate 10), was born on Monday 6 July 1908. From the local school she progressed to Ulverston Victoria Grammar School, four years behind father (they didn’t meet there). What to do next? The headmaster of the Askam School invited her back to take charge of a junior class. Mother had had no official teacher training but that wasn’t considered necessary in the mid-1920s. She could do the job, and do it well — wasn’t that sufficient? Grandfather Greenhalgh retired at the age of 48, to the seaside town of Morecambe, and mother transferred to a school there. She continued to live at home, as a daughter was absolutely expected to do. But she then took the daring step of applying for a position in the next county, Cheshire. Mother actually taught in Cheadle which is only a stone’s throw across the border (although sixty miles from Morecambe). Her wages were slightly more than the cost of food and lodging; there were just a few shillings remaining each week for clothes and the cinema. Father and mother had met on the tennis courts at Askam and continued their courtship in Manchester, which is only seven miles from Cheadle. They got engaged. Then father moved to Stroud. After a while, he broke it off (mother said that her parents never really forgave him for that). Two or three years later she sent him a birthday card, just for fun. This brought forth an immediate response: ‘you’re the only girl for me’. Mother took the engagement ring out of her purse and slipped it on again. They were married that summer, on Tuesday 28 August 1934. My parents rented a three-bedroom house in a cul-de-sac half way up Rod- borough Hill, where mother washed and ironed and cooked the midday meal. That was what middle-class wives did, in that place and time (she had a working-class woman come in to clean, for a few hours each week). One spring, getting there 43

the local school was short of a teacher and asked if she would fill in for a few months. Mother was delighted with the idea and said ‘yes’ on the spot without waiting to consult father (she said he took it well, while not being wonderfully pleased at having a working wife). Father had been so bruised by his upbringing on the fringes of Aunt Agnes’ not-so-happy family that he didn’t at first want any children. But mother certainly did. I was born just before the war started, in early 1939. Stroud didn’t itself attract any of Jerry’s bombs. But one evening I was held up to the window to see a bank of flames fourteen miles away — Cheltenham burning. Mother foresaw a long war and stocked up with packets and packets of tea before it dwindled in supply. Most things were rationed – sugar and butter, meat and cheese, one egg a week. Children weren’t allocated a ration of tea and coffee until they were five. I wasn’t offered any to drink at an early age, which led to my never picking up either habit. Most people can’t start the day without a hot potion; it takes a glass of icy-cold water to set me up. And while a large portion of the world seems unable to survive without frequent coffee or tea breaks, I continue working, and just keep a glass of water to one side for occasional sips. Father wasn’t called on to fight, science teaching being a restricted occupation. But he always said he’d have liked to get in there and show Jerry who was boss. Father thought of himself as a man’s man (he used to despair of my bookish nature and lack of interest in — and ability at — playing sports). I’ve always had a horror of war and violence and try to steer clear of films or books about the World Wars, or the Communist years in Russia. I’d point out the con- tradictions involved. In time of war you get a medal for killing some upstanding youth who has done nothing wrong but simply happens to belong to the other side. Whereas, in peace time, if you kill a nefarious character who has done you a grievous wrong, this can lead to years in jail (or, in those days, possibly to execution). Father said that I sounded exactly like his father, the prison warder. Mother always wanted a second child, but postponed this during the early days of the war when it looked as if the Nazis might triumph. Once it was clear that we were winning, my sister took a little while to conceive; Margaret Ruth Ward Dixon (always called Ruth) was born on Lady Day, Sunday 25 March 1945. I’d been sent up to spend a month with Grandad and Nanna Greenhalgh in Morecambe and wasn’t all that pleased with the news, having put in a request for a brother. Being an only child for six years was surely a factor in my becoming self- reliant and pretty self-sufficient. I’ve never been bored when by myself, only when trapped in a social situation involving people with whom I have little in 44 I am a linguist

common (which I’ve become adept at avoiding). Mother tells how I’d be happy playing alone and she’d hold me up to the window where a group of children were busy interacting in the street. ‘Don’t you want to join in, Malcolm?’ And I’d shake my head. But that was only sometimes. Our end of Rodborough Avenue had eight or ten kids all about the same age and I did hang around with them a good deal. Mary Friend, from across the road, was almost exactly my age. One day — aged about seven — we were exploring a field at the back and came upon a snake just uncoiling. Ran full tilt to consult Mary’s mother, who had been a biology teacher (although now a housewife). Mrs Friend got out a large book with pho- tographs. It was probably just a grass snake, quite harmless, rather than a viper, which has a mildly unpleasant bite. Now we knew! (But there was then a snake that used to come up to my bedroom door every night, which was why it had to be tightly shut. When we moved to just outside Nottingham, the following year, it took the bedroom-door-snake about three weeks to make the journey, although it didn’t last very long after that.) The headmaster of Rodborough Primary School was Captain Forster (and his deputy was Lieutenant something-or-other). They brought along army titles and also habits. At the whistle, the whole school had to stand in line in the play- ground, form by form. ‘Eyes right!’ Left arm was to be extended, to ensure the correct distance from one’s neighbour. ‘Dress!’ We shuffled to make a perfectly straight line. ‘Quick march!’, the youngest form leading. I made the mistake — only once — of being on the far right and led off too soon, to be reprimanded by a tough cuff around the ears. Once you got inside the school, everything was fine. Possibly the happiest of my school years, since nothing special was expected. I got the idea that I wasn’t the best pupil because of frequent tellings off for chatting and suchlike. Then, when I was not quite eight, there was a class list, all the marks added together. Miss Bowring pinned the piece of paper to the door and invited each of us to see how we had done. I gingerly examined names in the middle. Then those at the end. Nothing; had I failed altogether? Try again. ‘Malcolm Dixon’, in number one slot (and ‘Mary Friend’ as number two). ‘Please Miss,’ I approached the teacher, in bewilderment, ‘am I top?’ Father had progressed to be Head of the Science Department at the Stroud and District Technical College. Then, in April 1947, he was appointed head of the People’s College Senior Technical Institute in Nottingham, inheriting two full-time teachers and a bevy of part-timers who taught craft and vocational courses at a miscellaneous selection of venues scattered across the city. By the getting there 45

time he retired, in 1969, the People’s College of Further Education had a spank- ing new building right under Nottingham Castle, with more than 120 full-time teachers (plus about 300 part-timers). Father thought mother wouldn’t feel at ease living in the city, so they bought a three-bedroom house in Bramcote, then a village five miles off (within a decade it became enveloped in the conurbation). I attended Bramcote Church of England School, which wasn’t a patch on Rodborough School. The county education authority provided teachers while the church was responsible for buildings and materials. There were three classes, and just two rooms; one for the five- and six-year-olds and the other for all the rest, divided by a row of tall bookshelves. The teacher responsible for seven- and eight-year-olds had to make sure she wasn’t addressing the class at the same time as her colleague, who taught nine- and ten-year-olds. Father having brought along certain expectations, I was placed in the top class, destined for perhaps three-and-a-bit years in that partitioned room. Both teacher and pupils looked upon me as a little odd. ‘You like doing sums!’, min- gling surprise with disdain. Punishment for a misdemeanour (which I never merited) was to spend an hour in the cloakroom — doing sums. I was bullied a little bit, and that probably made my stammer a little worse. One lunchtime a group of boys pushed me into a barn on the way home and banged my head on the wall till it really hurt. ‘Did you tell your mother?’ one of them asked, a little anxiously, in the afternoon. A head shake and I was then more-or-less left alone. Father took me out of school one afternoon in 1948 to go and see Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. The next day, quarter-of-an-hour before lunch, Mr Sole announced to the class: ‘Malcolm Dixon will now tell us about the film he saw yesterday.’ With no warning whatsoever! I went out front and just stood there. ‘How did it begin?’, Mr Sole at last broke the silence. ‘Well, Hamlet’s friend Horatio was on the battlements of a castle and he saw the ghost of Hamlet’s father, who had been murdered.’ Then the story flowed, and at the end an excited group was plying me with questions. I suppose Mr Sole was getting his own back for father’s occasional visits to the little school to check up on the syllabus, in relation to his expectations for me. But really, it would have been fairer if Mr Sole had provided just a little warning, for me to pull thoughts together. A friend from down the road and I would listen to ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’ on the radio at 6.45 each evening, play endless games of draughts, go on cycle rides, and climb the intricately gnarled tree in the park across the road. Father had taken me to Nottingham’s famous cricket ground, at Trent Bridge, 46 I am a linguist

and I became engrossed in the game and its statistics. When the Australians came, in 1948, I devised my own tables, based on persistence of team selection, and studied every aspect of the scores in the Daily Telegraph. Father wrote a note to Mr Sole saying that he was going to take me to Trent Bridge on the afternoon of Thursday 10 June if the First Test Match was then in an interesting position. I came home to lunch in happy expectation. No, father said, we weren’t going. England had collapsed in the morning session. (For most sports supporters ‘an interesting position’ means that their team is winning.) I began walking back towards school at the slowest possible pace. Mother had sensed my disappointment, and father always listened to her. Just before I reached the corner of the street, she was at the gate, beckoning me back. We saw England dismissed for 165, the top score being 63 by Jim Laker (a favourite, since he was the first cricketer whose autograph I’d obtained). And then the start of the Australian innings. It didn’t happen that day, but in the match against the Nottinghamshire county team, I saw Don Bradman bat. (It is difficult to convey the significance of this to someone from a non-cricket culture. Perhaps like meeting George Washington, or hearing Jesus Christ preach.) Mother loved it in Bramcote. She joined, and then ran, all sorts of local committees and then was one of a group who founded the Bramcote Women’s Institute. She served as Secretary, then President, then became an organiser for the County Federation of Women’s Institutes, attending the national convention in London each year (and staying with us there, in the 1960s). The only sport which interested me at all was cricket but I never really got to find out if I had any talent at it. Mr Sole organised a team at the village school and twelve boys wanted to play. There are eleven in a team; I was deputed to be scorer since I was good at figures. There were games in the park opposite but I was always too small or too inexperienced to be permitted to play a role. There were, however, plenty of other things to keep me occupied, like devising new kinds of card games and reading books and comics. TheDandy was a great comic but, since no one read it for more than a limited period, the editor had the habit of recycling cartoon stories about every seven years without regard to changing social circumstance. In 1945 there was someone peeling a banana, throwing the peel over his shoulder, and the person behind slipping on it. This was totally incomprehensible to us since — at that stage of the war — we hadn’t ever seen a fresh banana (only the dried variety). Once in Bramcote, I also read Film Fun every week. Besides cartoons of Laurel and Hardy and suchlike, there were always a couple of prose pieces, one a spine-tingling ghost yarn. getting there 47

At school we were told to write a story and given an hour for the task. All I managed in that time was a page-and-a-half of introduction, not even getting into the actual action. Oh dear, expect a poor mark. But the new temporary head teacher (Mr Sole having mercifully moved on) seemed ridiculously pleased. It was, apparently, fine descriptive prose. And I’d used the word ‘eerie’. Well, that word recurred every week in the ghost story of Film Fun. (The word has always been a favourite, along with ‘eleemosynary’. Come to think of it, maybe it was an unconscious factor in naming my first daughter Eelsha. Yes, that is an invented name; after all, if a linguist can’t make up names, who can?) Father decided that I had talent and should not be permitted to dally on the wayside of life. When just eight I was in bed for some weeks with a childish malaise (probably measles). A largish-print edition of Oliver Twist was prescribed for sickbed reading (with the help of mother). It was okay, but I haven’t been able to read a word of Dickens since. Then, at nine-and-a-half, I was pronounced too old for comics. The newsagent was instructed to discontinue Dandy and Film Fun and instead deliver each week the Children’s Newspaper. That was okay too (although it never used words like ‘eerie’), but I really preferred the adult daily paper. (I still did read comics, in secret, borrowed from the boy next door.) There was one outstanding school in the city nearby, Nottingham High School (founded in 1513). This is a day (not boarding) public (which means private) boy’s school, rather hard to get into. Thirty scholarships each year were provided by the local authorities (twelve by Nottingham City, twelve by Nottinghamshire County and six by Derbyshire County); there were five foundation scholarships offered each year by the school. And the other pupils paid fees. The entrance examination was held one Saturday morning in May 1949, black-gowned teachers imparting an air of solemnity and perhaps doom to the 800 aspirants. The top 57 were offered places, and came back for a second examination to see who might be scholarship material. I begged father to pay for a place, in case I didn’t get an award, to avoid yet another year at Bramcote School (doing the same syllabus all over again). He agreed. Then the top twelve were summoned for interview. This was held in the headmaster’s pokey office with three more teachers present, all in gowns. I was given a passage to read for comprehension. So I read it, carefully, and looked up. Four scholarly heads were bent over their notes. I studied it again, looked up again, ‘Oh, you’ve finished already,’ the headmaster seemed surprised. The next boy to be interviewed was Pat Dolby. We both got foundation scholarships, were firm friends for the next dozen years, and still keep in touch. 48 I am a linguist

So I was able to transfer from the ramshackle village academy to the big school on the hill, and became the youngest boy in form 2A. The government educational establishment had a strict age policy and they wouldn’t have let me sit the ‘eleven-plus’ examination, to get into the High School (or any other secondary school) until the following year. Luckily, Nottingham High School bore no such restriction. It’s a familiar story — from being a large rock in a tiny cove to becoming just a little pebble on a wide beach. I spent eight years at the High School. It wasn’t bad; but my life since leaving has been better. (In fact, it has got better and better.) There were a number of factors. The snobbism, which I abhorred. The emphasis on games, which I became skilled at avoiding. But, most of all, I believe I have the kind of mind which is not suited to the traditional system of schooling in Britain. I can grasp the general principles of something — the storyline, the gist, the crux of the matter. I can work out facts and results, by applying general principles. But I am unable to learn the details, as a catalogue. I’ve never been able to memorise poems (other than the first verse of ‘Jabberwocky’) but I can recount exactly what happens in a poem using my own words. During a brief period as postgraduate student at Oxford, I was given some part-time work, teaching mathematics to economics students. I tried to teach them to think in the way I did — remember one or two basic axioms, apply the appropriate principles, and work out the formulas you need. They couldn’t do it. I just had to assist them to learn formulas by rote. Another example concerns how I learnt to speak Jarawara. Most body-part terms have two forms, one feminine and one masculine; for example, ‘eye’ is noki and noko, ‘foot’ is tame and teme. For some words it’s the last vowel which carries the gender distinction, and for others it’s the first vowel. How to remember which is feminine and which masculine out of each pair? What I do is go back to the original forms in proto-Arawá, the ancestor language, from which Jarawara and the other four tongues in the small Arawá language family descend. I have reconstructed that in proto-Arawá each body- part noun had a single form, to which suffix-ni was added for feminine and -ne for masculine. Now I apply the rules of change which did apply, as historical processes. For noko-ni ‘eye-feminine’, the final o-ni- became -i, giving noki; for noko-ne ‘eye-masculine’, the final -ne was simply omitted, giving noko. With the word for ‘foot’ we originally had feminine tama‑ni and masculine tama- ne. Now tama-ne became teme-ne (both the a vowels in the root assimilating to become e, like the vowel in the suffix) and then the final -ne was dropped, getting there 49

producing the modern masculine form teme. For the original feminine tama‑ni, the final -a-ni became -e; but this must have applied after the change that as- similated a’s to a following e, so that the feminine form remained as tame. This takes a while to explain but in fact I work it out in a couple of seconds. The point is that I don’t remember that the feminine forms arenoki and tame. I just remember that they evolved from noko-ni and tama-ni (and the masculine forms from noko-ne and tama-ne) and apply the historical rules. That’s how my mind works. In the first year at the High School I did well in mathematics, so-so in English, and rather badly in languages. If I-now (or any other decent linguist) could have devised the Latin course taught to me-then, I’d have loved it. Ex- plaining the way in which the grammatical system is structured, how it came to be that way, and why. But we just had to learn by rote. Declension of the adjective ‘good’ in three genders, two numbers and six cases: ‘bonus, bona, bonum’ — then 27 following forms that I couldn’t remember then and don’t now — finishing off withbonīs ‘ six times’. I used to like the last bit, it means that bonīs is the form for ‘good’ in plural number for both dative and ablative in all of masculine, feminine and neuter. I tried learning all this junk, wrote it all out several times at home but then couldn’t reproduce it in class. So I had to write it all out ten more times as an imposition. But still it wouldn’t stick in my head. French was only slightly better. When I failed to pronounce something to his satisfaction, Mr Oswald Lush would make me stand on a chair to say it again. This failed to produce any better degree of nasalisation, although it did worsen my stammer. After the first two years (at age twelve in my case) we were divided into specialist streams — Classics, for those who had done well in Latin (and would now add Greek), Modern Languages, for those who had done well in French (and would now add German), or mathematics and science. Pat Dolby was offered all three but opted for maths and science. I was regarded as abnormally unpromising in both ancient and modern European languages, and offered no choice. Assuming that I had to attend some school, I suppose that Nottingham High was the best available. Most of the teachers were excellent, although the school did keep on a few no-hopers who would surely have been retired off from a state school. It was the aura of smug arrogance among the boys that I found offensive. Father was, at least in the 1940s, a socialist. (Later on, swaddling his share portfolio, I’m sure that he voted for Margaret Thatcher.) This obviously had 50 I am a linguist

some effect on me. But I’ve never been one to accept any position without thinking it through, going back to basics, and making up my own mind. Ever since the age of eight I’ve had the strong belief that everyone should be accorded an equal start in life, then it’s up to them what they make of it. I’m against inherited land and wealth. If it were practicable, there should in my opinion be one hundred per cent death duties, then we could probably do away with income tax. I’m against inherited titles, and especially against a hereditary monarchy. If a country must have a king or queen then choose the best person for the job, not someone whose great-grandparent umpteen times removed gained the position by valour or trickery or something. When I became a naturalised citizen of Australia, in 1978, there were two steps to the process. First, I had to foreswear all previous allegiances. And then swear allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of Australia. In between, I had about thirty blissful seconds of queen-less-ness. (Nowadays, newly created Australians don’t have a whisper about the Queen in their oath of allegiance, I’m glad to report. But, although less mentioned, she has not yet quite been toppled from her seldom-sat-upon Australian throne.) At Nottingham High School it was taken for granted that we were superior to those youths who attended state grammar schools. Why? In what way? When a new headmaster arrived in 1954 a number of us asked if we could play soccer as an alternative to rugby. The headmaster saw no objection. But the board of gov- ernors most certainly did. Permission refused — rugby, not soccer, is the game of gentlemen. At the time of the general election in late 1955, we had a shadow election in school. Pat Dolby was the Labour Party candidate (and I was his agent). He received four votes while the Conservative candidate got about a hundred and the Liberal around ninety (and even the Communist received ten votes). So many things were arbitrary and thus — to me — unacceptable. Real (boarding) public schools, have the boys divided into houses, according to where they live. I can understand supporting those people who sleep under the same roof as you, and eat at the same table. We were assigned to houses, but on an arbitrary basis — Pat Dolby was in White’s, I was in Mellers’. At the swimming sports — an undistinguished event that everyone had to attend — he was supposed to cheer for White’s and me for Mellers’. Why? I might have a friend in White’s who I wanted to support. If we’d been assigned to houses on the basis of where we lived (all those north of the city centre in one house, those to the east in another, and so on) it might have made a little more sense. Most people did seem to enter into the spirit of things. I was in a small minority in being unable to relate to it. getting there 51

There were a number of inspiring teachers. Ken Smetham, in mathematics, was one day teaching us how to use logarithmic tables. It seemed awfully cumbersome. ‘Oh, come on, sir,’ I protested, ‘I could multiply two five-digit numbers by hand quicker than you can do it using tables.’ ‘All right, Dixon’ (it was all last names at that school), ‘let’s have a race.’ I won, although Mr Smetham — in good nature — pointed out that he’d been showing the class how to do it and could have been a lot quicker if he’d tried. (When I became Head of Depart- ment, in Canberra, everyone else would be fiddling with their computers in examiners’ meetings, while I was adding the marks up more quickly and more accurately in my head.) And there was B. E. (‘Barch’, short for Barchester) Towers, who really made English Literature come alive. Just before the 1952 summer vacation, he wrote on the board the titles of a number of contemporary novels that we should think about reading (in addition to the regulation diet of Shakespeare). Top of the list were two books of quite different character — George Orwell’sAnimal Farm and Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. I learnt a good deal out of school. Bramcote had no public library of its own and we were equidistant — two miles, a short bike ride — from the libraries in nearby towns Beeston and Stapleford. Residents of Bramcote were permitted to join either library. Or both, in my case. When I’d exhausted their stock, it was a half-hour ride to the main County Library, opposite Trent Bridge Cricket Ground. And books they didn’t have on the shelf could be fetched from the store in the north of the county (things like 1930s novels by Orwell, or classic books by African-Americans such as Booker T. Washington’s Up from slavery.) Father had rather fixed ideas about things. In fact, both father and mother decided early on that I was no good whatsoever at art or at music. Towards the end of the first year, the High School offered out-of-hours violin lessons. Pat Dolby’s father (who operated a machine that pressed out aspirin tablets at the local fac- tory of Boots the Chemists) welcomed this, but my parents dismissed the idea as preposterous. Didn’t I know that I had no ear for music, just as I had no aptitude for drawing? It’s hard for a child — or an adult — to counter such solemn judgements. But I did try to, later on. During the 1980s I enrolled in an evening class in drawing, and did demonstrate that while not especially talented, I was also not totally lacking in talent (especially when essaying the style of Van Gogh). I believe that anyone can perform reasonably well at almost anything, if they approach it in the right frame of mind. And attempted to follow this view with my own children, encouraging them to try any pursuit that took their fancy, and only occasionally suggesting a course of action (in a mild sort of way). 52 I am a linguist

‘Boys are good at mathematics and girls at English.’ Father laid this down as a desirable — if not an inviolable — rule. But then in 1953 the Beeston and Stapl- eford Urban District Council ran a Coronation Essay Competition. Temporarily pocketing antipathy towards the monarchy (it’s good to have a flexible and pragmatic attitude), my purple plaudits won first prize, a book token for three guineas. What wealth! Despite his pivotal position in education, father didn’t read books (except on the seaside holiday each summer), and although there was a small collection in the house it hadn’t been added to since the 1930s. Now I could buy the current hardback best sellers — Thor Heyerdahl’s The Kon-Tiki Expedition and Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea (for about twelve shillings each). Gradually, as the remaining credit diminished, I was buying cheaper and cheaper books — Penguin paperbacks at one shilling and sixpence. Father didn’t quite know what to make of my success in a non-masculine field; but he basically considered any sort of achievement to be worthwhile. I’d also amuse myself in other ways. Cricket is certainly the most complex of all games, but I was able to replicate it by throwing three dice. This gave 63 = 216 combinations and each had a consequence, depending on whether it was a batsman or an all-rounder or a bowler at the wicket, and whether he was facing a fast or a slow bowler. There were also parameters for how worn the pitch was, and what strategy the captains were following (attacking or defensive). Some dice combinations required a further throw (or two) to cover rare eventualities. In August 1951, Len Hutton was given out ‘obstructing the field’, the first time this had ever happened. I built in the possibility, programming it to occur about once in a hundred years (it hasn’t happened since). A real Test match takes up to five days, six hours each day. It took me five hours to play one day of, say, England versus South Africa, lying on my bed, shaking the dice, and keeping a neat scoresheet. Once there was an important match to finish and I was playing it at school during a wet lunch-hour. Someone commented: ‘that’s a game my kid brother plays’; he was thinking of a cricket game in the shops, which involves throwing just one dice. ‘Oh no,’ a bystander who had been carefully watching corrected him, ‘not the way Dixon does it.’

By the age of twelve, I felt I had a pretty mature, balanced perspective on the world, and was able to think things out for myself (rather than following what other people said). I believed that I had a clearer view than I’d ever have in later years. And I still think that was correct. I knew that in a year or two I’d have sexual feelings. And I could see how, in the adult world view, these lie like a veil over perceptions and actions. There getting there 53

is an element of show-off, of pride, an undercurrent of flirtation — all these come into play when a person’s mental abilities become linked with natural and innate carnal desire. There’s nothing one can do about it. If a man doesn’t copulate or masturbate, then the body provides wet dreams. As an adult one tries to keep the two things apart, with varying success. (I’ve found that for me it is best to link them, having a sexual partner with similar intelligence, similar intellectual interests, and similar work habits.) But never again does one have the untrammelled clarity of perception of pre-pubescent days. Like every teenager, I experimented with things. Being brought up in that place and time, the Christian religion was an obvious phenomenon to enquire into. For several early teen years, I explored the idea that there might be a god, even putting on my suit and going to the local Anglican church each Sunday for a period of several months. But then, deep consideration suggested that a supreme deity is not only implausible but also unnecessary. I prefer to accept responsibility for my own ideas and actions, rather than transferring this to an unpredictable spirit. Mother used to go to church at Christmas and Easter, and father would keep her company. She explained that she didn’t feel she was strong enough to do without a god (as a sort of crutch), but wished that she was. Much later, I heard exactly the same sentiment from a Christian missionary in Brazil. My attitude has always been to respect other people’s beliefs, and to hope that they will — in turn — respect my lack of belief; this is too often a vain hope. Just so long as they don’t try to force their beliefs on others (especially on indigenous peoples — more on this in chapter 14). I think of religious people as essentially weak, unable to stand on their own two feet. Although there are some excellent folk amongst them, I’m afraid my experience has been that some of the nastiest (meanest, most spiteful) people I’ve met were passionate members of one or another religious sect. Basically, life — and school — is what you make it. At Nottingham High School there were the rugby-playing establishment boys who became prefects. As you can guess, I wasn’t one of this bunch. They had licence to cane younger boys and generally to uphold ‘the honour of the school’ (why not ‘the honour of the human race’?). ‘All boys will wear caps, and buttons on raincoats will be fastened, on the way to and from school.’ The rest of us just got on with things. The form I belonged to had the reputation of being a bit of a handful. Sensible masters were respected. But once a chink appeared, then our wedge might reveal a soft underbelly, and we’d have fun. Really, my attitude of dissent — to authority, and to the establishment generally — was there nurtured. Those that were left of us after the rah-rah boys had 54 I am a linguist

gone off to play for the first eleven of that age group were instructed to pick a cricket captain. I was chosen on the principle that I was totally undistinguished at this (or any other) game. Everyone who wanted to, I let bowl; and everyone had a bat. There was no strategy of winning, or anything like that; we just had a nice egalitarian afternoon in the sun. Compulsory sports, the mark of a high-class English education, were a bane. But there are ways. After a couple of winters of rugby — when I tried to run in the opposite direction to that in which the ball was heading — Pat Dolby and I put our names down for cross-country running. The route went through a housing estate, out around farmlands, and then back along the other side of the estate. Who wants to run five miles? We’d take a short cut, amble around the streets chatting about the meaning of life, and join the bunch — putting on a quick burst of speed — on the home stretch. (It took a bit of planning to ensure that we didn’t finish too soon!) One summer we chose swimming, which involved splashing around in a pool while the master stood on the side shout- ing directions. He didn’t deign to get in the water and I didn’t learn to swim (not until 1969, when I took a proper course of lessons while at Harvard). Then one year I opted for fives, which involved putting on a glove and hitting a ball around in a court for half-an-hour at school; this saved the long journey out to the playing fields, and all that dirt and sweat. In those days, every public school had a cadet force, which was supposed to prepare one for compulsory military service. As a pacifist, I at first demurred. But father thought it ‘a good thing’ and since everyone else in the form joined, I did too. Just one afternoon a week. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. After two terms one could choose a specialism. In the air section I learnt about meteorology and how a jet engine works, and progressed to be orderly room sergeant, effectively running it (under the watchful eye of an officer/master). Twice a year we’d go off for a day’s outing to a local aerodrome. In my first-ever flight, the trainee pilot looped the loop, so that air travel has ever since been an anticlimax. And we went off to camps at RAF aerodromes — a week in Scotland, a week in Wales, a week in Northern Ireland. See the British Isles for a charge of a shilling a day. It’s good to try to understand the world in which one lives, and I received a jot of military experience in a sort of fun way. Assembly, prayers, gym, games, cadets. Oh yes, and we also did a little academic work in between. I was told to work hard at French and Latin (needing both of these to get into Oxford or Cambridge at that time, even for a science degree), pass them in the General Certificate of Education ‘O’ level examination, then I could forget about languages. So I did, and got 48½ per cent in getting there 55

Latin, where the pass mark was 48 (a friend scored 47 per cent and had to take it again). Then it was into the Science Sixth Form where, for the first time, I was top (jointly with Pat Dolby, who’d been top all along the way). One had to specialise again — in mathematics or in chemistry or in biology (physics went with each of them). I enjoyed writing chemical formulae and quite liked the pops, bangs and fizzes of practical work. Father, a chemistry graduate, saw me as following in his footsteps, fulfilling his unachieved aspirations. Get a PhD in chemistry, then work your way up to the top, perhaps eventually becoming a director of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) was his transferred ambition. Chemistry was the appropriate course for me, father believed, because mathematics is harder and I wasn’t quite good enough for that. In those days we took GCE ‘A’ levels at the end of two years in the Sixth Form and then those with high ambitions stayed on an extra year to sit the Oxbridge exams. Cambridge was better for mathematics and physics but Ox- ford stood out for chemistry, the school believed. So in early December 1956, Pat Dolby (who was also down for chemistry) and I — together with a bunch of people doing English and law — spent a week in Oxford. I put down Balliol first, since I’d heard it was the best college. They offered me a place (not a scholarship) for two years hence, after National Service. But there was a second chance, in March. One of the colleges in that batch was Keble, the head of which was an old boy of the school. So I was strongly advised to put Keble as first choice. As you’ll have guessed, I did no such thing. Never have I got anything — or tried to get anything — other than on my own merit. The whole concept of patronage or favouritism is anathema. I only put down one college: Merton, which is the oldest. The people at Merton were awfully nice. At the interview they pointed out that I’d have greater chance by offering more choices. So I walked around the other colleges available that March. Christ Church is the most magnificent, and they offered me an exhibition (a minor scholarship) for that September. I got deferment of National Service until 1960, just as it was abolished (as I’d hoped and anticipated it would be). At long last, school was over. I came home and said to mother: ‘I’m never saying “sir” to anyone again, as long as I live.’ (And I never have, save in jest.) ‘Oh, but you’ll have to,’ she exclaimed, horrified. She and father saw life like a staircase, which you slowly ascended by dint of a certain amount of effort and a good deal of the correct behaviour. I see it more as a kind of grassy terrain with hills and valleys (plus occasional patches of thick forest, and some half- hidden holes). 56 I am a linguist

Oxford was like a dream, a different world. On the first day, I stood on the top landing of staircase 5, Meadow Building, admiring the ‘Mr R. M. W. Dixon’ painted above the door of my suite of rooms (large living room, bedroom and storeroom). At the same time, the neighbour on the other side was admiring his ‘Mr R. E. Spear’. ‘What does the “R” stand for?’ I asked. ‘Raymond, call me Ray. What’s yours?’ ‘Robert.’ ‘I suppose they call you Bob.’ ‘Well yes,’ I agreed, in anticipation, ‘yes they do.’ Goodbye ‘Malcolm’, of family and school; hello ‘Bob’ for the rest of my life. Christ Church was like two colleges in one. There was the rich upper crust, from Eton, Winchester, and the like; they were assigned to share suites of rooms in Peckwater Quadrangle. And there were the rest, like me, assigned to individual suites in Meadow Building. The two groups just didn’t meet or mix. One night a friend remarked ‘Lord Oxmantown spoke to me at dinner tonight.’ ‘Oh, really, what did he say?’ ‘He said “could you please pass the salt”.’ Ray Spear arrived with a strong Manchester accent but by the end of three years this had gone. ‘That’s one of the reasons I came to Oxford,’ he explained. I had a slight East Midlands accent and have kept it all through life, unaffected by Oxford or Australia. I guess I just want to be myself. One thing I didn’t want to do was continue with chemistry. People said that Oxford was an open-minded sort of place, where one could switch courses. Father had opined that I wasn’t quite good enough to do mathematics and I respond well to that sort of put-down. He did support me once I’d made the decision, on about the last day of school. I gave up the job of bus conductor for the long vacation (but I did do it the next two summers) and worked solidly through textbooks to catch up on the extra mathematics which I’d missed in the Sixth Form. The chemistry tutor at Christ Church was most upset (he’d recently arrived from Birmingham, and I put it down to his not having fully absorbed the proper Oxford ethos) but I persisted. Chemistry would have involved lectures in the morning, labs in the afternoon, obligatory exam in German (to be able to read the important literature), regular essays to write and — since I was supposed to be good at mathematics — they wanted me to do a bit of extra maths. Blow that! I preferred to omit the chemistry lectures, labs, essays and German, and just do a bit of maths. After the first two weeks (during which I went to all the lectures in mathematics and nothing in chemistry) they relented. I did get a first class result in the Honour Moderations in Mathematics exam at the end of the first year, to prove the point. Mathematics is quality work, more thinking than sweat. I’d go to lectures in the morning, spend about twenty hours a week going over the textbooks, ‘doing sums’ at an advanced level. According to the Oxford system, two of us getting there 57

would have an hour each week with our tutor, who’d check up on what we’d learnt and explain any difficult bits. By the second year the realisation had dawned that attending lectures wasn’t really necessary. They varied in quality and the best were by the man who’d written the textbook, so just study that. The summer term of my second year I only did attend one lecture. An American friend studying English had urged me to come and hear Professor Tolkien declaiming and explaining ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. He said I’d remember it for the rest of my life and he was right. Each Monday lunchtime we’d check to see what the new film was at the Scala, art house cinema at the top of Walton Street. A new Ingmar Bergman? ‘Mustn’t waste any time seeing that, there’s a screening at 2.30.’ In the summer we spent almost every afternoon in a punt on the river. But those undergraduate years at Oxford were not just about learning mathematics and lazing in the sun. We talked through the essence of things, of the world we found ourselves in. Why things are the way they are. Why people behave in the way they do. How one should behave. Then time to look for a job. For reasons that will become clear in the next chapter, I rather fancied moving across to America, perhaps working as a management consultant. Had a couple of interviews in London. Did all right on the tests but the trouble was, the man said, I looked a bit young to be telling senior executives how to run their business. ‘I could always grow a moustache,’ but the interviewer simply raised his eyebrows. (Just to prove the point — to myself, I suppose — I grew a big bushy beard the following year; I don’t suppose that senior executives would have liked that either.) Mostly to please the tutor at Christ Church, I had applied for a PhD scholarship at Oxford. And was offered one (although I’d only notched up second class in the final honours examination). So I took it. Started working on mathematical logic. A PhD scholarship grant didn’t amount to much and I wanted to have my own apartment (never have liked sharing) and also run an old car. So I did some part-time teaching, and also did a bit of stagging. Let me explain. When a private company wants to go public, it floats its shares (what would be called stocks in America) on the open market. Lots of them, all at once, at a certain price. It’s important that they all get taken up, so the price of offer should be a little less than the figure they’ll be expected to settle at when trading begins. A stag buys some shares at the offer price and sells them as soon as trading commences, at a small but useful profit. Some care and effort is needed. One has to assess whether a share offer is likely to be successful — comparing comment in the leading papers tells you 58 I am a linguist

that. And a good issue is always oversubscribed so multiple applications are necessary. For instance, when the clothing retailer Jaeger was floated, I went round to the wholesale newsagents in Oxford and bought 34 copies of the Financial Times (all they had left), which bore the form of application. It took an hour or so to fill in 34 forms, address 34 envelopes, affix 34 stamps, write out and enclose 34 cheques each for the cost of 50 shares. The issue was oversubscribed five times (much as I had expected), all applications going into a draw. I got 27 cheques returned and seven issues of shares. Sell them the next day, when trading opens, and the proceeds come into your account before the cheques you wrote for the shares have been cleared (no temporary overdraft, in fact no capital needed). By this means I was able to roughly double my scholarship grant. I did work at mathematical logic, but without satisfaction. One puts forward premisses and examines what follows from them. The logician has control over their assumptions and methods. It would be nice to have a problem in real life, without the possibility of adjusting the premisses to suit one’s fancy. And, as I thought about it, it seemed that the really significant problems were matters of language. There should be some subject dealing with the systematic analysis of language, I thought, perhaps called linguistics. It would explain the meaning of language, which was a pretty big part of the meaning of life. In fact there was a discipline called linguistics (although it didn’t hit Oxford till some time later). I saw advertised a job at the University of Edinburgh, a Research Fellowship in Statistical Linguistics. The advert stated that no knowledge of linguistics or statistics was presupposed. Knowing nothing of either, I felt ideally qualified, applied, and got the position. (It was nice to accept a Research Fellowship while I was still 21 — well, a couple of days before my 22nd birthday.) What they actually wanted was either a statistician or a mathematician (who could easily teach themself statistics), to apply quantitative methods within an analytic study of the nature of human language. I was to work with Professor Angus McIntosh, in his study of the provenance of texts in Middle English, and with Dr M. A. K. (Michael) Halliday, in his work on the grammar of Modern English. The statistics bit wasn’t hard. During the first term at Ed- inburgh I gave a series of lectures to the linguists on such topics as sampling techniques and the chi-squared test for assessing the significance of correlations, and then waited for statistical problems to be thrown my way. The linguistics part was going to be more challenging. Halliday wrote a letter in February (reproduced here), explaining that there were ‘the sort of getting there 59

linguistics we do here’ and ‘the sort of linguistics we don’t do here’. (Funny! There weren’t different ‘sorts’ of mathematics, or of chemistry. More on this in Chapter 9.) J. R. Firth was the central figure for Halliday’s ‘sort’ and I tried to read some of his publications. As anyone who has attempted to understand Firth — without knowing any other ‘sort’ of linguistics — will aver, this is not an easy task. Firth’s writings more-or-less presume an understanding of Firth’s writings. It’s a bit like one of those telephone enquiry nightmares where you first talk to person A, who puts you through to B, who refers you to C, who says that the person to talk to is A, and you’ve gone full circle and got nowhere. Finally, by dint of approaching several of Firth’s essays from every possible angle, I obtained a whiff of understanding, and gradually built on that. (Firth’s greatest admirers couldn’t say that his work was a model of clarity and precision. Come to think of it, they probably wouldn’t value such features. Firth and his followers didn’t seem too concerned with being user-friendly.) And so I packed the car and shifted north. In those pre-globalisation days the strawberry season was strictly local, and lasted for about three weeks. These fell in June for Oxford but in July for southern Scotland. By moving to Edinburgh on 3rd July, I unwittingly enjoyed a double crop. It did seem a propitious omen. Now I had a job with a salary of £850 per annum (the PhD scholarship had been £420 per annum). I’d rather enjoyed the year’s stagging, but enough was enough (unless one is interested in money for its own sake, which I’m not). From that day I haven’t looked at a copy of the Financial Times, nor have I bought or sold a share, preferring instead to devote the mind to more intellectually rewarding things. From that time, my life took shape. But it wasn’t a sudden infatuation. Gradually, over a six-month period, I became more and more engrossed. By the end of 1961, it was a full-blown love affair between linguistics and me which has persisted for almost fifty years with unabating passion and devotion on both sides. (By the way, I’m devoted to linguistics, not to any ‘sort’ of linguistics. This will be taken up in Chapter 9.) I read and talked and listened. I was delighted to be requested to attend all the lectures for a year-long diploma course that Halliday ran. McIntosh and Halliday said it was entirely up to me whether I took the exam at the end of the year. I opted not to, which slightly surprised them. (I knew I was going to master the subject, wasn’t that enough?) All diploma students attended a first year undergraduate course in phonetics (the ‘first ordinary course’) taught by a team led by Professor David 60 I am a linguist getting there 61 62 I am a linguist

Abercrombie. Besides two lectures each week there were practical classes teaching how to recognise, transcribe and produce every sound that occurs in the world’s languages — the clicks of Zulu, the dentals and retroflexes of Urdu, the implosive stops of Hausa, and so on. Abercrombie was simply the best teacher I’ve ever experienced. His lectures were so smooth that one learnt without effort; without — until later reflection — realising that one had learnt at all. I’d been reading linguistics books for months and thought I knew what a phoneme was. But really I didn’t. Then in the middle of an Abercrombie lecture I suddenly did, like a lightning flash. (Over the years I’ve had hundreds of students in introductory linguistics courses, and I’ve tried to explain what a phoneme is, ‘the smallest contrastive sound in a given language’. I don’t think that I’ve ever engendered that rapier thrust of insight that David Abercrombie gave me.) Edinburgh was intellectually exciting but nothing to rave about as a place. Some lovely old buildings all coated in grime and buffeted by a chilling wind. In England the pubs are congenial and welcoming; in Edinburgh they are rough and raw. There were two seasons, people said, festival (where you get a year’s supply of culture squashed into two weeks) and winter. I was there from July 1961 until September 1963 and never during that time was it warm enough to discard a sweater. It does happen, I know, but it didn’t during those three ‘summers’. I had extra-curricular reasons for visiting London from time to time, and that provided an ideal opportunity for reading linguistics (of all ‘sorts’). For the eight hours down on the train I’d study Saussure in detail, with the eight hours back — a couple of days later — devoted to Hjelmslev. Next visit it would be Chomsky down and Pike back. And of course I read and appreciated all the Firthian stuff. Boas, Sapir and Whorf were the scholars who really opened my eyes to the wonders of human language. Franz Boas began the Americanist tradition of undertaking extensive fieldwork. He described the most intriguing grammatical patterns. For example, in Kwakiutl (from British Columbia) one can’t just say ‘that house’; it is necessary to specify whether it is ‘near me’, ‘near thee’ or ‘near him or her’ and also whether or not the house is visible to the speaker. Boas mentioned languages where a word need not include any vowel, while Sapir discussed languages in which it is difficult (but not impossible) to distinguish between a class of nouns and a class of verbs. Whorf suggested that the Hopi Indians do not, strictly speaking, have words that refer to space or getting there 63

time; such terms in English ‘are cast into expressions of extension, operation and cyclic processes’. I’d become dissatisfied with mathematics because it was like a game; one could choose and change the premisses. Linguistics was real, dealing with actual data — texts recorded in some previously undescribed language. The task is to analyse these, work out the system, uncover the underlying forms, seek out the basic meanings, and discover how these may be combined and modified. Generalise, to see whether (and how) some structural rule applies across a whole language. And generalise further, on an inductive basis, to discover what is common to all human languages. This will help us characterise the nature of human intelligence, how people view the world around them, how they classify objects and actions, and the way in which they are able to communicate with one another. What about applying statistical methods to linguistic problems, the work I was hired to do? Well, virtually nothing was referred to me. Angus McIn- tosh was studying the variable spellings found in Middle English texts. The geographical origin of some was known; by interpolation, I was expected to assign a location to others, on the basis of the spellings they employed. Un- fortunately, Angus didn’t get his data in order to pass on to me during the 27 months I was there. Michael Halliday was looking for a natural classification of phrasal verbs in English (two-element combinations such as pass out, take after and put off). He coded 557 verbs for each of 20 criteria and I ran this data through the computer according to a system of classification I’d devised. There was a division between 10 and 547 verbs; the larger subset then divided into 1 and 546, then that subset into 5 and 541. Michael said don’t worry, not everything works out. (Twenty years later I did a full study of English phrasal verbs myself, without any statistics. It’s my firm opinion that statistical methods have a very minor role to play in linguistics at its present state of development.) So I just spent my time learning linguistics. I read very widely. And I wrote. After I’d been involved in the discipline for just one year, I wrote a short monograph Linguistic Science and Logic, suggesting that it was inappropriate to think of linguistics as a special kind of system of mathematical logic, in the way that Noam Chomsky did. In early August 1962 I attended the Ninth International Congress of Linguistics, held at Harvard and M. I. T. The week before I’d sent the book off to Peter de Ridder, who was the owner of Mouton Publishers in The Hague. We met at the first-night cocktail party. ‘Oh yes,’ he told me, ‘I read your manuscript on the plane coming over. We’ll publish it. Well, I’ll have to check 64 I am a linguist

with Professor Cornelis van Schooneveld, the academic editor of the series, but I’m sure he’ll agree.’ (The book came out in April 1963.) That was my first and last International Congress. The futility of it all! Lots of little twenty-minute papers, all on top of each other, a bit here and a bob there. (I’ll say more about academic conferences in chapter 11.) Noam Chomsky had the right idea. He gave a plenary address on the final morning, an event which could be said to mark his ascension to be high priest of the new ‘transformational’ sort of linguistics. And he attended just one talk, that by Gustav Herdan, a mathematician who had crackpot ideas about language. Chomsky said he went just to see what Herdan looked like. (Halliday and Chomsky agreed about this; Herdan had been listed under ‘C. The sort of linguistics nobody does’ in Halliday’s letter.) Chomsky bought a ticket for the Congress banquet but didn’t go. In retrospect, I silently applauded his wisdom. We had interminable reminiscences from all the old fogies who’d been at the first International Congress back in 1928. To relieve the boredom, the folk at my table switched name tags. I became Gene Schramm, a Semiticist from the University of California at Berkeley. He referred to me as ‘Schramm’ and I called him ‘Dixon’. I had just got married the following year when we called in at Berkeley en route to fieldwork in Australia. Gene referred to Alison as ‘Our wife’. During the second year in Edinburgh, I took an advanced course in practical phonetics, taught half a course on the study of meaning, read deeply in the history of linguistics, and studied grammatical descriptions of languages with the most exotic and exciting features. It was inevitable that one day I should go to Halliday and say: ‘Michael, I want a language of my own, something to do intensive fieldwork on. Record texts, and work out the grammatical system.’ ‘What sort of language do you think you want?’ Having immersed myself in the intricate polysynthetic structures of languages from the north-west of North America, I suggested that I might work on an American Indian tongue. ‘No,’ said Halliday, ‘there are plenty of good people in America working on those. Why not go to Australia? There are languages there with really compli- cated systems of nominal concord, which have scarcely been studied.’ I followed Halliday’s bibliographic directions to some papers on languages of the Kimberley Division, Western Australia, by Arthur Capell, linguist at the University of Sydney (he was one of only two linguists in Australia at the time). The Worora language has four genders, which are marked by a suffix to interrogatives, by a prefix to demonstratives, by both prefix and suffix to adjectives, and by prefixes onto the verb (for the gender of subject and of object). The getting there 65

genders are based partly on meaning (‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, ‘places’, the rest) and partly on form (all the words in the ‘feminine’ class, which also includes ‘sun’ and ‘spear-thrower’, end in -nja or -dja; most of the words in the ‘places’ class end in -b, -ba, -m or -ma). Wow! ‘Yes,’ I told Michael Halliday a couple of weeks later, ‘Australia for me.’ As it happens, the Australian government had just established a body called the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS), for academic investigation of indigenous cultures. In view of the dearth of local linguists, they needed to import a few. One of Halliday’s recent students was doing an anthropology PhD in Canberra, and had put Halliday in touch with Capell, who was on the AIAS committee. There was a plan for Michael to go out for three months fieldwork. I would accompany him, learn the trade by watching how the master did things, and stay on for nine months on my own. Then Halliday got a new job from April 1963, at the University of London, and couldn’t go. But that didn’t need to affect my plans. AIAS offered a position as Research Officer for twelve months from September 1963. After considerable correspondence, Capell suggested working on languages from the Cairns rain forest area, in north-east Queensland. This was a mouth-watering prospect, especially in the middle of a gaunt Edinburgh winter. Back in 1957, I went to University for three years, expecting that that would be it. I had no ambition to be a career academic, and if anyone had suggested that I might still not have left university fifty years later it would have evinced horror. But things just sort of happened. I accepted a PhD scholarship at Oxford because it was there. I abandoned this and took the job at Edinburgh in search of insight into the nature of language. Moving on to do fieldwork in Australia was a natural extension; if you want to really learn the nature of something, the only proper course is to study it in the raw. Before leaving for the antipodes I had an interview in London for a job as management consultant, twelve months hence; it was left on hold. During the second year in Scotland I worked on the draft of a second book; this was revised while I was in Australia and published by Longmans in 1965 — What is language? A new approach to linguistic description. Following a thumb- nail sketch of the history of linguistic work, this put forward a view of language as a form of human behaviour (not as some ersatz system of mathematical logic). Each part of language has both an internal meaning — its correlations with other language patterns — and an external meaning — its correlation with non-linguistic patterns, in the context in which it is uttered. I examined the systems of contrasts and replacements which give structure and meaning to a 66 I am a linguist

particular text, and then looked at how these can be generalised as a statement of the types of correlations that define the language. I didn’t realise it at the time, but my life’s work was on track. In Edinburgh I’d been reading (and writing) about linguistics. Now to get out to Australia and really do it. The two-years-and-a-bit in Edinburgh had been a prolegomenon. The next step was to unravel the structure of an Aboriginal language spoken in the rain forest of north-east Queensland, the real thing. This is described in chapter 5. But I had other interests, which should also be mentioned. 4 Discography, and a bit of fiction

During my late teens and early twenties, I’d been deeply engrossed in discography. That’s like bibliography but documenting gramophone records rather than books. In my case it was blues and gospel recordings made by African- American artists for an African-American audience up until the beginning of the Second World War. How, you may ask, did a boy from Nottingham get involved in this? Well, it was through an initial interest in jazz, which moved on to blues and gospel music. And through a systematic curiosity, which leads to a desire to have precise and thorough documentation of anything I am engaged in. The jazz bit came about by an act of dissent, which transmogrified into a passion. European classical music was all around, so I experimented with it a bit, in the same spirit in which I experimented with Christianity. Give it a go, see if there was anything there which appealed to me. Once a week, at lunchtime, a group gathered in the school library to listen to classical records, and I joined them for a few weeks. We were in the sixth form, basically doing science and mathematics but still subjected to a couple of periods of ‘English’ from an old fool of a teacher called Tubby Hardwick. ‘I’ve seen you,’ he pointed his finger at me, ‘I’ve seen you listening to classical music in the library. You can give us a talk, play some records and tell us the story behind them.’ I knew nothing about classical music, had been trying to find out whether it held any interest for me, decided it didn’t. I had no wish to talk about classical music, and couldn’t. I also considered that Tubby Hardwick was intruding. Surely I should be able to do whatever I wanted at lunchtime without it being any business of his. A friend suggested taking the mickey by talking about jazz, which I also knew nothing about. The friend supplied the jazz records, brought in his portable gramophone, and told me what to say. We had a bit of a laugh. At that time, jazz was considered disreputable, especially for boys at a public school (it was even worse than soccer) and I’d never heard any before. But — the realisation came on listening to the records in Tubby Hardwick’s 68 I am a linguist

class — this was it! In 1955, the traditional jazz boom was just gathering steam. The bands of Ken Colyer, Chris Barber and many others came and played in Nottingham of a Saturday night, and a group of us would be there each week. Records of the jazz masters from the ‘twenties and ‘thirties were being reissued. I bought a 78 r.p.m. record of Potato Head Blues by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven, and then a new-fangled ten-inch LP by the greatest jazz band of all time, Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers. Thus, at the age of sixteen, my allegiance was transferred from the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground to Bill Kinnell’s Jazz Record Shop on the Wilford Road (which is only a few hundred yards from Trent Bridge). Father didn’t approve at all. ‘One of these days you’ll come to regret having wasted all this money on records,’ he muttered. Oxford colleges gave applicants a general interview, ranging beyond the purview of their subject of study. When asked what my main interests were — at Merton College, in March 1957 — I just wasn’t game to say ‘jazz and blues’, a topic on which I could have expounded at length. In retrospect, I should have told them straight. (Pathetically, I said ‘Voltaire’, having read nothing but Can- dide. It didn’t make a good impression. Well, they didn’t take me.) I always have been interested in — and had a sympathy for — minority groups. I suppose it accords with an inherent anti-establishment stance. Long before having heard a bar of jazz, I read the classic accounts by American Negroes (as they were then called) about the National Association for the Ad- vancement of Colored People, and the like. So it all fitted together. In the ‘fifties, some of the best early jazz and blues performances were being reissued on a little English label called Jazz Collector. There werePratt City Blues and Jab Blues by Jabbo Williams (from 1930) on Jazz Collector L51, and See See Rider Blues coupled with Jealous Hearted Blues by Ma Rainey (from 1924) on L20. I made a list of everything on the Jazz Collector L-series, from L1 to L137. It was the first glimmer of discographical work. Only a small proportion of jazz and blues records from the ‘twenties and ‘thirties had been reissued at that stage, and I wanted to hear the rest. There was a wonderful magazine (which, in fact, still exists) called Vintage Jazz Mart. This came out on the fifth day of each month, and had lists of old records for sale. Each was carefully graded for condition: N, new; E, excellent; V, very good; G, good (which meant you could just hear it); and P, poor (which meant it was so worn that the surface noise was considerably louder than the music itself). Some adverts quoted a fixed price, but most were auctions. You put in bids for the items you wanted, by a closing date, and the highest bidder won. discography, and a bit of fiction 69

Old shellac records were highly breakable so they had to be carefully packed between multiple sheets of stout cardboard. In those days the postage system was good and reliable and the cost modest. I might bid for seven records in an auction and win three of them — a 1935 Peetie Wheatstraw for eight shillings and tuppence (that’s two pence), a 1937 Sleepy John Estes for fifteen shillings and tuppence, and a rather worn (V+ condition) 1928 Ma Rainey for six shillings and eight pence. Plus two shillings and thruppence (three pence) for post and packing. There was a psychological slant to the bidding. You’d know that a record was worth about fifteen shillings, and one person might bid just that. Someone else would be clever and add a penny on. I tried to be extra clever and added on two pence. (But, of course, I might be beaten by someone who was super clever and added on three pence. As with all auctions, it’s hard to know when to stop.) Being at school and then a student at Oxford, my money for buying records was limited. So in 1958 I invested in a Telefunken tape recorder. Buy the records I wanted (often from collectors in the USA), tape the music, and sell the records to other collectors in Europe. I’d recoup what I’d paid and, most of the time, make a small profit. But, most important, I had all this wonderful and obscure music on tape. I never could be called faint-hearted. If something appeals to me, then it’s to be embraced with ardour. I’m also (or used to be when young) something of a purist. Within a few months of becoming a jazzophile I got hold of Shin- ing Trumpets, a History of Jazz, by the American Rudi Blesh, which holds up the ‘classic jazz’ (his term) of New Orleans to be the pinnacle of achievement; everything after this he considered to be an anticlimax. Although the book was published in 1949, Blesh doesn’t provide a mention of Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie, who had by then innovated bebop, one of the major paradigms of modern jazz. Well, New Orleans jazz is wonderful; I still think so. But so are other forms of the music. Only very gradually did I shed the blinkers and come to appreciate the full gamut of jazz music (just so long as it has both a melody and a harmony). Jazz, which is basically an instrumental form, merges into blues, which involves vocal performance. The great female blues singers, such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, typically had a small jazz group to accompany them. They would perform in theatres, alongside jazz bands. Then there were the male blues singers who accompanied themselves on piano and typically played in bars and brothels; occasionally with a couple of jazz instrumentalists. Finally, 70 I am a linguist

there were the itinerant blues singers who accompanied themselves on guitar, playing for nickels and dimes on street corners. All of these kinds of music were recorded in the 1920s and 1930s by roving recording units of the major companies, who would call in once or twice a year at Dallas and Memphis and Atlanta, putting on wax local black blues and gospel artists, black and white jazz bands, and white hillbilly singers. There were three sorts of gospel recordings. A tub-thumping preacher would declaim a frightening sermon about sin and hellfire, using the last section of the three-minute record to break into song, accompanied by some of his congregation. A male quartet would specialise in contrapuntal harmony. And a gospel evangelist would accompany himself on guitar, just like an itinerant blues singer except that they used sacred material. Now some African-Americans were deeply religious and abhorred blues as ‘music of the devil’. But they bought plenty of gospel records by preach- ers, quartets and guitar evangelists. In fact, some of the blues performers were identical with some of the gospel artists, but they employed different names to hide this fact. One quartet called themselves the Birmingham Jubi- lee Singers on religious tunes (such as Every Time I Feel The Spirit and Walk in Jerusalem Just Like John) but adopted the name Birmingham Quartet or Mobile Four for secular items (like How Come You Do Me Like You Do and Toot Toot Dixie Bound). One only has to listen to the records to realise that it’s the same group; but the religious people presumably didn’t listen to non-religious material. Discographical study helps to confirm aural impressions. For example,Every Time I Feel The Spirit and How Come You Do Me Like You Do were recorded on the same day (Friday 5 November 1926) and in the same place (Atlanta, Georgia) by the Columbia Phonograph Company. Blind Lemon Jefferson was one of the great itinerant singers, recording almost a hundred blues items for the Paramount label between early 1926 and late 1929. Paramount also put out two religious records by Deacon L. J. Bates. These sound remarkably like Blind Lemon Jefferson, in both voice and guitar, and the ‘L. J.’ initials are surely a clue. Let’s study the circumstances. Black Snake Dream Blues and Hot Dogs, both issued as by Blind Lemon Jefferson, were allocated matrix numbers 4577 and 4578, and He Arose From The Dead, issued as by Deacon L. J. Bates, was allocated matrix 4579. This provides pretty clear confirmation that Jefferson and Bates are the same person. (We can’t be certain of the date of this recording, since Paramount files have not survived, but it must have been about June 1927.) discography, and a bit of fiction 71

A discography of an artist — say, of Blind Lemon Jefferson — consists in listing all their recordings, with full details for each. This includes: —(a) the artist name under which each record was issued, and its exact spelling; —(b) whether the singer also plays an instrument on the recording, and the names and instruments of any accompanying personnel; —(c) date and place of recording; —(d) matrix numbers, these being the consecutive numbers assigned by recording companies for their own book-keeping purposes; —(e) take numbers — if several recordings were made of a title, these might be numbered take -1, take -2 etc. (or take -a, take -b, etc.); —(f) titles of tunes (different spellings might be used on different issues, and these should be noted); —(g) the number of the record on which each title was issued, and any reissues (or, if a recording remained unissued, this would be stated). For example, take -2 of matrix 4577, titled Black Snake Dream Blues, credited to Blind Lemon Jefferson, was issued on Paramount 12510, backed with take -2 of matrix 4515, titled Right Of Way Blues (this was probably recorded about a month earlier). There can be various kinds of complication. For example, the two tunes on Paramount 12585 by Deacon L. J. Bates (4579-1, He Arose From The Dead, and 20073-2, Where Shall I Be?) were reissued on Herwin 93014 with the same tune titles but the artist now called Elder J. C. Brown. And, to add confusion to complexity, there is another version of Paramount 12585 by Deacon L. J. Bates, which couples 4579-1, He Arose From The Dead with 20074-2, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean. In the 1950s, record collectors in the States would mosey around southern towns, turning up large stocks of old blues, gospel and jazz records in radio stations or in junk stops or just by knocking on doors. Through advertisements in Vintage Jazz Mart and similar journals, some of these records made their way across to Europe. I recall my mind being blown when, about 1960, I first heard Gennett record 6167 withThe Jail House Blues and Riverside Blues by Sam Collins, from southern Mississippi (recorded in Richmond, Indiana on Monday 25 April 1927). In fact, I could have sampled Collins under several other sou- briquets. Gennett recordings were also issued on cheaper labels, sold in chain stores. Sam Collins was labelled as Big Boy Woods on the Bell label, as Jim Foster on Champion, Silvertone and Superior, and as Jelly Roll Hunter on Su- pertone. All this duplication has to be sorted out and assessed by discographers. 72 I am a linguist

How does one do discography? Well, by utilising every possible source. The records themselves bear artist and tune titles, issue number and sometimes also the matrix and take numbers either printed on the label or stamped in the wax. Just occasionally, labels identify accompanists. Record company catalogues and newspaper advertisements are another source. Listening to the records can help with identification, especially if a singer names an accompanying musician (‘Play that thing, Mr Georgia Tom!’). One can opine that the style of the pianist is like that of, say Roosevelt Sykes, on records issued under his own name. But great caution is required here since opinions do differ; generally, aural identification requires confirmation from some other source. One can also interview the musicians who made the recordings, perhaps playing their own records to them. Again, one should be careful not to suggest some identification which will readily be agreed to, for the sake of being nice. Jazz discography began in the 1930s, a pioneer work being New Hot Discog- raphy by Frenchman Charles Delaunay. Then two Englishmen, Albert J. McCa- rthy and Dave Carey, began publishing a multi-part Jazz Directory. Volume 6, covering Ki-Lo, came out in 1957 but no further volumes followed. Jazz Direc- tory attempted to list all blues and gospel artists, in addition to jazz performers, but McCarthy and Carey hadn’t been able to assemble full details. It struck me that a fundamental problem in discography is how to know that you have listed all the recordings by a particular artist. How to be fully comprehensive? After a good deal of reflection, I perceived a way of achieving this goal. In the ‘twenties and ‘thirties there was a limited number of companies is- suing blues and gospel recordings by African-American artists. Unlike jazz by African-American performers, which was sometimes marketed for white audiences, vocal performances in the blues or gospel vein were distributed almost exclusively to an African-American market. Most companies put the records out in special series called ‘race series’ (for ‘the Negro race’, only they didn’t want to use the word ‘Negro’). The Paramount label, owned by the Wisconsin Chair Company, commenced its race series at 12000 in July 1922 and this continued up to number 13156, issued in mid-1932. The Columbia race series began at 14000-D in December 1923 and ran on until 14680-D in April 1933. The OKeh series ran from 8000 in about 1921 to 8966 in April 1935. Some of the smaller labels had shorter series. What I planned to do was to assemble listings of all the records in each of the race series; these covered jazz, some comedy and novelty numbers, and also blues and gospel. Many artists recorded for more than one company. By discography, and a bit of fiction 73

collating the information on individual labels, it should be possible to come up with a pretty comprehensive discography for each blues and gospel artist. It wasn’t quite that simple, though. Not every company had a separate race label, or they didn’t have one all the time. From 1923 to 1929, Victor had one catalog series for all types of recording, so I had to try to list this in outline, and within it provide full details of the race issues, which came in small blocks. Thus, in April 1927, catalogue numbers 20574-20585 were a block of race records and in May 1927 the block was 20648-20655. Of these twenty records, seven were blues, seven were gospel, four were straight jazz with the remaining two being a jazz band with a blues-type singer. A number of race labels had already been documented (although quite a few details were missing). Michael Wyler listed all known records in the Paramount 12000/13000 series in the magazine Jazz Monthly during the mid ‘fifties. For the Columbia and OKeh labels, Helene Chmura from that company had typed out information on matrix and issue series and circulated these to discographers in the early and mid ‘fifties. But some labels hadn’t yet been tackled. I set out to document the Decca race series which began with issue 7000 in August 1934 and continued until 7910 in 1944. This featured some of my favourite artists: Sleepy John Estes from Brownsville, Tennessee (who accompanied himself on guitar); Roosevelt Sykes, nicknamed ‘The Honey Dripper’ (who played the piano); and the ubiquitous Peetie Wheatstraw, dubbed ‘The Devil’s Son-in-law’, also from St Louis (who could accompany himself on guitar or on piano). There was a sort of fraternity of blues collectors, and one established good friendships. Paul Oliver was then art teacher at a secondary school in north Lon- don and has since became a major expert on vernacular architecture. More importantly for me, he was — and is — the major researcher on blues. The first of Paul’s many books was published in 1960. Blues fell this morning: the meaning of the blues investigates the social milieu in which blues music evolved, and its message. As one dawdles through life, just occasionally one thinks of what one might have done — what one almost did — and heaves a deep sigh of relief. I was auc- tioning some records in Vintage Jazz Mart. One disc attracted half-a-dozen bids of between seven shillings and nine shillings, plus a bid of four shillings from a fellow called John Godrich. For another disc, the bids were between twelve and fifteen shillings except for one of six shillings from John Godrich. Just about everyone who wrote in won two or three items except for Godrich, who got none. I thought of writing, saying that he shouldn’t waste his time making bids so low that he had no chance of success. But I didn’t. 74 I am a linguist

Just after that, I advertised that I was working on the Decca 7000 series and welcomed data. John Godrich advertised the same thing at the same time. We got in touch, pooled our data, and worked as a discographical team for the next thirty-odd years (until John died, in 1991). That partnership might never have come to be had I written the letter I was tempted to. John was born about 1927, twelve years before me. His mother was a doctor in Swansea but John ran away to sea, joined the Merchant Navy at the age of fourteen or fifteen. He saw the world; then came home, got married and settled down, working at unloading vessels on the docks at Swansea. He hurt his back and then got a job as book-keeper at the docks. John had limited money, hence the low bids (but he did possess a good record collection). He was highly intelligent and had a methodical nature, the same sort of documenting yen as me. Among the things John had compiled was an index to discographies of blues artists which had appeared in jazz magazines. John lent it to me, in longhand (he didn’t have a typewriter at the time). I typed it up, put his name at the top, and suggested he send it to Vintage Jazz Mart, which included a few pages of ‘reading matter’ each month. Without my knowing, John added ‘and Bob Dixon’ at the top, and it appeared as the first of a series called ‘Margin Notes’. We published twenty ‘Margins Notes’ in all — over the next couple of years — featuring further indexes, bits of knotty discography, and the like. These were the days before photocopying. I was studying mathematics, which didn’t take up a huge amount of time. Between us, John and I typed up every bit of discographical data we could lay our hands on. He did half (John had now invested in a typewriter) and I did half, with copies for the other. I spent many happy hours between 1959 and 1961 typing out the lists which Helene Chmura had circulated (they were lent to us by Derek Coller and Bert Whyatt, slightly more senior discographers). And of course we typed up the Decca 7000 series, and circulated it to blues friends in the hope that they could fill in gaps from records in their own collections. Jack Parsons (from Cirencester in Gloucestershire) went through his own blues and gospel collection and then spent a weekend in London, staying with Paul Oliver. While Paul and his wife Val went out for the evening, Jack stayed at home, happily going through Paul’s considerable collection of Decca records, checking artist and tune titles, adding matrix and take numbers, and any information on the label concerning accompaniment. John and I had no real thought of doing anything with all this material; we just discographed because we enjoyed it. The information gained added to discography, and a bit of fiction 75

our appreciation of the music, and its background. We provided copies of our compilations to anyone who was interested. Exciting things, of a quite different nature, began to happen in the blues world. In 1959, two Frenchmen — Jacques Demetre and Marcel Chauvard — went to the States and found that many of the great blues singers from pre-war years were still alive and playing good music. It just wasn’t the sort of music that the African-American record-buying public of that time wanted to hear. But white blues collectors were very interested in it. On the strength of his book, Blues fell this morning: the meaning of the blues, Paul Oliver was awarded a Foreign Specialist Grant by the US Department of State to spend three months looking for old (and new) blues singers, mostly in the southern states. It seemed a good thing for him to have some finance to pay for recordings by whatever singers he found. With Paul’s approval, I launched a ‘Blues Recording Fund’ with an article in Jazz Monthly in March 1960, solic- iting loans in multiples of £3, which would be paid back when the recordings were issued (we paid back £3½ for every £3 invested, a few years later). The illustrious French jazz critic Hugues Panassié wrote that he could not support the project since Paul was planning to go with Jacques Demetre, who Panassié described as ‘a congenial idiot’ (I think he may have meant ‘congenital’). Then Jacques pulled out so I wrote and told Panassié. ‘Now, perhaps, I can help,’ he replied. But he didn’t. Besides half-a-dozen great LPs (put out on small specialist labels in the UK) Paul wrote a fine book Conversation with the blues (1965, reissued with a CD by Cambridge University Press in 1997). Some of the ‘re-discovered’ artists came on concert tours to Europe, and we were able to listen to their music again and to glean from them information concerning their old recordings. In mid-1961, the first really comprehensive discography came out: Jazz Records, 1897-1931 by Englishman Brian A. L. Rust, published by himself. This included a few blues sessions — and the odd gospel item — where there were jazz accompanists. I’d moved up to Edinburgh that July, but in September was down in London to take a course in the Fortran language for computer programming. Paul Oliver said: ‘Look, why don’t you and John do a comprehensive blues and gospel discography, just like Brian’s for jazz?’ Paul and I went around to see Brian who agreed to publish it. He also promised to help fill in the gaps. There are full files of Victor and Bluebird recordings but these have never been circulated or made easy of access. A copy existed at the local office of the company in Hayes, just outside London, and Brian knew the people there. He called in at Hayes to get the information I’d requested on matrix and take 76 I am a linguist

numbers, etc. Brian has an eidetic memory; he could look at a page in the Hayes office, memorise it, then go home and write it down. John and I decided to do the discography by labels, in the first place. We produced separate alphabetical lists for each of the major labels, and one for a group of smaller labels. These were circulated to Paul Oliver, Jack Parsons, Derek Coller, Bert Whyatt and three other collectors, for correction and addition. I said I’d do the first draft of each list. Learning linguistics took up the weekday daylight hours, but I’d spend every evening and all day Saturday and Sunday typing up one or more pages for each artist, with three carbon copies (if you made a typing error it had to be corrected on all four copies, which provides an incentive to maintain accuracy). By December 1961 I’d finished the Victor/Bluebird file and that for the labels of the American Record Corporation and was part-way through Decca. Then my love affair with linguistics exploded. I wanted to spend every wak- ing hour learning about this marvellous but inchoate discipline. John agreed to take over. He finished Decca and then did Columbia, OKeh, early Vocalion and Brunswick, Paramount, Gennett, and the ‘odd labels’. I checked them all. After our panel had made their suggestions, John collated the individual lists into one overall alphabetical compilation, and I checked that. Big Bill Broonzy, for example, recorded between 1931 and 1942 for Paramount, Gennett, Bluebird and the American Record Corporation labels. He had one or more pages in each of these files, and these were now merged. Brian Rust published our Blues and Gospel Records, 1902-1942 in the spring of 1964, while I was on linguistic fieldwork in North Queensland. Brian had typed it on paper matrices which wore out after about 1,100 copies had been run off. John conducted a regular amendments column in a blues magazine, and we were able to make quite a few improvements for a second edition, which was put out in 1969 by a small English outfit called Storyville Publications. The book had a great reception. The English magazine Blues Unlimited finished its review with ‘Messrs Godrich, Dixon and the publishers have my sincere and unreserved congratulations. And thanks. Most humble. It is less than they deserve.’ On the other side of the Atlantic, the Saturday Review considered the book to be ‘indispensable ... the best and most precise undertaking of its kind in the field’. Indeed, it soon came to be called, in blues collector circles, ‘the bible’. John had done about 70% of the work for the first two editions. Then, in 1970, he decided that because of ill-health he couldn’t look after the undertaking any more. Who would take over the major role, he wondered. ‘Well, I will.’ John said he thought that since I’d just moved to Australia for good, embarking on discography, and a bit of fiction 77

a new life (as it were), I wouldn’t want to. Of course I did. We ran a regular amendments column in the Storyville magazine, under the heading ‘I Believe I’ll Make A Change’ (this was the title of a blues which had been recorded by six different performers between February 1932 and May 1939). Then, in October 1982, the third edition came out, again from Storyville Pub- lications, running to 898 pages. We’d added an extra year, to 1943. In fact there was a musician’s union ban on its members recording from mid-1942 until 1944, and this was one reason why we’d stopped at 1942 in the first place. Extending the scope to 1943 just involved adding a few non-union artists (mainly gospel groups) who recorded for small labels. Each edition was an improvement on the one that had gone before and received even more ecstatic reviews. There were letters, like that from Mrs. Mary K. Aldin who presented ‘Preaching the blues’ each week over radio station KPFK in Hollywood, California. She wrote: ‘Dear Robert M. W. Dixon. First of all you are a gentleman and a scholar and have certainly written the Great American Novel!! Wotta chore. It must have taken forever but is Well Worth It. You have the undying gratitude of pre-war blues collectors everywhere.’ From England came more restrained but equally appreciated messages, such as ‘let me say how much I enjoy it and commend your efforts’. The academic journal Ethnomusicology re-stated that ‘for accuracy and completeness, it upholds high scholarly standards. Dixon and Godrich’s discography is indispensable.’ Keeping the discography up to date wasn’t a huge task, and I had it streamlined. Letters would come in at a steady rate but I’d put them in a box and about every six or nine months spend a few evenings acknowledging, checking, and adding to the files. Caution has to be the by-word when doing this. There is a certain brand of collector who will aver that it must be Blind John Davis playing piano on a particular record since his style is unmistakeable and he was in the studio later that day making records under his own name. Then someone else writes in about precisely the same record saying that he and a group of five friends have listened most carefully and decided unanimously that the pianist was Roosevelt Sykes, whose style was unmistakeable. And even when I didn’t receive conflicting opinions about a single recording, identification on aural evidence alone should be treated with a fair degree of scepticism; if it is included in the discography there must always be a qualification ‘possibly’. Even a spoken comment on a record cannot always be taken at face value. A singer may shout out: ‘Play that piano, Mr Fats Waller’. This doesn’t necessarily mean it was Fats Waller performing; it could be that the singer meant: ‘You play just like Fats Waller’. 78 I am a linguist

And then there are the myopic collectors who ask a visiting American blues singer if it was Blind John Davis playing piano on a certain record the singer made in 1935. The singer would listen and say: ‘No, it don’t sound like him. I don’t rightly recall who we used on that date.’ On the artist’s next visit to Eu- rope the collector would ask the same question and get the same answer. Third time lucky. The blues singer might want to call a halt to this repeated quizzing and he’d agree: ‘Yeah, I guess it could be Blind John Davis.’ I’d receive an excited postcard, but the ‘information’ provided was worth nothing. Jazz authority Howard Rye had typed the third edition for Storyville Pub- lications and provided terrific input, becoming — de facto — a third author. So John and I asked him to become an official member of the team for the planned fourth edition. For the first time, we were able to interest a major international publisher in the project — Oxford University Press (this gave particular joy to John). It’s interesting to compare the scope of Brian Rust’s discography with that of ours. Soon after his 1897-1931 compilation, Brian completed a 1932-1942 listing and then merged the two into a definitive jazz discography:Jazz Records, 1897- 1942. (The first known jazz record was five years earlier than the first items we included, gospel songs by the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet from 1902.) Brian’s discography deals with jazz as an art form, whether performed by black or by white musicians, and whether marketed for a white audience or an African- American audience or (as was often the case) for a mixed audience. In contrast, Blues and Gospel Records, 1902-1943 deals exclusively with black artists. There were a few items in the race series by white performers, singing African-Amer- ican-type material. They generally sounded as if theymight be white. Once we were able to confirm this, they were eliminated from the discography, with just a note to say that they were white artists some of whose material was issued in a race series. (The same thing happened the other way round. A few items by black artists were released in the white ‘country music series’; we do list these.) We applied another restriction, confining the discography to music not only recorded by African-American artists but also predominantly aimed at an African-American audience. Thus we did not list recordings made by black groups such as the Pace Jubilee Singers, the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet and the Tuskegee Institute Singers, which toured the States (and, indeed, the world), performing for white audiences. They sang in a basically white style, but with African-American overtones. Blues and gospel collectors, who would buy the discography, by-and-large didn’t care for recordings made by groups like the Pace, Fisk and Tuskegee singers. discography, and a bit of fiction 79

Doug Seroff — a white record collector and dealer from Nashville, Tennes- see — put pressure on us to expand the scope of the discography in its fourth edition, to include all distinctively African-American recordings, irrespective of whether they were aimed at an African-American audience. That is, to include groups like Pace, Fisk and Tuskegee. (He didn’t want us to go so far as to include things like operatic recordings by black singers.) I eventually accepted his point. John wasn’t at all happy with it, but agreed to go along, as did Howard Rye. The fourth edition was ten years in the making, and didn’t come out until 1997. We added 150 new artists. Besides many gospel groups, Howard provided details of African-American groups which had played and recorded in Europe during the early years of the twentieth century, such as Jim Europe’s Four Harmony Kings and Ciro’s Club Coon Orchestra. And there is a full listing of recordings made between 1901 and 1922 by Bert Williams, a vaudeville come- dian some of whose songs include a measure of blues and gospel content. There were also additions to the established materials and a few more blues artists included. Our commencing data extended back to 1890 with the discovery of gospel numbers by ‘colored’ groups on early cylinder recordings. Some we got only from catalogues but for others the cylinders had survived and we were able to confirm that they were by African-American artists. Howard Rye undertook the considerable task of compiling four indexes — to titles, to broadcasts and films, to vocalists, and to accompanists. Blues and Gospel Records, 1890 - 1943 (which has, in all, 1419 pages) received many reviews, all utterly positive. For example theJournal of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors said: ‘One of the true classics in the field of discography has just been issued in its 4th edition and it is a beauty to behold ... All in all, this is a stunning publication.’ The magazine Blues and Rhythm began their review with: ‘How Robert Dixon and the late John Godrich ever summoned up the fortitude to even attempt the task of cataloguing every blues and gospel recording made before WW2 in the first place, without the support and convenience afforded by computers, beggars my store of admiration. Hav- ing followed the book through four editions, I can only marvel anew at the dedication and sheer bloody hard work that has gone into its initial production and constant up-dating.’ My favourite comes from the French magazine Soul Bag. Before going on to laud the new features of the fourth edition, this review begins: ‘On parle du “Larousse” ou du “Michelin”. De la meme façon, on parle du “Godrich & Dixon”, dès qu’il s’agit de discographies de blues et de gospel d’avant-guerre. Une référence absolue, tant la qualité du travail des deux com- pilateurs était irréprochable.’ 80 I am a linguist

Soon after each previous edition had been published there’d been a flurry of corrections and additions from collectors. When the fourth edition came out, I received much less correspondence than before. This suggests that we have, at long last, achieved a reasonably high level of completeness.

John Godrich and I wrote one other book. Around 1970, Paul Oliver edited a series of twelve ‘Blues Paperbacks’ for Studio Vista, a London publisher (the first four were also published by Stein and Day in New York). Number four was our Recording the Blues, a 112-page essay on how the recording companies operated, and the artists whose work they captured for posterity. There were 54 illustrations — of singers, record labels, contemporary advertisements, extracts from catalogues, and the like — plus a graph showing how many blues and gospel records were issued each year between 1919 and 1942 (with an indication of when each major race series was initiated and when it was discontinued) and a chart of all field trips made by northern recording companies to southern towns. In 2001, Paul Oliver got Cambridge University Press to reissue three of the ‘Blues Paperbacks’ in one volume, titled Yonder Come The Blues, retaining just 20 of the original illustrations for each. Those included, in addition to ours, were Blacks, Whites and Blues by Tony Russell, a study of the interaction between black and white folk music traditions in the States, and Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues by Paul himself, an insightful examination of the African elements in blues and jazz (based in part on fieldwork in West Africa). Paul wanted the three works to be republished without change, and each author to add an updating postscript (Howard Rye did one for John Godrich’s and my contribution). I protested that I’d like to rewrite Recording the Blues. I can write better now than I did thirty years ago and could make it more lively and more readable. If an author is dead, by all means publish a work as is, but if he is alive and wants to improve it, why not let him? This was not permitted. Still, it’s good to have these studies back in print.

When a student, I used to read lots of science fiction. Ideas for stories ran around in my head but there was never any spare time to write them down. Then I suddenly gained a free day, out of the blue. Before embarking on fieldwork, we spent a week or so in Canberra. On Monday 7th October 1963, I was ready to go to the library of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies to do some linguistic work. But I found that the AIAS was closed. The first Monday in October is a public holiday in the discography, and a bit of fiction 81

Australian Capital Territory (Labour Day, commemorating the introduction of a forty-hour week). Why not take advantage and write a short story which had been mulling in my mind. Frederik Pohl (one of my favourite authors) accepted ‘The Perfect People’ for the November 1964 edition of a sci-fi magazine he edited, Worlds of If, under the nom-de-plume Simon Tully. I met Fred Pohl a few years later, at an International Science Fiction Con- vention held in London, and he explained how he’d streamlined his editorial work. Fred would go into the magazine offices in New York one day each week. Stories sent in by established authors were all carefully read and perhaps one third would be accepted. Each week there would be several dozen stories from newcomers, only a small fraction of which would be worth publishing. Fred would take the whole stack and skim them during the bus journey back to his home in the country. One or two he might keep out for close reading (mine was one of these). The remainder he’d slip into a thick envelope his secretary had prepared and mail them back to her as he got off the bus, to be returned to authors with polite notes of rejection. I wrote a few more stories in the ‘sixties and got just one accepted. ‘Whose brother is my sister?’ is about a race with three sexes, one of each being needed to cooperate for the act (leading to multilateral jealousy). Fred Pohl published this in the May 1967 issue of another magazine he edited, Worlds of Tomorrow. Fred also commissioned two fact pieces (published under my own name) for Worlds of Tomorrow: ‘Alien Arithmetic’ (May 1966 issue) and ‘How to Under- stand Aliens’ (January 1966), which included an anecdote or two from my linguistic fieldwork in North Queensland.

5 Into the field

Just about the time that John Godrich was sending off to Brian Rust the typescript of Blues and Gospel Records, 1902-1942, I embarked — together with new wife Alison — for Australia. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies had originally wanted to me to gather a bit of information on each of the 136 languages which were listed as spoken in far north Queensland. I had a quite different agenda, and insisted that the first six months of the twelve-month contract should be spent on intensive study of a single language from the rain forest region around Cairns. (In fact, this study has now extended over more than four decades.) In later years, I sent many students into the field. They had completed courses on every aspect of linguistics — analysing words and sentences in exotic languages, working out sound systems, comparing languages and reconstruct- ing earlier stages of them. Each course has involved solving carefully crafted problems; working out — from a representative set of data — such things as the structure of a word in Abaza (spoken in the Caucasus), sentence structure in Sonrai (from Africa), how the principles of negation changed between Old Eng- lish and Modern English. The students would take a course in ‘field methods’; this involves working with a speaker of an unknown language and — by recording simple texts and asking well-chosen questions — uncovering something of the structure of the language. The course would also discuss the socio-political how and why of fieldwork, what to do and what to avoid. I had none of this. Sure, I’d studied the various theoretical approaches, but I’d never been asked to solve a problem. And I’d never talked to anyone who had done any real fieldwork. But I did have ideas about how to proceed. Look- ing back, these were absolutely sound. When I start to study a new language today, I follow exactly the same approach as in 1963. Of course, the details vary; with experience, my methods are more streamlined. But the plan of attack hasn’t altered one iota. The works of the great anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski had taught me that one has to spend considerable time in a community to achieve an 84 I am a linguist

understanding of its culture and language. And my book-wise linguistic men- tors, Boas and Sapir, had stressed the importance of analysing texts in the indigenous language, rather than asking how to translate isolated sentences from English (or whatever the local lingua franca might be). One must analyse a language from the inside, as it were, examining how the people communicate and analysing the system underlying this, rather than just seeing how bits of English are rendered. My ideas were sound, but too grand for the practicalities of fieldwork (simply due to lack of experience). I wanted to record spontaneous conversation, with a tape recorder and a camera, to create a record of the complete linguistic event. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies did provide a camera, once I really insisted. (More on this anon.) After touching base in Sydney and Canberra, we flew to Brisbane, picked up a four-wheel drive vehicle together with a shiny aluminium caravan (‘trailer’ to Americans), and set off north. I hadn’t even glimpsed an Aborigine down south. Would they welcome me? My natural confidence gradually eroded as the rain forest region drew ever nearer. Then we were there. I recorded a few words in Nyawaygi from an old blind man called Willie Seaton, in Ingham. And a little bit of Jirrbal from Joe Chalam, just outside Euramo. People around the small sugar-mill town of Tully said to go down to Murray Upper and talk to Chloe Grant, who knew several languages. Chloe had a sing-song voice, an insatiable curiosity, and sparkling eyes (see plate 11). Yes, she could record a few words for us but stories — sorry, no. So, try another tack. Next day we went past Chloe’s house to the farm of an old white man called Birdy Curtis, where there lived three old crones (absolutely out of Macbeth). At Birdy’s bidding, they recorded a snatch of conversation — two word questions and monosyllable answers. Pride is perhaps the dominant characteristic of the human race. Chloe Grant had plenty of pride — in herself, and in her community, and in her language. We called on her the following day: ‘I wonder where you going when I seen that orange truck drive past here yesterday.’ ‘We got a story, from the old ladies at Birdy Curtis’s.’ I said, ‘do you want to hear it?’ ‘Put it on.!’ Chloe listened for a minute. ‘Take that off the machine,’ she ordered. ‘You didn’t come all this way out from England for that kind of rubbish.’ I put a clean tape on. ‘I’ll tell you story, real story. Now, what language you think you want?’ Chloe decided to give us the works. She spoke in Jirrbal, a story about her youth, how foods were gathered and the way in which life was lived. And then switched to Girramay for a further reminiscence. Chloe’s house into the field 85

was actually on Girramay land, but the territory of the Jirrbal began just a hundred metres away, on the other side of the Murray River. She mentioned some of the lexical differences: ‘Jirrbal call “water” bana but Girramay say gamu. And “fire”, that’s buni over there but this side they call yugu.’ In fact these are dialects of one language, about as different as American English and British English. And, around the Tully River, Gulngay was spoken (in linguistic terms, a further dialect of the language). Did we want to record a bit of that too? Absolutely. ‘Start off with “nothing”, yimba‑ju,’ Chloe said (this would be yimba-jilu in Jirrbal and maya-jilu in Girramay). Then she launched into a third story, deepening her voice and drawing out the words to sound like someone from the Tully River. Once started, Chloe saw no reason to stop. How about a traditional story? Nothing could be more welcome. About the origin of water, told in Jirrbal. In those ‘creator days’, all the people were animals and the only water was secreted by a villain called Banggarra, the blue-tongue lizard (he spoke in Gir- ramay, to emphasise his evil nature). One by one the animals tried to secure the water and finally Galu did; he was a mouse, the smallest animal of all. And then a fifth story, about the origin of fire, and this time the dialect of narration was Girramay. My work on the indigenous languages of Australia — which extends until now and will continue — is founded on that afternoon’s recordings, on Wednes- day 23 October 1963. Over the years I have worked with more than twenty speakers of Jirrbal and Girramay and a dozen or so for other dialects of the language. But Chloe was the lynchpin. During that first year in the field — and again in 1967, 1970 and 1971 — she was always ready to drop multitudinous tasks (washing, cooking, cleaning, looking after children and grandchildren) in order to instruct me in her ancestral language. And there was more to it than just one language. ‘We had special way of talking,’ Chloe announced. ‘To mother-in-law. Son-in-law to mother-in-law and back again. And daughter-in-law to father-in-law. That’s “mother-in-law language”. We call it Jalnguy.’ ‘Is it very different?’ I asked in wonderment. ‘Long way different. “Water” is bana in straight-out language but jujamu in Mother-in-law. That brown wallaby, we call him barrgan, but Mother-in-law they say yungga.’ My head started spinning. What, two separate languages! Different nouns. Surely not verbs and adjectives as well? ‘What about “go”, that’s yanu ....’ ‘And bawalbin in Jalnguy,’ Chloe stated triumphantly. I tried again: ‘In straight-out language you say bulgan for “big”.’ ‘Jalnguy, he say gagir for “big”,’ Chloe re- 86 I am a linguist

sponded. It turned out that the Mother-in-law style (called Jalnguy) has the same grammar as the everyday style (called Guwal) — the same pronouns and the same suffixes to nouns and verbs-gu ( for dative case, -ny for future tense, and so on). But every lexical word is different. It’s always best to do one thing at a time. I felt I had enough on my plate working out the grammar, and didn’t completely investigate the nature of Jalnguy until four years later (but I did do it most thoroughly then). Chloe’s intelligence was shared by her son Ernie (four years older than me). He’d had limited chance in life — just a few years schooling when numbers in the local all-white school fell below the minimum to justify a teacher and they hurriedly enrolled Ernie and his sister, to keep the place open — but he is an achiever. Ernie was at that time studying for his private pilot’s licence and I’d help out a bit with trigonometry during a midday lunch break from linguistic work. He remains a good friend to this day. Only recently has Ernie recounted how, when I first appeared in Murray Upper, the Aboriginal elders held a meeting to decide on their attitude towards me. According to Ernie, he argued strongly that I should be encouraged to record all aspects of the language, as a permanent record for posterity. Chloe was deputed by the community to be my main teacher, with everyone else helping along the side. As this book has been written, a blight has begun to envelop part of academic endeavour, in the shape of ‘ethics approval’ (one aspect of that global shadow ‘political correctness’). What began as a reasonable check on medical research has now spread — like a virus — to fields such as linguistics. One has to obtain, in advance of commencing fieldwork, written permission from the community for the work to be undertaken. That’s pretty hard in the case of a monolingual group, or a community where no one can read or write. If I’d attempted to obtain written permission at Murray Upper in 1963, it would have torpedoed the whole project. I’d have been identified as akin to the police or a government agency, and these were perceived by the Aborigines as hostile bodies (and feared). Plainly, a linguist cannot work in an indigenous community unless they are wanted there. But this has to be worked out on the basis of friendship and trust. To demand written certification demonstrates not only ignorance of the cultural milieu in which work on a small minority language is carried out, but also a contempt for that culture.

The tribal land of Chloe’s ancestors was invaded by Europeans in the 1860s. Forest was cleared for sugar and banana farming, and for the grazing of cattle. into the field 87

If Aborigines got in the way of this colonial endeavour, they were simply eliminated (Ernie Grant is currently cataloguing the mass graves in his area which resulted from massacres). The Aboriginal population fell rapidly, dropping by more than half each generation after the invasion. By 1920, the Jirrbal and Girramay tribes had just a few dozen members (down from many hundreds); but from that time the population did start to increase. By 1963 there were a couple of hundred Aboriginal people in Chloe’s region and about half of them (most of those over thirty, plus just a few younger ones) were fluent speakers of Jirrbal or of Girramay. The other dialects of Dyirbal had fared worse, simply because they had been spoken in terrain that was more economically attractive and had been exploited more comprehensively by Europeans than the mountainous forest around Mur- ray Upper. There was just one speaker left of Gulngay, from the Tully River, and two of Jirru, originally spoken around Clump Point. Further north, on the Atherton tableland, I located half-a-dozen people who spoke Mamu, and four or five who knew something of Ngajan. These were all mutually intelligible, rather like Glasgow English and Cockney English. I used Dyirbal (a variant spelling of Jirrbal) as a made-up name for the whole language; we have the Ngajan dialect of Dyirbal, the Jirrbal dialect of Dyirbal, and so on. My task was to write an overall grammar of the language, with notes on dialect variation. But that wasn’t all. ‘You got to get all these other language,’ Chloe instructed. ‘Warrgamay, down at Cardwell, I can understand bit. Nyawaygi be more difficult, that’s out Ingham way. But up on range here,’ she pointed west, ‘Warungu is real hard language. Old Alec Collins, he know it alright.’ So Chloe, together with Jimmy Murray and his wife Maryann, guided me one day to Warren’s Hill, to record a bit of Nyawaygi from Long Heron (so called because he was tall), oldest and best of the three remaining speakers of that language. Then an expedition was made up the tableland to Kirrama station (named after Girramay, which can also be pronounced Kirramay). We gathered a little data from Alec Collins on Warungu, the language of his youth which he hadn’t actively spoken for decades. The station owner made us welcome in the traditional white-fellow manner. I was invited to eat with her and her young husband while Chloe and my other companions sat outside, munching the sandwiches we’d brought. After the meal, the owner used different tea towels to dry the plates which Alec Collins and another Aboriginal stockman had used, and those eaten off by white people. Back in 1938, the anthropologist Norman Tindale had recorded a dozen words in ‘Barbaram’, spoken just west of the Great Dividing Range. These 88 I am a linguist

seemed quite different from words in all the other languages of the area — monosyllables, and words beginning with a vowel or with two consonants, like abo ‘ground’, mbera ‘grass basket;’ and kok ‘water’ (in other languages a word has at least two syllables and begins with a single consonant). I traced a couple of ‘Barbaram’ people who didn’t remember any of the language and then found Albert Bennett (plate 13), who did. He was friendly but hadn’t spoken it for decades (since his mother died) and didn’t really think he could help me much. A first visit drew just 28 words. But I went back eight times over the next seven years and in all gathered about 300 words and quite a bit of grammar. (A modern-day funding agency would require written permission from Albert Bennett before I could ask him anything. He wouldn’t understand such a thing and, in any case, couldn’t write. Under these circumstances, the language would have gone undocumented.) The first word Albert Bennett proffered was dog for ‘dog’. This is notable in having the same form in Mbabaram and English, a rare coincidence. Later, the great American field linguist Ken Hale showed how this is a development from an original form gudaga ‘dog’ (which is preserved in its full form in the neighbouring language Yidiñ). The second a became o because of the initial gu, then this gu and the final a dropped — from gudaga to gudoga to dog. And the unusual words Tindale had recorded could be explained in similar manner; original jabu ‘ground’ had become abu, kuku ‘water’ became kuk, and jumbi ‘penis’ became mbi. Albert Bennett informed me that the name of the language was actually Mbabaram.

Murray Upper was the only place where a goodly portion of traditional culture survived. Two corroborees were held for my benefit (and these were, I believe, the last corroborees ever held in the region). Jimmy Murray sang, accompanied by his own clapped boomerangs and by wife Maryann banging a skin drum stretched between thighs (under her skirt). Half-a-dozen men — painted with white and yellow and red clay, and with black charcoal — danced the message of each song. A pelican circling over deep water in the middle of the ocean, swooping to catch fish. A white cockatoo chick trying to lift its wing, shifting around in the nest, wiggling its yellow top-knot as it calls out, waiting for the food its mother is cutting up for it with her beak. And songs relating to life with the whiteman: a big mob of cattle, striding around with their red legs; bullocks, with balls hanging down, as they move along. Before actually embarking into the realities of fieldwork, I had wanted to record and film spontaneous conversation. It now became apparent that to try into the field 89

to use a cine camera would imperil the informal relationship I’d built up with Chloe, Jimmy, and the rest. There was enough to do with tape-recorder and notebooks. After a couple of months I simply sent the camera plus unopened spools of film back to the Institute in Canberra. (Present-day funding bodies which require written permission in advance from a community often also like all recordings to be on video. One could do this, but it would serve to distance the fieldworker from the community, and thus make them less likely to be able to observe spontaneous and informal speech.) Recording spontaneous conversation was difficult, and transcribing it turned out to be a daunting task. People were talking over each other with several lines of discourse at once, making it hard to decipher what was being said, and to whom, and in reply to what. Chloe, indefatigable teacher, helped me transcribe three segments and I did get some good things which would not occur in a narrative. But it took three or four times as long to transcribe as measured monologue or dialogue. At that time, the Aborigines at Murray Upper lived scattered around, one family on each white-owned farm. Only occasionally did one hear them speaking the language. When I later undertook fieldwork in villages in Fiji and in Amazonia, everyone spoke the language. There was conversation all around, much of it involving me. I just listened, and wrote down interesting things (no need here to battle through recording an entire conversation). My main business was recording, transcribing and analysing texts — stories told by Chloe, by Paddy Biran and Mosley Digman, by Jack Murray, and by others from the community. Traditional tales of ancestral beings, historical narratives of past events, and accounts of things which were happening at the time. As the cultural richness of Chloe’s people unfolded before me, so did the beauty of the language. Dyirbal has four genders, I discovered. These are, basically, masculine, feminine, edible vegetable, and neuter. And there are interesting rules for assigning nouns to a gender. The sun is believed to be a woman and the moon her husband, so these are feminine and masculine respectively. The hairy-mary grub has a sting which feels like sunburn and it is feminine, like the sun. (More on this in the next chapter.) Dyirbal territory abounds in mountains and rivers. In keeping with this, any demonstrative or article (similar to this or the in English) can take a suffix indicating whether the thing it refers to is uphill, downhill, upriver, downriver, across the river, or just way out. And for up or down it is necessary to specify whether a short, medium or long distance up or down. 90 I am a linguist

All my life, the major motive for undertaking any piece of work has been not how much I might get paid for it, or the prestige which might accrue, but just the intellectual satisfaction that obtains. Working out the structure of Dyirbal was, simply, a thrilling adventure. And the usefulness of various theoretical concepts — from all of the ‘sorts of linguistics’ Halliday had mentioned — became evident. Halliday’s own structures and systems provided a foundation for the description, and Chomsky’s transformations were also entirely relevant and illuminating. The proper methodology of field linguists is not to ask ‘how to say’ something from the lingua franca of the region (here, English). Rather it is to analyse the language in its own terms, studying texts. There can, of course, be pitfalls. The most frequently occurring verb in my corpus wasyanu ‘go’ and I gathered together all the forms — future, non-future, imperative, negative imperative, purposive, and so on. The snag was that yanu is the only irregular verb in the language. (I should have realised that if it is an irregular verb, it is likely to be one of the most commonly-occurring words.) So this wasn’t a good basis for generalisation. But it was a minor set-back One can infer a good deal of grammar from systematic study of texts. There has then to be some judicious asking of questions to fill in gaps, and to check hypotheses. These questions involve posing sentences in Dyirbal (not in Eng- lish). For example, I’d try to work out the structure of the relative clause and then construct a number of new relative clause constructions on the basis of the principles I’d formulated. In such-and-such a circumstance, I’d ask, ‘could you say’ — and then a Dyirbal sentence I’d made up. Chloe would think for a moment. ‘Oh yes, I see what you are trying to say, only it should be like this,’ and she’d repeat my sentence with a small correction. If I did get it right, Chloe would nod. But this isn’t enough. ‘You say it,’ I’d insist. One has to actually get a sentence said by a reliable native speaker, to be certain. I might have got one thing right, but erred in some other aspect. Consider an example from Eng- lish, to illustrate this. Suppose someone asked: ‘Which of these is right, I am to London going or I is to London going?’ ‘The first,’ a native speaker might say, commenting on the form of the verb. But when asked to repeat it, they will say I am going to London, with correct word order.

The European take-over of Australia involved expropriation of land, appropria- tion of women, and also a form of mental aggression which involved telling Aboriginal people that their traditions and customs and languages were be- neath contempt. In Dyirbal, the verb most often comes at the end of a sentence. into the field 91

‘That’s no good,’ Chloe told me, ‘not like English.’ I replied that there are lots of ways of saying something and the Dyirbal way is different from the English way, but is in no way inferior. Each is as valid and good as the other. And think of all the great things Dyirbal has in its grammar which are lacking from Eng- lish — the four genders, and intricate specifications such as ‘medium distance downhill’. It was later in the 1960s that Aboriginal people all across Australia began to throw off the ‘you are inferior’ brainwashing, and to take pride in their own ethnicity and languages. During the very early years of the twentieth century, many of the remaining Aboriginal people — those who had not been murdered — were rounded up and taken off to church missions and government settlements. The most notorious of these was the settlement on Palm Island, off the Queensland coast a little south of Dyirbal territory. In 1963, Palm Island was still being run like a prison camp. People from many tribes had been mixed together there. The children, segregated in dormitories, were forbidden to speak traditional languages. But there were old people who had considerable knowledge, so I made several trips across. Alf Palmer was an old Warungu man who knew his own language and Warrgamay (neither of which had been actively spoken for several decades) and also the Girramay and Jirrbal dialects of Dyirbal, which were then still in limited use. Alf wouldn’t record stories, but he gave me over 500 words and lots of sentences in comparative mode, each in Warungu, Warrgamay, Girramay and Jirrbal. The person Chloe told me I must work with was George Watson (plate 12), a Mamu man who also had excellent knowledge of Jirrbal and Girramay (over the years, he’d had a wife from each of these groups). George and Chloe had been promised in marriage at an early age but this never eventuated. They were two of the few part-bloods, born around 1900. Many white men ‘took advantage of’ Aboriginal women (as people put it) but either they or the Aboriginal mother (or both) would make sure that any offspring was killed at birth. In later years, George recorded his life story, telling how his mother had wanted to kill him but her sister begged to be allowed to bring up the boy. (In his case the white father, an occasional rapist, wasn’t even aware of the birth.) It was not easy to work on Palm Island. No white man was allowed in the streets of Aboriginal housing and no Aborigine was permitted in a white person’s house, unless employed as domestic servant. The rule was that I should talk to George Watson (or Alf Palmer, or anyone else) in the courthouse, supervised by an Aboriginal policeman. But the dictatorial superintendent was away at the time of my first visit and his deputy agreed to stretch a point, just for me. 92 I am a linguist

George wasn’t allowed in the guest house where I was staying and I certainly couldn’t enter his home. But we were permitted to talk together sitting on a fallen log down by the creek (well away from public scrutiny). George was magnificent — a compleat storyteller and insightful explainer. He recounted the Mamu versions of the origin of fire and the origin of water stories, and told of how the first baby came out of a boil on the leg of an Abo- riginal Adam. George gave a detailed description of the last instance of cannibalism in the region, which took place in 1940, on condition that I not play the recording to people who had drunk the victim’s blood (all three men were still alive, and all became good friends). One can ask questions about words but not, generally, about parts of words. A speaker of English will discuss the meaning and use of untruthfulness but not of the ‑th- element within it. I had a verbal suffix -ma-, whose meaning and function were quite unclear. One could say bungi-n ‘slept’ (bungi- is the verb and -n past tense suffix) and also bungil-ma-n. What I could do was ask George to contrast bungin and bungilman. ‘That bungilman, with the -main it, means “slept with something”,’ George explained. Ah! So bungi- is ‘sleep’, an intransitive verb taking just a subject, whereas bungil-ma- is ‘sleep with’, a transitive verb taking a subject and an object. Adding -ma- makes an intransitive verb into a transitive verb. That’s the sort of insightful help George was able to offer (which, in my experience of more than forty years of fieldwork, is rarely encountered).

During ten months in North Queensland (from October 1963 until August 1964), I spent some time recording limited information on Mbabaram, Warrgamay, Nyawaygi, Warungu, Yidiñ, Dyabugay, Wagaman, Dyangun and Gugu-Mini. But eighty per cent of my effort went into exploring the structure of Dyirbal, uncovering the basic principles on which the language operates. I’d read a good deal of linguistics during the two-and-a-bit years in Edin- burgh, but had received no practical training. Only on actually starting work in the field did this lack begin to loom large. I ordered — through Walker’s bookshop in Cairns — copies of three standard practical manuals: Phonetics and Phonemics by Pike, and Morphology by Nida. I’d looked at these before but now I studied them most thoroughly. By dint of common sense and a bit of lateral thinking — and under the unparalleled tutelage of Chloe Grant and George Watson — I did manage to pull it all together. I started to learn the discipline of linguistics by doing it, in a way I could never have achieved through just reading volumes on linguistic theory, back in England. into the field 93

North Queensland was a new world to me, with two new cultures. The Cowans (a white farming family) became close friends, inviting us to park the caravan in their back yard and to use their toilets and shower. Old Lindsay Cowan expounded on the history of white-black relations and recounted horri- fying instances of murder and exploitation. (When he didn’t have a son handy, I’d help Lindsay geld some calves, or slaughter a beast for table and freezer.) My first experience of fieldwork was very different from later work among the Jarawara — recounted in chapter 1 — or in Fiji, where I became a member of a living language community. Although the full impact didn’t register until fifteen years later, this was a dying language situation. There were here a small number of Aboriginal people living as a just-tolerated minority within white society, rapidly acculturating to its ethics and language. I was essentially digging back, with the people recalling a language and culture as it had been. Linguistic fieldwork is based on friendship. In my experience, one can’t buy the sort of cooperation needed, nor can signing a paper ensure it. Chloe and George really wanted to teach me their language, for the satisfaction it gave them, just as I wanted to learn it, for the satisfaction it gave me. Of course I did pay them, but not in any sort of formal way which would have demeaned us both. Taking out one’s wallet and extracting notes is like buying goods in a shop. I’d put the appropriate sum in my pocket, then take the notes out and pass them to Chloe (or whoever) with a thank-you handshake. A similar pattern was followed in later fieldwork in Fiji and in Brazil. It wasn’t viewed as paying, more as sharing or as helping out. Sometimes friendship could come into conflict with the cold hard rules of institutionalised racism. On the last day of my third visit to Palm Island, George Watson and I were sitting on the fallen log by the creek. Then George said: ‘Come to my house and we can work at a table. Have a cup of tea. Behave like civilised people.’ We both knew that this was forbidden; George could well get into deep trouble after I’d left. Impatient of my hesitation, he insisted: ‘Look, I’m inviting you into my house. Are you coming or not?’ So I went. Soon after, George applied for permission to leave Palm Island and return to live on the mainland. This was granted. I suspect that the superintendent was glad to get such a trouble-maker out of the way.

There were a couple of offers to stay on in Australia. I had lots of work left to do — actually writing and revising the grammar of Dyirbal — and for that I felt the need of a good academic linguistic environment, such as did not exist in Australia at that time. Michael Halliday offered a lectureship at University 94 I am a linguist

College London — where he’d moved the previous year — and I had no hesitation in accepting. Quite apart from the linguistics, I’d always wanted to live in London, which is the centre of the world for every English boy.

RELATED PUBLICATIONS

Searching for Aboriginal languages: memoirs of a field worker is a popular narrative account of my fieldwork in North Queensland from 1963 to 1977. This was published by the University of Queensland Press in 1984 and then re-issued by the University of Chicago Press in 1989. For the last few years I have been trying to get a publisher to bring out a new edition, in which I could add a bringing- it-up-to-date chapter and (most important) a CD featuring the voices of Chloe Grant, George Watson, Jimmy Murray, Albert Bennett, and half-a-dozen others. This quest hasn’t been successful. But Cambridge University Press is to reissue the book (without change) in 2010. At the academic level, the Dyirbal grammar was published in 1972 and a full analysis of the data gathered on Mbabaram in 1991 (see list of Major Publica- tions at the end of the volume). 6 Frustration and fulfilment

There hadn’t been any encouragement from the people at Edinburgh for me to undertake fieldwork. Quite the reverse. A lectureship was to be advertised to replace Halliday and I was told it could be mine. ‘Forget all this nonsense about Australia,’ they advised, ‘settle down to a steady job and start building your academic career.’ But I wanted to master the discipline of linguistics and felt this could only be achieved by working at the coal-face, as it were. Linguistics investigates the nature of human language, by inductive generalisation from studies of individual languages. I knew that only by studying and analysing some previously undescribed language could I begin to understand the essence of language, and make a significant contribution to knowledge. If I had taken the Edinburgh job and then moved south, it would have made for a year’s seniority in the London position. As things were, the fieldwork experience was held to be of no account. Of course it was of critical importance to my development as a linguist, and subsequent ascent in the field. The moral is: do what you feel you need to do, not what the current establishment recommends. From 1964 until 1970, linguistics at University College consisted of just two permanent academics: Michael Halliday (who became a professor in 1965) and me. We were to teach a two-year Academic Postgraduate Diploma in General Linguistics, with half-a-dozen students who had completed bachelor’s degrees in modern languages or classics or anthropology. Halliday also had a couple of soft-money endeavours. One was on the study of scientific English, headed by Rodney Huddleston (who went on to become a leader in the study of English grammar). And the other was on the application of linguistics to language teaching. This involved four school teachers, seconded to the project. Living in London was great, but the job — well, not so hot at first! I was to deliver two lectures each week on grammatical theory. For a number of reasons, these weren’t a great success. Wouldn’t you be disconcerted if one of Hal- liday’s seconded teachers turned his chair at right angles and looked out of the window instead of at the blackboard for almost the whole of a lecture? I’d been analysing the word structure of some exotic language and had, as is normal, 96 I am a linguist

used phonetic symbols appropriate to that language. ‘It’s a symbol we haven’t yet been expowsed to in the phownetic class.’ I was told in that picaresque accent of the I-rather-think-I-must-be-upper-class. With experiences like this, I seriously considered giving it all up — the job, linguistics — and embarking on a some quite different career, Five years later, when I accepted the chair at Canberra, this chair-turning paragon offered his congratulations. But I was naughty, and couldn’t resist turning it back on him. ‘Thanks, Peter, but I wouldn’t have thought it was the sort of thing you’d value.’ ‘Well, naaw,’ he agreed, ‘Ostraaliya isn’t at awl the sort of pleyce ay’d like to live.’ Friendlier students offered more helpful advice. I was simply putting too much into each lecture, making them far too theoretical. ‘Well,’ I responded, ‘how I see it is this. If you travel for over an hour from the northern suburbs and the same time back, for a one hour class, I need to make it worth your while.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ my friend replied, ‘there’s no danger of your short-changing us.’ So I learnt, eventually. The next year swung to the opposite extreme — highly empirical and quite simple. By the third year I’d hit a happier middle-course and considered myself an okay teacher, if nothing outstanding. One needed to publish, even then (it’s much worse now). So, rather prematurely, I put out a couple of papers on Mbabaram when it would have been more sensible to wait until I had the opportunity for further fieldwork. Then, the major task was a comprehensive grammar of Dyirbal. Halliday being so busy with his projects, there wasn’t in his department the sort of intellectual atmosphere which can stimulate and inspire. But a couple of hundred yards away there was the School of Oriental and African Studies with many fine scholars (especially in the Africa department) who shared their analytic problems and triumphs in analysing languages of tantalising complexity. And I got friendly with the anthropologists at University College. Begin- ning a seminar in the Dyirbal mother-in-law language, in 1966, I mentioned the four genders and their meaning basis. Daryll Forde, head of the Anthropology department, put up his hand for pause. It was generally believed that in African languages the allocation of nouns to genders is arbitrary. Now was I saying that this is not so in the case if Dyirbal? Certainly, yes, I’d formulated the basic principles and they seemed to work. If one starts with grammar then the composition of the gender classes does appear to be heterogeneous and unprincipled. Gender class I, for instance, includes human males, most fishes, a few birds, the moon, and some spears. But language is all about meaning. One should start with meanings and see how frustration and fulfilment 97

these are mapped onto grammar (not the other way round). The basic concepts associated with gender I are human males and non-human animates. For gender II they are human females, water, fire and fighting. Gender III is edible non-flesh food, and gender IV is everything else. In addition, there are two rules for transferring class membership. If something actually is X, but is associated with Y, then it may be put into a gender class on the basis of Y. Birds are non-human animates, but they are believed to be the spirits of dead human females and so are assigned to the female gender, II. Except that certain birds appear in stories as legendary men and women, and this determines their gender. The sun is said to be a woman, thus in the female gender, II, and the moon is her husband, in the male gender, I. Fighting spears are in gender II (like the fighting ground itself), hunting spears are used by human males to catch non-human animates and are, like them, in gender I. A number of big short spears, also used as digging sticks, are in ‘everything else’ class, gender IV The other rule is that if some members of a semantic set are dangerous, they may be placed in a different gender from the rest of the set. Most fishes are in gender I; really harmful fishes (the stonefish and the garfish) are in gender II. Trees with edible fruit are gender III, those without in gender IV. But stinging trees, which can inflict considerable pain, are in gender II. All in all, there are dozens of distinctions of meaning, and these are mapped in complex but prin- cipled ways onto the four genders of the grammar. I’d worked all this out as a matter of course. It was only Daryll Forde’s appraisal which made me realise that it was a useful bit of work. So I read up on genders (otherwise known as noun classes) in languages from Africa and elsewhere, and in 1968 published a general paper ‘Noun classes’, with the final section explaining how Dyirbal works. This became the standard work on the topic for a decade or more. Halliday didn’t provide much leadership and was generally too busy to offer advice. If I really wanted to talk about something, I could walk to the bank with him at lunchtime and air it on the way. Once I became Head of Department at Canberra — in the 1970s and 1980s — it seemed natural to extend a hand to newly appointed faculty. I’d discuss their syllabus and reading list. After a month or so I would, with their permission, sit in on a class and offer comments as to what aspects might be improved. That’s what I would have appreciated myself during those early days in London. Halliday is a great scholar but administration was certainly not his strength. The departmental secretary and I would try to keep things chugging along. ‘This needs to be done,’ she’d say. ‘Yes, and that.’ I’d add, ‘you remind him of 98 I am a linguist

this and ...’ ‘No. Let’s both remind him about both. Twice a week.’ Each summer, Michael would be away for two or three months, and things were then so much easier. The secretary and I (as Acting Head of Department) would just complete things as they came up. The way university courses in England are organised, it’s hard to teach a discipline in a really satisfactory way. One (or, occasionally, two) lectures per week for a term of eight to ten weeks can’t cover the ground. And most English students only do a moderate amount of background reading. In the American and Australian systems, a semester course will have thirty or forty contact hours, and the students will spend further time solving linguistic problems and reading widely. Those London years were frustrating, both personally and academically. I used to day-dream, making up a fantasy syllabus in which every aspect of linguistics was accorded proper and lengthy attention. (The dream became reality during the next decade, at the Australian National University.) Michael Halliday went away for a year’s sabbatical in 1967/8, leaving a temporary lecturer to help me with the Postgraduate Diploma course. But, was this the best thing for the Department to be doing? Why not develop undergraduate teaching in linguistics, instead? (We didn’t have the resources to cover both.) I wrote to Michael in the States with this rather radical plan to restructure all our work. ‘Sure, ‘ he replied. So I staggered through all the bureaucratic channels and the University approved joint degrees: one half Linguistics, and the other half Anthropology or Philosophy or Psychology or English or German or French. We interviewed the first batch of students during 1969/70 and began teaching undergraduates in October 1970, just after I’d left to take up the position in Canberra. Living in London on a lecturer’s salary was not easy. (There was a ridiculously small ‘London allowance’ which scarcely alleviated matters.) We’d bought a converted working-class terrace house in a poor part of Islington, just twenty-five minutes walk from University College. With three children, by 1967, ends could be made to meet only with great difficulty. For instance, I didn’t buy a single new blues or jazz record during a three-year period. (How- ever, things have got much worse since. Around 1980, I found that the price of a house such as that we owned had increased about four-fold, whereas university salaries had only doubled! Since then the gap has, I believe, widened further.) I could have followed the example of some of my colleagues and earned extra money by going up to Cambridge for a month or so each summer to teach a summer school for German girls who came across to learn English, frolic in punts on the river, and suchlike. But the long summer vacation was precious research time. That was what gave me real satisfaction (and it was, after all, a large frustration and fulfilment 99

part of what I was employed to do). This attitude left us poor at the time, but it led to the publication of papers and books which did pay off within a few years. There were, of course, some bright spots. Warren Cowgill, from Yale Uni- versity, spent the 1966/7 academic year at University College as Visiting Pro- fessor of Comparative Philology, which is another way of saying Historical Linguistics. Although Firth had employed a lecturer in Historical Linguistics, he appears to have had little regard for the sub-discipline; it didn’t feature in any of his writings. My linguistic education to that time had been bereft of any competent account of how languages can be compared, and their pasts revealed. Historical linguists can decide whether a certain group of languages are genetically related, descending from a common ancestor. Having been brought up within the English tradition, I’d been told that this kind of investigation was neither important nor interesting. Well, I wanted to learn about what is regarded in other parts of the world as a vital segment of the discipline. Halliday offered no objection when I asked if Warren might be invited to teach a course to our Diploma students (one hour a week for ten weeks) and of course I went along as well. Warren also conducted a small class on Old Irish for a few of us. And I had lunch with him almost every day for a year. This was the sort of intellectual companionship that I had craved.

Now Dyirbal has one fascinating property. I’d worked it out in the field but didn’t know the appropriate terminology. Like other languages, each verb is either transitive, relating to two participants, the subject and object (as in ‘Mary saw me’, ‘I cut the cake’, ‘John told a great story’), or intransitive, relating to one participant, the subject (as in ‘Mary laughed’, ‘I fell’, ‘John spoke’). In English, the subject — whether transitive or intransitive — comes before the verb and the object after. Also, for most pronouns, there is a different form for subject (for example, I) and for object (me). In Dyirbal, the words can occur in any order, with what is subject and what is object being indicated by endings on nouns and on pronouns. Interestingly, the endings on nouns are different from those on pronouns. Here are some examples, using proper nouns borrowed from English:

Mari Jani-nggu buran Johnny saw Mary Jani Mari-nggu buran Mary saw Johnny Mari miyandanyu Mary laughed Jani miyandanyu Johnny laughed 100 I am a linguist

What we have here is:

TRANSITIVE SUBJECT INTRANSITIVE SUBJECT TRANSITIVE OBJECT ending -nggu no ending no ending

When I showed this to Michael Halliday — on getting to London in 1964 — he told me that the name for a special ending for transitive subject (different from that for intransitive subject and for transitive object) is ‘ergative’. In Dyirbal, -nggu is the ergative case marker. Pronouns, though, don’t show an ergative pattern. Here are some examples, with ngali ‘we two’ and nyubala ‘you two’:

ngali nyubala-na buran we two saw you two nyubala ngali-na buran you two saw us two ngali miyandanyu we two laughed nyubala miyandanyu you two laughed

(The most frequently occurring word order is used in these examples. But in each sentence the words can be permuted into any order, with no change in meaning.) Putting the marking on nouns and on pronouns into one table we get:

TRANSITIVE INTRANSITIVE TRANSITIVE SUBJECT (A) SUBJECT (S) OBJECT (O) NOUNS -nggu PRONOUNS -na

Pronouns are like English, with transitive subject and intransitive subject shown in the same way (this is called nominative case) and transitive object differently (by the accusative case ending-na ). It seemed a bit unwieldy to keep having to say ‘transitive subject’, ‘intransitive subject’ and ‘transitive object’, so I gave them each a letter name — A, S and O respectively — just for ease of reference. (More on this in chapter 8.) Now I didn’t have a PhD. In Britain in those days, people in non-science disciplines often never bothered about a PhD. But the realisation gradually dawned that this would be a useful thing to have, especially if I wanted to go somewhere like the USA. I was writing a grammar of Dyirbal, so why not register for a doctorate using the grammar as the dissertation. frustration and fulfilment 101

How to write the grammar involved a bit of thinking. And then rethink- ing. In the summer of 1966 (instead of teaching German girls in Cambridge) I wrote a draft in terms of a new theoretical approach which I’d devised, a sort of amalgam of the ideas of Sapir and of Chomsky. (Indeed, it was called simply ‘A model of linguistic description’.) John Lyons, the new Professor of Linguistics at Edinburgh, agreed to read it and provide comments. ‘I’ve spent eight hours on it, Bob,’ he wrote, ‘and it is very hard to follow.’ John Lyons’ comments really made me stop and assess what I was trying to do. I mulled over what he’d said, and over what my aims should be. Dyirbal is a fairly unusual language, right? Why wrap it up in some obscure, posturing for- malism? I decided then and there (in late 1966) to turn over a new leaf. I’d write the grammar of Dyirbal — and everything else I did — in as straightforward a manner as possible, in order to make it maximally accessible to the reader. It worked. The grammar of Dyirbal, when it was published in December 1972 (a revision of the 1968 dissertation) was well received and continues to be much referred to and quoted from. That certainly wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t heeded John Lyons’ advice and replaced opacity by transparency. It seemed appropriate to mark this change of stance. My two books and half-a-dozen papers before 1968 were as ‘Robert M. W. Dixon’. With the adop- tion of an aim for pedagogic clarity, I dropped the ‘obert’. My mature linguistic publications, from 1968 on, are all by ‘R. M. W. Dixon’. (There was nothing to reassess and change on the discographical side, and for blues and gospel materials the full ‘Robert M. W. Dixon’ has been retained.) So I discarded the description of Dyirbal which John Lyons had found so obscure, and started again, discussing things with Warren over lunch. New points came up which needed clarification so I returned to the rain forest of North Queensland (my spiritual home) for a few weeks in March and April of 1967. It was wonderful to see Chloe again, and George Watson, now living on the mainland just outside Innisfail. I had two more sessions on Mbabaram, with Albert Bennett, as well as collecting more information on Nyawaygi, Warrga- may, Warungu and Yidiñ. Checking further into the matter of ergativity brought up the most un- expected result. In English, transitive subject (A) and intransitive subject (S) are marked in the same way (both coming before the verb, and with the same form for pronouns). And if one links together two clauses which have the same subject (S or A function in each) then the subject can be omitted from the second clause. One can say Johna saw Maryo and (Johns) laughed or Johns laughed and (Johna) saw Maryo, omitting the word in parentheses. But if the 102 I am a linguist

S and A in one clause is the same as the O in another, then nothing may be omitted; one can say Johns laughed and Marya saw Johno, but not *Johns laughed and Marya saw. In Dyirbal, S and O are marked in the same way on nouns. If two clauses share a noun which is in S or O function in each, then that word can be omitted from the second clause. So, from Mario Jani-nggua buran (‘Johnny saw Mary’) and Maris miyandanyu (‘Mary laughed’) we can form Mario Jani-nggua buran (Maris) miyandanyu, which means ‘Johnny saw Mary and Mary laughed’. That is, if the Mari is omitted from the second clause, a speaker of Dyirbal infers that the S of this clause (the person who laughed) is the same as the O of the previous clause. This contrasts with the English sentenceJohn a saw Maryo and laughed, where the missing S from the second clause is understood to be the same as the A of the first clause. (Note that Dyirbal has nothing corresponding to and in English; two clauses to be joined are just said one after the other.) This I knew full well, and had many examples in the stories collected three years before. The way in which clauses are put together follows an ergative pattern (S and O treated in the same way, and A differently) as far as nouns are concerned, just as S and O are marked in the same way (with no ending) and A differently (with ergative ending‑ nggu) on nouns. But what of pronouns? The forms of pronouns in Dyirbal follow the same pattern as those in English; for ‘we two’,ngali is used for S and A, and ngali-na for O function. Surely, joining clauses that have a pronoun in common should also be like in English. I made up a few examples. Take ngalia nyubala-nao buran (‘we two saw you two’) and ngalis miyandanyu (‘we two laughed’). Surely these could be linked together and the second ngali omitted, givingngali nyubala-na buran miyandanyu. I put this to Chloe, more or less as a matter of routine. No. This was wrong. You could sayngali nyubala-na buran miyandanyu alright, only it doesn’t mean ‘we two saw you two and we two laughed’; rather, it means ‘we two saw you two and you two laughed’. If the S is omitted from before miyandanyu ‘laugh’, then a speaker of Dyirbal will infer that this S is the same as the O of the previous clause (not the same as the A, as in English). Pronouns behave just like nouns in clause linking, despite the fact that the forms of pronouns are different from those of nouns. A couple of days later I was talking to George and put the same sentences to him. Exactly the same response as Chloe. Then I looked through the corpus of texts. There were plenty of examples, which I’d been too dumb to see before. There are many other grammatical properties which uphold this analysis (too many and too complex to go into here). Thus, it became clear that whereas frustration and fulfilment 103

Dyirbal is partly ergative (for nouns) and partly accusative (for pronouns) in the marking of functions — A, S and O — within a clause, it is entirely ergative (treating S and O in the same way and A differently) in its syntax, in the way in which clauses are linked together. This was a major result, and it has become known throughout the linguistic world as a fascinating property of Dyirbal. The interesting thing is that it came as a surprise to me. I’d expected pronouns to have an accusative syntax (treating S and A in the same way, and O differently, for clause linking). But further intensive fieldwork had shown that this expectation was not borne out. Back to London to write up the grammar of Dyirbal for the PhD dissertation. Now there’s a traditional way of writing a grammar. One begins with phonology and phonetics, describing the sound system; then morphology, the structure of words; and finally syntax, how words are arranged to make clauses and how clauses are put together to make sentences. But in Dyirbal the most interesting thing is its ergative syntax. Could I put this first, before phonology and morphology? Warren’s opinion was sought and he endorsed the idea. Of course I had first to slip in the most important bits of morphology (cases on nouns and pronouns, and tenses on verbs). Then the syntax. Followed by the remainder of the morphology and, finally, phonology and phonetics. This scheme of presentation wouldn’t suit most languages, but it was appropriate for Dyirbal. I’m sure it was an important factor in ensuring that the grammar was widely read. My 1967 field trip brought another unusual dividend, which provided a counter-example to established ideas about ‘scientific method’. What one is supposed to do is formulate a hypothesis, check it against data, then refine the hypothesis into a theory. I did nothing of the sort. I had no hypothesis. What I did was systematically elicit data, and then cross-elicit it. Lo and behold — an important theoretical insight emerged, all on its own. A major task on this field trip was to fully investigate the ‘mother-in-law’ vocabulary, Dyalnguy, and its relationship to the vocabulary of the everyday speech style, Guwal. I’d carefully organised the lexicon of Guwal into semantic sets and went through every word — separately, with Chloe and with George — asking for its equivalent in Dyalnguy. Now Dyalnguy has fewer words than Guwal. Whereas Guwal has, for example, a name for every species of grub, Dyalnguy has a single term, jamuy. In Guwal there are names such as mandija ‘little grub found in the milky pine tree’, bugulum ‘little round grub found on bark’, jalnggunmu ‘grub found in a blue gum tree’ and jambun ‘long wood grub’; the Dyalnguy equivalent for each of these is jamuy. The same kind of many-one relationship between Guwal and 104 I am a linguist

Dyalnguy vocabularies applies for every kind of noun, and for adjectives and verbs. In Guwal one must be as specific as possible, but the Dyalnguy style is purposely vague, in keeping with the formality of relationship between mother-in-law and son-in-law (and between father-in-law and daughter-in-law), relationships which are marked by the use of Dyalnguy. After I’d asked each Guwal word and obtained its Dyalnguy equivalent, I then did things the other way round. I made out a card for every Dyalnguy form and entered on it all Guwal forms for which it had been given as equivalent. A typical card looked like this:

Dyalnguy wuyuban

given as equivalent to buwanyu ‘tell’ Guwal verbs jinganyu ‘recount’ ngarran ‘deny having something’

Now I put each Dyalnguy word to Chloe and to George (separately) as a check on my initial elicitation. ‘Wuyuban in Dyalnguy, what would that be in Guwal?’ I’d expected Chloe to list the words on my card. But she just said ‘Buwanyu’. ‘Anything else?’ I enquired. ‘No, wuyuban in Dyalnguy, that’s buwanyu in Gu- wal.’ And, a couple of days later, George provided exactly the same response. ‘But what about jinganyu and ngarran?’ I then asked. ‘Oh, yes,’ Chloe (and George) agreed, ‘those are wuyuban too’. ‘Well,’ I ventured, ‘there are two different words in Guwal, buwanyu and jinganyu. How would you bring out this difference in Dyalnguy?’ Chloe thought for a moment. ‘Buwanyu would be just wuyuban but for jinganyu you drag it out and say wuyuwuyuban.’ I then tried buwanyu and ngarran, how would that lexical difference in Guwal be rendered within Dyalnguy? ‘For buwanyu we say wuyuban, and ngarran, he’s wuyuban jilbungga.’ For this, and for other Dyalnguy cards, George gave almost identical answers. Entering these onto the card I now had:

wuyuban C buwanyu wuyuban jinganyu wuyuwuyuban ngarran wuyuban jilbungga frustration and fulfilment 105

Just one Guwal word was always given as the central correspondent of the Dyalnguy form, marked by C on the card. One can divide the words of Dyirbal into what I called ‘nuclear’ and ‘non-nuclear’ sets. Dyalnguy has a minimum vocabulary, just the nuclear words. Guwal has the nuclear words (those marked by C on my cards) and — corresponding to almost every nuclear item — one or more non-nuclear words which can be defined in terms of it. Nuclear verb buwanyu has a wide, general meaning, referring to any kind of telling; this was always translated into Dyalnguy by the simple form wuyuban. Non-nuclear verb jinganyu refers to telling some rather particular piece of news. This more specialised meaning is brought out in Dyalnguy by reduplicating the basic word wuyuban; repeating the first two syllables before the root we get wuyu‑wuyuban. Verbal reduplication in Dyirbal means ‘do it to excess’, perfectly capturing the meaning of jinganyu — calling everyone to come close as one rather deliberately recounts an important item of information. The meaning of the other non-nuclear verb on this card, ngarran, is brought out in Dyalnguy by adding to wuyuban the word jilbu ‘nothing’ plus locative ending -ngga; literally ‘tell about nothing’ to describe telling someone that one doesn’t have a certain thing when in fact one does. (In Dyirbal society it is customary to share. One can’t really refuse to share; what one can do is deny that there is anything to share.) I had thus uncovered a division of the vocabulary into nuclear items, each with a wide general meaning (which cannot be defined in terms of other nuclear verbs), and non-nuclear items, with more specialised meanings (which can be defined in terms of the related nuclear item). Dyalnguy reveals this division, and also provides the definitions for non-nuclear items. And I had had no idea whatsoever that this sort of division might exist. It simply revealed itself, through systematic elicitation and cross-elicitation, with two incomparable language consultants.

Michael Halliday had taken a year off in 1967/8. I didn’t see why I should miss out so as soon as he returned I took off, to spend the academic year 1968/9 at Harvard. One semester teaching and one semester research, sponsored by Professor Susumu Kuno’s project on ‘Mathematical Linguistics and Automatic Translation’. Susumu didn’t require me to do anything related to the project (such is the way money frequently is granted and spent in academic circles). I just got on with my own research and at the end of the six months gave him a 22-page paper, ‘Syntactic orientation as a semantic property’ for his Report Number 24 to the National Science Foundation. 106 I am a linguist

Basically, the year in America was a wonderful learning experience. A course on ‘Comparative Indo-European Linguistics’ by Calvert Watkins further extended my training in Historical Linguistics. Dwight Bolinger taught in the Spanish Department but he was also a major creator within general linguistic theory. Dwight was giving a lecture on phrasal verbs in English (later an important book) at Yale, and I went down and back with him on the train. It’s hard to imagine anyone better organised than Dwight. He first went through a newspaper, noting interesting word combinations and grammatical usages which he would the next day clip out and place in appropriate files, as raw material for future studies. Next he spent some time reading a linguistics book. Then, raincoat folded neatly for a pillow, Dwight lay across two seats and slept. I just lolled in my seat for the three-hour late-night journey, half awake and half asleep. Dwight awoke thirty minutes before we got to Boston and returned to sit next to me, for a social chat. I taught an undergraduate course on semantics, which was great fun. In England a lecturer drones on and the students take notes; one just does it. Lecturing in the States is more like a joust. The students ask questions — sometimes to clarify a point but other times simply to show how clever and well- read they are. Cal Watkins came to one of my classes and Dwight Bolinger to another, just to see what I was like. In Dwight’s presence I was explaining some theoretical point with illustration from verbs in the Dyirbal everyday and mother-in-law language styles. One verb, gujin, relates to the dissemina- tion of a smell; what emits the smell is the subject and what perceives the smell is the object. I commented that there is no good translation of this verb into English. After the class Dwight mentioned, very nicely, that there is such a verb — waft. I also taught a graduate course on the indigenous languages of Australia, with a class notable for its quality. There was Ives Goddard, now one of the foremost experts on North American Indian languages. And Michael Silver- stein, now an enigmatic icon in linguistic anthropology. And Ken Hale. Ken probably worked on more out-of-the-way languages than anyone else ever has. He had unparalleled knowledge of Navaho and Papago (now called Tohono O’odham) among other North American languages. He’d spent three years in Australia, working on several score different languages and achieving a good degree of fluency in a dozen of them. I went along to his weekly class on field methods at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (just down the road from Harvard). And we spent an afternoon each week with Ken telling me about the structures of two Australian languages — Warlpiri, and then Lardil. frustration and fulfilment 107

He requested me to ask about each grammatical category in turn. Ken had it all worked out in his head. Pronouns in Warlpiri? He’d write out the paradigm on the blackboard. Verbs? The five conjugations with major inflections for each. I wrote it all down and photocopied my notebook pages for Ken. Surely no one could equal Ken Hale in linguistic acumen and insight. Yet when he died in 2001 (at the early age of 67) it pretty much all went with him. Ken inspired people. He cared. He was a wonderful person. Yet he realised only a tiny fraction of his potential. Where are the books? Where are the detailed and intricate grammars of Navaho, of Warlpiri, and of all those other languages Ken knew through and through (knew in terms of their structural organisation, for it was through this understanding that Ken was able to use the languages in fluent fashion)? Ne’er a one. At MIT, the ascendency of Noam Chomsky’s brand of formalistic language theory was just coming to the boil. About 140 people attended his weekly seminar course — students from MIT and elsewhere, all the faculty, visitors like me, just about everyone. At this time there was emerging a splinter movement called ‘Generative Semantics’, which — within a few short years — budded and bloomed and then withered (from observation, this seems to be the inevitable path of all such formal theories about language). Two of the proponents of Generative Semantics were John Robert (‘Haj’) Ross, the anointed boy genius of MIT (more about him in chapter 9) and George Lakoff, who had a temporary position at Harvard. Haj and George sat together, near the back of Chomsky’s class, whispering their disagreement with the proffered analysis. From time to time George sighed deeply, as if having to deal with a wilful child who just wouldn’t listen to what Mommy said was best to do. Eventually, he’d stick up his hand. ‘Noam,’ in a tone of forced patience, ‘there’s facts which show that your position requires substantial modification.’ Chomsky, ever alert and basically polite, would listen. ‘Put this on the board!’ George started dictating and Chomsky couldn’t help but comply. Sentence after sentence went up, George taking over. We never did get to the point (if, indeed, there was one). Eventually, patience broke. Chomsky erased the Lakoffinalia and suggested: ‘George, if you don’t like it you can leave.’ But he didn’t, and something of a similar nature recurred each week. It was like a bit of old-time music hall.

Then it was back to the department in London, which still consisted just of Halliday and me (and he still had little time to talk linguistics). At Harvard and MIT there had been a steady hum of intellectual excitement. Mind you, some 108 I am a linguist

of the things Americans get excited about aren’t really worth getting excited about; but it did provide a most stimulating environment. Back in London — just about nothing. I’ve seldom got really depressed in my life; but this was one time when it certainly took over, for weeks on end. Well, do something about it! Back in June the Australian National University had advertised a chair in linguistics within its School of General Studies. Rodney Huddleston had just moved to the University of Queensland, and he wrote that a Senior Lecturer from Canberra — whom I shall call Blossom — had been in Brisbane and reckoned that he was going to get the chair. Rodney had formed a low opinion of Blossom and was, frankly, appalled. Ah! Maybe this was the way forward for me. If the leading candidate didn’t impress, could I stand a chance? It was lonely being the only Australianist in Europe. And, just as important, Australia is exactly my sort of place. No hereditary aristocracy. Nothing like the English class system. A relaxed, egalitarian milieu where people are judged on their merit, not on forebears or connections. Well, it was worth a try. My exploratory letter to the ANU brought forth a telegram. ‘Please send in application without delay. Committee meets next week.’ I wrote to Calvert Watkins at Harvard and Arthur Capell in Sydney: ‘Can I ask a favour. Or, rather, I hope it’s alright that I’ve just taken one and named you as referee for my application to Canberra.’ There was no interview. But, a couple of weeks later, another telegram which offered me the job and advised ‘letter follows’. (I was later told that Stephen Wurm, Professor of Linguistics in the Research School of Pacific Studies at ANU, had been on the committee. Never one for understatement, he’d opined that I was one of the top ten linguists in the world, which was ridiculous. I’d have been happy to be included in the top hundred, and that would have been a considerable exaggeration.) It seemed sensible to wait for the letter and peruse all details. But the mails at Christmas are slow. Another telegram arrived, hoping that I’d let them have a decision soon. Hm, now was the time to do a little bargaining (too late for this after having accepted the post). So I sent off four requests: (1) need two more lectureships; (2) funds to enable me to invite top world linguists for short visits; (3) if the library didn’t have the books and journals I considered necessary, would they buy them; (4) need finance to cover fieldwork by me and other members of the department. The reply was good. There were two lecturers in linguistics besides Blossom and I would make four. The minimum size of a department was five so I could certainly appoint one more person, but beyond frustration and fulfilment 109

that student numbers would have to rise as justification. For points (2) and (4) the answers were a qualified ‘yes’ and for (3) a definite promise, But, in fact, the library was already of a very high standard. I also wrote to John Haiman, a Canadian scholar doing a PhD at Harvard whom I’d been most impressed with, asking if he’d fancy a lectureship with me at Canberra. ‘Yes.’ Jim McCawley, a really top theoretician from the University of Chicago, was passing through London around Christmas time. Would he be interested in a couple of months in Australia one northern summer as a Visiting Fellow? Certainly, he would. All of these enquiries were necessary since at that time there was virtually no linguistics in Australia. It would be a real challenge, but the signs were propitious. Having accepted a Research Fellowship while I was still 21 (well, just), it was nice formally to accept the Canberra chair while I was 30 (by a couple of days). But I didn’t take it up until July 1970, at the riper age of thirty-one-and-a-half. Mother had died of cancer, at the age of 60, the previous December, so father and sister Ruth came to spend this Christmas with us. I told father about the Canberra offer, then still being mulled over. ‘Of course you won’t take it.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, you’ve got to think of your children.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The schools wouldn’t be so good over there.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Well, I don’t think they would be.’ In fact, they are just as good. Father’s attitude was absolutely typical of how the English view Australia. And it was this kind of hollow arrogance which helped spur me to emigrate. I did think of returning to England to live, in 1991 (see chapter 13). People at Oxford then loftily stated: ‘I suppose you’ll be awfully glad to get back here after all those years in Australia.’ It was this, in part, which made me realise how much better a place Australia is to live in (for me, at least). Of course I wasn’t idle during the year back in London. There wasRecording the blues to write (see chapter 4). Before leaving University College I prepared a full set of lectures for the first year undergraduate course at Canberra, to give myself a flying start. And for the past couple of years I’d been reading about and thinking about and generalising about languages with small adjective classes. This matured into a long paper ‘Where have all the adjectives gone?’ (I actually thought of the title in 1968 but didn’t finish a full draft of the paper until early 1970.) An important basis for this was the idea that the lexicon of a language can be divided into a number of ‘semantic types’ (we return to this in Chapter 10). All words of MOTION (‘go’, ‘jump’, ‘take’, ‘follow’) make up one type, verbs of 110 I am a linguist

SPEAKING (‘talk’, ‘discuss’, ‘remark’, ‘ask’ and many more) are another type, and so on. As mentioned in Chapter 2, some languages, scattered across the world, have a class of adjectives with very few members. These almost always belong to just four semantic types. Igbo, from West Africa, has just eight adjectives made up of two from the semantic type DIMENSION (‘big’ and ‘little’), two from the AGE type (‘old’ and ‘new’), two from VALUE (‘good’ and ‘bad’) and two from the COLOUR type (‘black/dark’ and ‘white/light’). I investigated a fair number of other languages with small adjective classes and found that their members are invariably restricted to DIMENSION, AGE, VALUE and COLOUR terms. Slightly larger adjective classes may have more terms from these types (such as ‘long’ and ‘red’) and also a few from the PHYSICAL PROPERTY type (like ‘raw’, ‘hot’ and ‘wet’). Only in larger classes (with a few score members) do we find items belonging to what I call the HUMAN PROPENSITY semantic type — words such as ‘jealous’, ‘happy’ and ‘clever’. So, the question posed by the title of my paper: in languages like Igbo with a small adjective class, how does one express all the other concepts which are covered by adjectives in a language such as English? After examination of several dozen languages for which there are good descriptions, I arrived at the inductive generalisation that PHYSICAL PROPERTY terms are generally coded as verbs (so that one says something like ‘it heavies’ rather than ‘it is heavy’) while HUMAN PROPENSITY ideas are often coded as nouns (in such a language one says ‘she has clever- ness’ for ‘she is clever’). The paper was widely circulated in 1970 and quoted quite a bit. But I was then so busy working on Australian languages (and teaching and administrat- ing) that it didn’t get revised for publication until 1976 (appearing in 1977). The results have stood up well over the past three decades, requiring only minor modification.

The first thing I had to learn was how Australian universities organise their undergraduate teaching. In England each department accepts a group of students who follow a set sequence of courses for three years and then get an honours degree. In Australia, students are taken into a faculty and can do any of the courses offered by departments in that faculty — four in the first year, and three in second and third years, for a pass degree. At that time this had to include two majors (a three-year sequence in a discipline) and one sub-major (a two-year sequence). The top ten per cent or so of students are earmarked for honours. They take extra honours courses in the second and third years and then stay frustration and fulfilment 111

on for a fourth year — which is roughly half coursework and half thesis — for a graded honours degree (first, upper second, lower second and third class). The allocation of academic staff is based not on quality of teaching but on quantity of students, in terms of Effective Full-Time Student Units, EFTSUs. Each student doing a first-year course counts one-quarter and one doing a second or third year course counts one-third of an EFTSU. A fourth-year honours student is one EFTSU and an MA or PhD student counts as two. Before I arrived ‘general linguistics’ (as it was called) was a section within the Germanic Languages department, under the stewardship of Blossom. Student numbers had been slowly falling, from 23 EFTSUs in 1968 to 20 in 1970. The university had to do something about it — either close linguistics down or appoint a professor to revive it. Blossom and his two colleagues had been offering General Linguistics I, taught each year, and General Linguistics A and B, taught in alternate years. A student did a sequence of I then A then B, or I then B then A. I wrote saying that I was sure we could attract excellent students by offering exciting courses and proposed that Linguistics I, II and III should be taught every year. Blossom replied that this idea was all very well, but would we have the resources to do it? He told me that on appointment he’d been told by the Dean that he wouldn’t have to teach more than 81 hours per year, or 3.1 hours per week (there being 26 teaching weeks in the year). Amazed, I took this up with the ANU Registrar who replied that Blossom had a similar contract to me, with no mention of teaching hours. The Dean he quoted had gone back to Sweden and the Registrar didn’t want to write to him about it. What the Registrar should have done was have Blossom in and tell him where he stood. Nothing was done. (However, the Registrar and Vice-Chancellor did provide terrific support in the Blossom saga, as is described a little later on.) Blossom’s secretary, who became my secretary, told me she never thought I’d come after receiving letters like that. But come I did, with a vision of providing courses of the highest quality across the entire gamut of linguistics, and training students to be fine scholars, able to provide informed and revealing description of languages, and then to investigate inductive generalisations concerning the inherent nature of human language. I made a private commitment to stay for at least ten years, since I reckoned it would take that long to achieve my aims. One can only do so much at a time and I decided to concentrate on undergraduate teaching. Linguistics I, II and III were introduced in 1971 and went well. Our total EFTSUs advanced to 32 in 1971 and then to 40 in 1972. But the full-year courses involved several faculty members, each teaching a portion and 112 I am a linguist

all contributing questions for the final exam. Some departments were bringing in semester courses and these seemed to me a much better option. Each member of staff would be wholly responsible for two courses each semester, one at junior and one at senior level. I set out an ambitious list of over twenty semester courses, some taught each year and others in alternate years. The faculty secretary shook her head in disbelief. ‘How can you teach all these courses, Bob, with just a man and a boy to assist you?’ (By the man she meant Karl Rensch, a hold-over from the Blossom era who was a tower of strength, and by the boy John Haiman, who had just arrived.) I explained that the courses would be advertised some time in advance and gradually implemented. The prospect of these courses would attract students whose numbers would justify the appointment of more staff to teach the courses. And so it happened. Our EFTSUs went up to 48 in 1973, 70 in 1974 and 97 in 1975. They then levelled out at between 100 and 130 for the next decade. The advantage of the Australian system is that students could be accepted into the Faculty of Arts knowing nothing about linguistics and then do a major or an honours degree in the discipline. They might do linguistics to make up a fourth unit in the first year, and then fall in love with it. Or some other student might say what a fascinating course it was. Or a lecturer in another department could recommend that linguistics would go well with Japanese or German or anthropology. By putting on high-quality courses we were able to attract high-quality students, in sufficient numbers to ensure a satisfactory EFTSU score. It was, of course, important to appoint high-quality staff who, at that time, had to come from overseas. (Later, the students we trained went on to fill a high proportion of the faculty positions in the linguistics departments which opened up at other Australian universities — during the late 70s and 80s.) I advertised jobs widely, to the best departments around the world. And I persuaded the Registrar to let me write the letters requesting a reference, rather than him. Referees tend to respond differently to a linguist they know, than to a face- less administrator. Also, I asked the sort of questions I considered appropriate about the candidates. At that time Australian universities didn’t have a very high standing, especially for linguistics. My crucial question was: what chance would the applicant have of being appointed to a lectureship (if writing to a colleague in the UK) or an assistant professorship (to someone in the USA) in your university, if you had one available? In this way I was able to avoid the ‘oh well, he (or she) is not all that good, but I suppose they’d be OK for a job frustration and fulfilment 113

in Australia’ syndrome. This paid off, and — except for one mistake — we appointed excellent academic staff. Faculty members came from the USA, Canada, England and Poland, providing a healthy prism of backgrounds and interests. They were all people with good and positive reasons for wanting to work in Australia. All that is except for the mistake (I should have known better), someone who couldn’t get a job in North America and came to Canberra as a stop-gap, hoping to return to his home continent at a later date. This never happened. If we hadn’t offered him a position, it is entirely likely that he would never have gained an academic job anywhere. (More on this man, who we can call ‘Dr Povar’, in Chapter 15.) I’d calculated that a staff of six highly competent and dedicated scholars would ideally be needed to implement the ambitious teaching program. Allow- ing for a sabbatical of one year off in seven (or one semester off in seven), we’d always have five people on deck. In fact, we were able to progress to a faculty of eight by 1976 and kept that number into the 1990s. Almost all the staff were doing research on some previously undescribed language so — in addition to the standard sabbatical — they were able to have the occasional semester off for linguistic fieldwork. Every aspect of the discipline was covered. It is important to have a phonetician, who can teach an advanced course on the physics of speech, studying pitch, frequency and loudness of sound waves, rate of air-flow, and so on. But they should be able to teach other courses besides, and our phonetician could. I wanted a quality course on the use of linguistic methods and results in language teaching (what is generally called Applied Linguistics) for those students who took a major in a language together with a major in linguistics and planned a teaching career. But an applied linguist must be able to teach other courses as well, and ours could. The way in which university courses are assessed had troubled me. When a boy, I’d been an excellent examinee, but considered this a valueless attribute. One could cram a subject for 48 hours, go into the exam, scribble furiously, gain an excellent mark, and then have forgotten it all 48 hours later. When I became a teacher the insufficiency of exams was glaringly apparent in a quite different way. Under examination conditions, some bright students produced mediocre materials, and middling students poor stuff. Yet one had to tread carefully in trying to change the system. My opportunity came in 1973, when students occupied the central administration building. One of their demands coincided with mine — assessment based on work during a course, perhaps supplemented by a take-home exam 114 I am a linguist

at the end. I swiftly abolished exams for all later-year units. For the first year they were kept, since some students do unduly collaborate (that is, cheat) on their assignments and the first-year class is too big (with more than a hundred students) properly to police. Other courses were smaller — usually no more than thirty members — so we could detect and expunge any nefarious conduct. Mind you, continuous assessment makes much more work for the teacher. It can take a couple of hours to mark a long essay, whereas twenty minutes suf- fices to assess a three-hour examination. But assessment which does not rely on a single formal examination at the end of the course is a much more satisfying pedagogic procedure for all concerned. For the exams which were retained, students were allowed to take in any notes or books. The questions didn’t ask for facts to be regurgitated; rather they sought to discover whether a student understood basic theoretical issues, and could think in an intelligent way. A typical question might run: ‘In what ways do languages change, in phonology, in morphology and in syntax? In what respects is English likely to change during the next hundred years?’ There was no ‘correct’ answer to the second part of the question; we simply wanted to see whether a student could think and argue in a cogent and sensible manner. I’d planned to concentrate on undergraduate teaching. But then graduate students came a-knocking. People wanted to do MAs and PhDs on languages from Australia and the Pacific region. Good students, who it was a pleasure to have. Of course they added to student numbers and helped the staffing formula. More important — there is nothing more satisfying than to supervise a fine student writing a grammar of a previously undescribed language. My standards for accepting graduate students were high, but of course they paid off. Someone with a first or upper second class honours degree in linguistics could go on to an MA or PhD. They’d have done eight semester courses during the first three years of the bachelor’s degree, and then another three or four in the honours year — eleven or twelve courses in all. Someone with a good honours degree in another discipline (we had people from mathematics, psychology, anthropology, medicine, English, German, French and Classics) had to do an MA by coursework, involving 12 courses over two years. Anyone without a good honours degree had first to pass a one-year Master’s Qualifying course (all coursework) and then a two-year MA which was half coursework and half thesis. Three years before they could commence a PhD. ‘That’s too long,’ a prospective student might exclaim. I simply shrugged: ‘That’s what it takes.’ Most of them did it. A few baulked; and some didn’t do well enough in the Master’s Qualifying year to be permitted to go on to an MA. I directed these frustration and fulfilment 115

to Macquarie University in Sydney, which offered different kinds of linguistics courses from us. In all, 33 PhD dissertations were completed during the 20 years that I was head of department. Of these, 26 were descriptions of previously undescribed languages (16 Australian Aboriginal, 7 Austronesian, 3 Papuan), each making a substantial contribution to knowledge. Twelve of the dissertations were published as books, and fifteen of the students went on to academic positions in universities. About 1972 or 1973, the Students’ Union asked if they could circulate a ques- tionnaire to all students in each course, asking their opinion about the lecturer, the syllabus, the reading list, the workload, the assessment scheme, and so on. I agreed, thinking that no harm could come of it. In fact the results were both revealing and useful. And — a matter of immense surprise — it appeared my performance as a teacher was ranked as outstanding. This was as much a matter of astonishment as when, at age 8, I’d eventually found my name at the top of Miss Bowring’s class list at Rodborough Primary School. Well, something must have been learnt since that bruising first year in London. I’d been appointed professor till age 65, as one almost always was; and also head of department until age 65, as a professor was at that time. Soon afterwards, the headships were for a five year period. I suggested resigning my lifetime position and being appointed for a five-year term; but the higher-ups would have none of it. I didn’t in fact manage to divest myself of the headship until December 1990, a period of twenty-and-a-half years. It was really satisfying leading a good-quality department in Australia at that time. What helped my survival was adherence to a small number of basic principles, some learnt from others, some gained from experience. Dennis Fry, Professor of Phonetics at University College London, had stated a major principle — first decide what you want to do, then work out how to do it. That is, do not begin by familiarising yourself with the bureaucratic rules, and then thinking in terms of what they permit. Any reasonable course of action should be possible; it’s just a matter of working out the appropriate strategy. Hugh Sacker, a teacher of German at University College, had explained a fiscal principle. If as an individual citizen you overspend then you’re in trouble, and could end up in jail. But if the head of a university department overspends a bit (not grossly, of course), this can be seen as a good thing. He (or she) may well be given more money the following year since more appears to be needed. Acting on Hugh’s principle, I overspent mildly when Michael Halliday left me in charge, in 1967/8. Half-a-dozen of the best linguists from around Britain 116 I am a linguist

were invited to London to each give a seminar, in order to provide a dab of intellectual stimulation. The faculty absorbed the deficit I ran up. In Canberra I always overspent a little, and generally received a bit more the following year. (The most important thing of course is not to underspend, for then they may give you less the following year.) We built up a good departmental library, to supplement the university library; we had guest lecturers from out-of-town; the faculty needed money for fieldwork; and so on. The third principle I taught myself: don’t ask questions, just make statements. I wouldn’t go to the Dean and ask: ‘Can we have $5,000 to pay for tutors in classes with large enrolments?’ What I’d say was: ‘In order to maintain our high academic standards, which have been widely admired both within and without the university, we need $5,000 this year to provide tutorials for our larger classes.’ A question invites a simple ‘no’ as answer. A statement requires a reasoned response, and it was scarcely ever negative. I also learnt, from experience, not to be too definite. The set of rules I’d con- cocted on arrival in 1970 set out the prerequisites for entry to an MA course. Then a potential student turned up with an unusual background and I tried to vary the requirements only to be told that it wasn’t possible. ‘But I made up the rules.’ ‘Yes, and then they were approved by the faculty, by the board and by the council; they can’t be varied.’ There was a simple remedy. When drafting rules for the new set of semester courses, the following year, I included ‘normally’ before every stipulation; this allowed freedom for me to do whatsoever I wanted (within reason, of course). The simplest and also one of the most important habits is always to say ‘thank you’. If you ask a secretary to make a photocopy, even though it is part of her job, then say ‘thank you’ when it is done. If someone sends you a copy of an academic paper, or a book, always drop a line to say ‘thanks’. Always thank (preferably, in writing) a colleague from another department who gives up their time to present a guest lecture in your course. If someone invites you out for dinner, then say ‘thank you’ the next day — in person, or by phone or letter. Only a few people in Australia (and also in America, for that matter) do habitually behave in this way. But it is something which is much appreciated. (I like people to say ‘thank you’ to me, as well.) There are two other principles with which I operate, and they are linked. The first is: always expect the worst. If you apply for something, be prepared not to get it. That way, if it doesn’t come up, you won’t be disappointed; if it does, then it’ll be a pleasant surprise. The related principle is: never give up. If at first you don’t succeed in some reasonable endeavour, then try again, maybe frustration and fulfilment 117

from a different angle. Just keep on trying until you eventually succeed, as you certainly will. (Of course, if you have embarked on some course and it becomes clear that there is no chance of success, then cut your losses and pull out. You probably should have known better than to start it in the first place.) I aimed to lead by example, teaching as much as (or more than) other members of staff, besides administering and keeping up a steady stream of research. I advised my colleagues about their research projects and encouraged them in applying for outside grants. We had a fine team, with no factions (otherwise I would certainly not have remained for as long as I did), and with everyone sharing my vision of high-quality teaching across the discipline and striving to implement it. A most important factor was collegiality. Every important decision was discussed with other members of staff. Everyone was involved — and felt themselves to be involved — in what was happening. Three or four times each year we held meetings that reviewed the progress of every fourth-year honours student and graduate student in the department. In this way, everyone had a full perspective, could perceive any areas of difficulty, and work towards al- leviating them. At the end of each semester we would have a meeting at which each member of staff explained the examining scheme for the courses they had taught and justified the grades they had awarded. In this way we were able to achieve uniformity of examining standards across the department. (At first, some faculty members were plainly rather generous with their grades while others were rather mean; after a few years we were all pretty similar in our expectations and marking.) I have a dislike of secrecy, which is often accorded the more-respectable- sounding name of confidentiality. Anyone could have gone through my files; I had nothing to hide. And I deliberately flaunted university policy when this interfered with what I considered a proper course of action. For instance, a new appointment was decided by a committee consisting of the Dean, me, and two professors from other departments. Only they were supposed to see the referee reports. I’d illicitly let each of my colleagues see all the information on each candidate, including referee reports. We’d decide on who we wanted and I’d ask the committee to endorse the department’s preference (which was always also my preference). Right from the beginning we had a Departmental Committee — which met twice each semester — consisting of two students from each year, two graduate students and all the academic staff. Each course was frankly discussed, students airing any worries and staff responding. The committee had a student as 118 I am a linguist

Deputy Chair (I was Chair) and we’d keep in touch between meetings, with the Deputy Chair letting me know of any difficulties they’d heard of, so that I could investigate and take remedial action before things became too serious. Any new development was discussed at the committee. The students outnumbered the staff and could have outvoted us. But nothing in the nature of a confrontation ever appeared. It is important not to convey a false impression. Most things were indeed rosy, but during my twenty years as head there had been just one major hurdle to overcome — the problem of Blossom. This erupted a couple of months before I arrived, with the Dean writing to the Vice-Chancellor, on 6 May 1970, as follows: ‘Recently a student who is in my opinion balanced and responsible laid complaints about the academic conduct of Dr [Blossom] in the Linguistics Department. I made a few further inquiries — not extensive — which confirmed the student’s complaints. It was alleged that Dr [Blossom] was frequently late to classes; cancelled them readily or failed to appear; did not prepare classes well or coordinate his course sufficiently, and was unsatisfactory in his han- dling of some details of marking and examining.’ The week after I arrived, Blossom took off for a nine-month sabbatical overseas and people said he was unlikely to return. But he did, in May 1971, and it didn’t take long for the complaints to be renewed. I was that term concentrating on a final revision of the Dyirbal grammar, but something had to be done. I went to a class, was appalled, went to see the Dean, was told to attend more classes, did so, went to see the Vice-Chancellor. In all I attended seven hours of Blossom’s ‘teaching’ and submitted a forty-page report to the Vice-Chancellor in which I said I felt unable to assign any teaching to him during the third term. Blossom’s shortcomings can be seen in extracts from a letter which a student wrote to the Vice-Chancellor, as she said, ‘on my own initiative’. ‘His classes are designed to test one’s memory, not one’s intelligence or grasp of the subject; in them, facts and definitions are presented, examinations of the validity of theories or analyses are not encouraged. His classes are generally ill-prepared; on occasions he has devoted them to reading from a book. He does not seem to be well-equipped to handle questions from a class — either on the subject matter raised in it or on his running of it — and appears to feel threatened when faced with them. He is unwilling to admit that he does not know the answer to a question, and equally unwilling to admit to making a mistake ... I do not consider Dr [Blossom] either efficient or versatile in his teaching, nor do I find his classes profitable.’ frustration and fulfilment 119

Blossom then announced that he had actually been appointed — back in 1965 — as Senior Lecturer in Phonetics and in future would decline to teach anything other than phonetics (the nature of speech sounds) in the narrowest sense. He refused to answer questions about how phonetics related to any other branch of linguistics, including phonology (the study of how speech sounds are organised into a system in a particular language, in order to communicate meaning). The Vice-Chancellor instructed me to allocate him some phonetics classes within the first-year course in March 1972, so that an investigating committee could attend and assess them. But students complained, and began leaving the course, while the investigating committee had not yet been assembled. Feeling that my primary responsibility was to the students, I relieved Blossom of his lecturing. The Vice-Chancellor stepped in and offered him ‘special leave’ for the remainder of the year, on the understanding that he should look for a job elsewhere. But he didn’t, and returned to the ANU in early 1973. I sequestered him in a room on a different floor from the rest of the department and we carried on with our business, most people scarcely aware of Blossom’s existence. A disciplinary committee was now to be assembled, with one member of the ANU Law Faculty to represent Blossom and another to represent the university at the committee’s hearings. ‘Is there any student Blossom can call to testify on his behalf?’ I was asked by the university’s lawyer. Not a single person, of that I was sure. Well, lawyers take their time. Three months passed, then six, then eight. My sources told me that, from his position of isolation, Blossom’s nerve was beginning to crack. Thus far he’d scorned all talk of a settlement with the university but now he might be interested in one. ‘We’ll make him an offer,’ suggested the Registrar when I conveyed this information. ‘No’, I warned, ‘anything coming from you will be spurned. Talk to the lawyer representing Blossom and get him to suggest that Blossom should bring up the idea of a settlement.’ In September 1973 I was involved in a quite bad car crash at the end of a field trip in North Queensland. A few days later the Registrar rang. ‘I’m sorry about your broken arm. But there’s good news. Blossom has agreed to resign immediately in consideration of a monetary payment.’ I believe he received a lump sum of about two-and-a-half times his annual salary (and he had been fully paid all through the kerfuffle). It had taken more than three years after I arrived to get rid of someone whose performance was simply appalling. The Vice-Chancellor (Sir John Crawford) and Registrar (Colin Plowman) had supported me to the fullest extent. I hope I was able to repay them by establishing a really fine linguistics department over the next decade and a half. 120 I am a linguist

One great fillip was the steady stream of distinguished Visiting Fellows I was able to organise, in almost every year. Besides Jim McCawley, these included Michael Silverstein, Bh. Krishnamurti, Mary Haas, Bernard Comrie, Peter Trudgill, Igor Mel'čuk, Margaret Langdon, Johanna Nichols and Juri Apresjan. All the senior students and most of the staff would go along to the cutting- edge lectures which these visitors gave. And the staff would also attend each other’s advanced-level seminars, for cross-fertilisation of ideas and serendipitous insights. One learns a bit by attending other people’s lectures. A lot by reading the classic texts. But the only way to really master a discipline is by teaching it. We used to rotate the teaching, so that everyone got a go at a fairly wide range of courses. Before essaying a course on a topic I hadn’t tackled before, I’d spend about a year reading widely. Then a month or more of the summer vacation would be devoted to detailed preparation of the lectures. Just thinking through every aspect of a subject, and working out how to present it to students, provided me with an understanding and a facility that I would never have gained through just reading books or doing research on my own projects. By about the age of forty I could reckon to have learnt linguistics reasonably well (although one does always keep on learning) and could then have moved on to a pure research job, instead of waiting another decade to do so. After that, I’d only really gain a lot by teaching an advanced seminar course on some topic I was writing a book on. One can — at any stage of a career — get great feed-back from advanced students, always assuming that the students possess high quality minds, and have had the appropriate middle-level training in linguistics. Students learn by reading and listening, but these activities should always be reinforced by getting them to actually do linguistics. This is achieved, in the first place, by a series of well-constructed problems, presenting data from some language that is critical for a theoretical point being expounded. Such problems are not easy to fabricate. Most will relate to real languages but sometimes a point can be well illustrated by inventing a language. Two of my more ersatz efforts are in the appendix to this chapter. The Guri problem I began on the train to work in London and got so absorbed that I missed my station. Boarded a train going back and missed the station again. This was given, at University College, as an aptitude test to school students applying for a place in our linguistics course. I’d then hand it out in Canberra in the first week of the freshman course, as a hands-on introduction to the discipline. The Out-Of-This- World problem is just fun; but it demands linguistic insight. (These are not at frustration and fulfilment 121

all typical of the problems we used. But it would not be appropriate to include here problems on affix recognition in Classical Arabic, on the case system in the Australian language Djapu, or on word structure in Yagua from Peru.) Courses on various aspects of linguistic theory (phonology and phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics) all fed into a third-year course on ‘field methods’. We’d get a speaker of some out-of-the-way language and the students would — by recording and analysing simple texts, and by asking questions — work out something of the basic structure of the language. The lecturer would advise and assist, but never do the work for them. This course — more than any other — promoted an understanding of the nature of human language, and demonstrated in the most practical way the relevance of the various theoretical tools which had been discussed in earlier courses. And it provided a jumping- off point for those students who would go on to an MA or PhD which involved fieldwork. By efficient streamlining of all activities, I was able to keep up a good research profile. If possible, I’d stay at home for two or three mornings each week for concentrated thinking or writing. Or, if I went to work, there were instructions not to disturb me — no phone calls, no knocks on the door. Some mornings I did have to teach or go to meetings. Every afternoon my door was open, until about six o’clock. This was the time for most teaching, for seeing students, and for administration. Then in the evenings I’d mark undergraduate work and read chapters by graduate students. I stayed on as head of department for too long. My colleagues would say: ‘You can combine teaching, administration and research. Please continue!’ So I did. But things gradually worsened in the 1980s (and the deterioration ac- celerated in the 1990s), as money became scarcer and the bureaucratic load — some imposed by the government, some generated within universities — mushroomed. A university is supposed to be concerned with quality. One appoints the best staff, accepts the best students, teaches a discipline to the highest standard, awards top grades for the best work. But for us the wherewithal to achieve this was based on quantity, on student numbers. Every February, before term began, the university statistician would send a list of students enrolled for each course, and if the numbers were less than the previous year I’d lie awake at night worrying about them. The money allocated to universities was cut, and so as a consequence was the staff/student ratio. One needed more EFTSUs to justify the same number of staff. And then even more. And then more still. There are pluses and minuses 122 I am a linguist

for the Australian system, where students are accepted into a faculty and can select courses taught by any department in the faculty. At first, we reaped the advantage — by offering intellectually tantalising courses, we attracted the best students to linguistics. But as everyone needed more student numbers to keep going, so things changed. The less-than-top quality students would seek out courses which required little intellectual effort and had a low workload, the ‘mickey mouse’ courses. Departments would compete for the patronage of these students by introducing easier and easier offerings. Up until 1988, I’d consistently applied the criterion of quality. But then, although our student numbers had remained constant, they justified only six staff and we had eight. Something had to be done. We put on a part-time MA in Applied Linguistics for Canberra schoolteachers, with after-hours classes. This was an academically worthwhile endeavour, and it brought in more student numbers. What else? How about exploiting the buzz words of 1989. A first-year course on ‘Cross-cultural communication’ — quite distinct from our regular high-quality linguistics courses — attracted over a hundred enrolments. (Mind you, enrolments dropped in the mid-90s, when buzz words shifted.) When I did step down from the headship, at the end of 1990, student numbers again just about justified the staff we had. My life was being spent within the university system. Just what is this system? How did it evolve, how is it changing, where is it heading? The next chapter airs these issues.

PUBLICATIONS The list of major publications, at the end of this volume, includes the article on genders (or noun classes) from 1968, that on nuclear and non-nuclear verbs, under the title ‘A method of semantic description’, from 1971, and ‘Where have all the adjectives gone?’ from 1977.

APPENDIX Solutions to both problems are at the end of the book, on pages 355-8. frustration and fulfilment 123

Guri problem Here are twelve sentences in the Guri language, with translations into English. 1. Dole midil nubi humab gahi bulul sono, The man kicked the woman’s buttocks. 2. Dole midil sono yabob gahi, The man shoved the woman with his knee. 3. Gahi midil bera humam dole bulul nubi, The woman is punching the man’s head. 4. Dole bulul nubi yabom gahi bulul bera, The man is butting his head into the woman’s shoulder. 5. Gahi bulul nubi yabob dole, The woman butted the man with her head 6. Gahi midil nubi humam dole bulul bera, The woman is kicking the man’s shoulder 7. Dole suni midim sono, The man has a big knee 8. Gahi suni bulum nubi, The woman has a big head 9. Dole bibo midib nubi, The man used to have small feet 10. Gahi midil bera humab dole bulul sono, The woman punched the man’s buttocks 11. Dole suni bulum bera, The man has large shoulders 12. Gahi bibo midim bera, The woman has small hands

The words used in these sentences are (note that English translations are only a rough guide):

NOUNS ADJECTIVES VERBS VERB ENDINGS dole, man suni, big huma- -b gahi, woman bibo, small yabo- -m bera, arm midi- -l sono, thigh bulu- nubi, body

Work out the meanings of the verbs, and the meanings/functions of the verb endings. Discuss the grammar and semantics of the Guri language, in so far as it is revealed in these examples.

Out-of-this-world problem As his craft hovered in sight of Altus Rex, Latso again flipped the South- Eastern District Manual to page 974. He had already had time enough, on 124 I am a linguist

the six weeks flight from Earth, to memorise every word of the four-page entry on Altus. But the imminence of landfall was making Latso increasingly jumpy and nervous. He wondered if he had missed anything. If perhaps two pages had been stuck together, or if there had been more data on Altus in the Appendix. No, there were just the three sections. Geography of the planet; description of the habits and civilisation-ranking of the most advanced species encountered; and a final paragraph — the briefest of all — on the language. Latso counted it up again — twenty-three words!! What was that to go on? But then what could he expect? As a probationary linguist on his first assignment it was perfectly standard for him to have been sent to a class IIa species. And — Latso knew this by heart from the seven years training for his bachelor’s degree at the Extraterrestrial Language Bureau — a class IIa people could be expected to have between thirty and thirty-five words. About twenty-five nouns and half-a-dozen or so verbs,if you were lucky. To have had twenty-three of these recorded by a geological survey party, fifty thousand years before, was more than any probationary linguist had the right to expect. Latso read again the account of the ‘people’ of Altus Rex — at least he kept trying to think of them as ‘people’. The intelligent species were two-metre- long eel-like creatures, who spent most of their time in hollow logs under the water. But there was a peculiarity. Although the people lived on fish, and slept totally submerged, they always emerged to lie in the grass for two hours each afternoon. A test conducted by the first-contact party had established that they had to do this. There was an electrical component to the species’ physiology that could only be charged up by lying in the warm rays of the afternoon sun. (There was nothing subtle about the test — one of the eels was simply kept forcibly submerged all day. And died.) The eels apparently had no contact with their nearest intelligent rival — a weasel-like animal (with Ia classification, and thus no hope of developing language for at least two million years). Like the eels, the weasels were carnivores, living chiefly off a smaller scurrying bandicoot-like mammal. And the language. Entirely monosyllabic, with a simple consonant-plus- vowel pattern. Well, at least it was a normal IIa phonology, Latso thought (phonetics had not been his strong point at the Bureau). Again, he began to read the list:

da eel-people ma fish frustration and fulfilment 125

Latso nodded approvingly — every IIa group encountered had a word for the main source of food.

mi sun wa weasel

Good — the main intelligent rival was known and named. This was a species that was going to prosper and conquer its world, as man had earth, thought Latso.

bu animal su be at rest si move

There’s two verbs at least (Latso had shown special aptitude for verb semantics in his final exam, and it was the field he hoped to specialise in, after the ten years obligatory fieldwork).

wu water la land

Suddenly the landing light flashed on. Latso had barely time to buckle himself in before the gravitational lock connected. As the auto-pilot gradually negoti- ated itself nearer and nearer to the salmon-coloured seas of Altus Rex, Latso wondered what changes the last fifty thousand years had wrought in the eel- people, and in their language. By rights they should now be at civilisation stage IId, with a vocabulary of 70-100 words. Latso thought back to his Bureau lessons: that meant there should now be two pronouns, words ending in a consonant, and compound nouns! And the first pair of adjectives should just be in the process of evolution.

Two weeks later, Latso returned to the craft a broken and dejected man. On the basis of the progress he had made thus far the only future he could see for himself in the Bureau was as a counter of vowels. Almost everything had gone wrong. First, Latso had failed to find the eel- people. He had looked in the grass just after noon and in the rivers and seas at night. What finally convinced him that the eels had gone was the result of a fish count — there were now ten times as many fish as there had been at the time of first contact. Nobody was eating them! Strange things had happened on land too. He quickly identified the weasels and bandicoots, but found there were many fewer weasels than previ- 126 I am a linguist

ously and a considerably larger number of bandicoots. And, worst of all, a completely new species was encountered; large, iguana-like animals with long black tails. On the second day Latso discovered that the iguanas were intelligent — and of status IId. He suddenly wondered if they might be related to the ancient eel- people and hastily elicited words for some common notions. Latso’s hands trembled as he converted the semi-gesture signals of the iguanas into the appropriate noise symbols, by means of the Universal Somesthetic Converter. ‘Weasel’ — a curve of the upper lip, back legs kicked forwards, and a burp. Latso searched through his handbook and came up with the vocal equivalent: man. Quite different! Then:

wan animal sil iguana people siw fish

All were totally different from the words obtained fifty thousand years ago. Almost mechanically, Latso elicited more words. He found the two pronouns that each IId language has:

someone dan I bun other than I

And there was a regular IId pattern of verbs:

sun lie down bus stand sin walk about

The Universal Converter dropped from Latso’s hands. He knew he wasn’t the world’s greatest linguist. But he felt he could handle this language. The only trouble was that his designed PhD topic, assigned by the Supreme Sapir of the Bureau, was to investigate the changes the eel people’s language had under- gone in the past fifty thousand years. And the eel-people were no more! Dismally, he obtained a few more words:

wam bandicoot min sun sum grass frustration and fulfilment 127

What was the use? Picking up his Converter, and stuffing it into the fob pocket of his linguist’s robe, he went slowly back to the spaceship. Two hours later, after polishing off a portion of Peking Duck (the one luxuri- ous frozen repast he had brought from home), Latso was feeling better. More relaxed, certainly. But he knew his limitations. Slowly, Latso picked up the telephone to call his Divisional Sapir and report failure.

ASSIGNMENT. You’ve probably guessed that Latso wasn’t of the first ilk. Did he miss something? Could you do better?

7 The role of universities

As mentioned at the end of chapter 3, I went up to university in 1957 expecting to be there for just three years (although I had no clear idea of what to do after that). Several times I did plan to leave — and enter the real world — but somehow never quite got around to doing so. Universities provided a convenient niche in which to do linguistics and, for much of the time, I was able to organise a good group of scholars which it was satisfying (and fun) to lead. I have worked solidly as a member of the university community but never felt myself to be an indissoluble part of it. It’s good to sometimes stand aside and view the university system as an ordinary taxpayer would, to perceive its virtues and its shortcomings. Over the years, things have in many respects changed for the worse. Back in the 1970s my department had about 100 EFT- SUs (effective full-time student units), which justified a faculty of eight. I could have achieved good results with six, provided they were all of high quality and dedicated to the job. Government funding to Australian universities has been cut so drastically that a student load of about 100 EFTSUs now justifies a faculty of four — or perhaps only three — with which it is impossible to provide the quality of instruction that was expected thirty years before. Why has this happened? Well, the community at large — in Australia and across the world — has come to hold universities in lower and lower esteem. The way university staff and students react to this has simply served to lower the esteem still further. But let me start at the beginning, and tell the story more slowly.

The Academy in ancient Athens and the leading universities in Europe and America (and in Australia) a hundred years ago had much in common. There was research — the advancement of knowledge (a better phrasing than ‘the search for truth’). And there was instruction. The imparting of knowledge was a part of instruction, but not the most important aspect. What a university education provided for young men — and for the few young women who, at that time, society deigned to include — was the attainment of an intellectual 130 I am a linguist

maturity. Students acquired the habits of thinking, reasoning and assessing. They then worked in commercial enterprises or in government jobs, either at home or in what were called the colonies. An intellectual sophistication — engendered by university study — enabled them to understand the world in which they were situated, and to administer it in an honest, efficient and beneficial manner. Universities then were elite institutions, which strived to have only the finest scholars on their faculty and to admit students with brain and determi- nation, who were to be the future leaders of society. A member of a university was immersed in academic endeavour. Some problem might turn over in their mind while watching a play, or hiking on Sunday afternoon, until eventually a solution presented itself. Faculty and students were, by and large, dedicated to the pursuit of excellence, a path of endeavour which held its own satisfaction. With the development of science, universities began to provide instruction of a new kind, training in a profession. A professor of physics or biology would, by their own research, advance knowledge, and at the same time instruct students who would go out to apply this knowledge in practical aspects of life. There was still an emphasis on quality. Universities would be funded (or endowed) in terms of the excellence of the publications of their faculty and the value of the training imparted to students. (Not of how many books and papers they published, nor of how many graduates they produced.) But things were changing. The noted American educationalist Abraham Flexner espoused the views just enunciated but he warned, in 1930, of ‘the pressure of numbers, the craving for knowledge, real or diluted, the lack of any general respect for intellectual standards, the intrusion of politics here and of religion somewhere else, the absurd notion that ideals are “aristocratic,” while a free-for-all scramble which distresses the able and intelligent is “democratic”.’ And he bemoaned the cultivation of sports, so that in America a university might be valued more for its football team than for matters intellectual. The scope of universities gradually expanded as vocational courses came to be offered, weakening the intellectual essence of the institution. Flexner believed that training in ‘the make-believe professions — journalism, business, library science, domestic science and optometry — could be discarded: they would not be missed either by the university or society.’ But the trend, once established, did not abate. More people aspired to a university education and more were told to as- pire to it. The ratio of undergraduates to people in the 17-22 age group was, in Australia in the 1920s, a little more than one per cent, creeping up to about the role of universities 131

two per cent by 1939. There was a post-war jump to over four per cent, then a steady climb to six per cent by 1960 and ten per cent by 1980. About the same number were enrolled in Colleges of Advanced Education and Teachers’ Colleges, which were concerned with vocational instruction without any significant component of research. Then the government made CAEs and Teach- ers’ Colleges into universities, thereby doubling the number of university students. And the rise continued; in 2001 the ratio of undergraduates to the 17-22 age group was about 36 per cent (if this undergraduate number is combined with the number of those undertaking every conceivable kind of postgraduate course, the figure is 48 per cent). Similar figures, with proportionate increases, would apply for other countries. Vocations that formerly employed on-the-job training moved into the classroom. In 1960 a trainee nurse would be taken on by a hospital. After three months of lectures by nurse educators, they’d have perhaps fifteen months on the wards, a further three months of lectures and a final fifteen months on the wards, to gain a certificate. Now every nurse-to-be must enrol in a university for three years. And some do not set foot in a hospital ward until their third year. Is this real progress? Is such a classroom-bound training necessary, or appropriate? Do we need departments of nursing in universities (with a full complement of professors, associate professors, senior lecturers and lecturers, each spending a proportion of their time on nursing research) rather than the old system of training in hospitals? In days gone by, a journalist would learn their trade on the job, straight out of school. Then university courses in journalism were introduced, three- year-long courses. And more specialised degrees, such as sports journalism (sorry, Sports Media). Australian universities offer many hundreds of courses for training in the modern world, from a BA in Coaching Science to one in Parks, Recreation and Heritage. Or how about an Executive Certificate in Stage Combat? Vocational courses — whether or not they belong in universities — provide a definite qualification (satisfying established criteria) which is accepted by the appropriate profession. But traditional subjects are still taught and they attract increasing numbers of students, of an increasingly low standard — as the entry level for university drops from the top ten per cent of school leavers, to the top thirty, forty, fifty per cent. We also hear that the training provided by schools is receding in quality. Basic numeracy and literacy (how to write essays), previously the domain of primary and secondary schools, now has to be provided during the first year of university study. 132 I am a linguist

Universities were founded on quality. Employ the best scholars, to provide challenging instruction. Teach about what is best in the world, in the best way, to the best students, and reward their best efforts. Then quantity became a factor; a small factor at first, slowly growing in emphasis. If more students go to university, their overall quality necessarily falls. And the quality of the courses that attracts them must, as a consequence, wane. There are still, of course, brilliant students (those who would have made it into a university fifty years ago) but they are far outnumbered by the hoi polloi. To gain a scrape pass in a course at a good university requires only a little brain, with a minimum of work and attention. In the last chapter I described the Australian system, whereby a student is accepted into a faculty (rather than into a disciplinary department) and may then make virtually any choice of units. In the 1970s this was to the advantage of my department at the ANU. We’d put on challenging freshman courses which attracted good students; the best of these would continue into later years, enabling us to maintain an intense level of training. Then the university admitted more students, of lesser ability. Government funds were cut so that we needed greater student number to retain the same number of faculty. So did every other department, so that we competed — better, fought — for customers. Courses were offered on popular topics (I mentioned our ‘Cross- cultural communication’) with fewer hours of instruction, lower expectation of achievement. Sure, we’d like to maintain quality if we could, the universities said, but we’re being funded on quantity. Quality, perforce, had to take a back seat. In 1930, Abraham Flexner remarked on absurd topics for doctoral dissertations. And absurd doctoral candidates, one should add, mediocre people who would have been rejected with scorn a few decades ago but are now accepted with gratitude — ‘we need the student numbers’. Whereas university departments used to vie for excellence, they now compete for scarce resources by trying to be popular. The core of a traditional university (as against an inflated-name university) must today be the science faculty, where there is an accepted body of results and methods to teach, and definite standards to achieve (in both undergraduate and graduate work). The sort of linguistics I espouse has many of the attributes of a science (see chapter 9), but is almost always included in a Faculty of Arts or Humanities. Thus, this is where my experience lies. An Arts Faculty is, by and large, not an inspiring place. There are language courses where some (maybe all) of the faculty have neither real fluency in the role of universities 133

the language nor any perspicuous understanding of its structure. In Australia (unlike in European nations) students seldom have a period of ‘immersion’, in a situation where the language is spoken around them. Sometimes they don’t bother to learn it at all, since courses are offered on things like ‘Russian literature in translation’. Classics departments (where these still exist) may have a dozen students learning Latin and half-a-dozen doing Greek, the department making up student number by large enrolments in courses in ‘Classical civilisation’ (taught without reference to a classical language). History courses tell a story, which can be fun. Only in the final year of a degree are honours students taught about historiography, the theory of how to research and write history. (In linguistics, we begin with instruction in theoretical principles — of phonetics and phonology, of morphology, of syntax, of semantics, of language comparison — and then in the final year apply these to analysis of a specific language, in the field methods course.) At the ANU we had A. D. Hope, recognised as Australia’s leading poet. He would ruefully relate how his much acclaimed books of poetry brought in pal- try royalties on which he certainly could not live. But, as Professor of English, he was paid a fine salary for interpreting other people’s poetry to students. Most of his colleagues didn’t actually write works of literature; they simply commented on them. What does such commentary involve? I was once chatting to a lecturer in English about how when one first teaches a course the amount of preparation is time-consuming, but the second time around it’s a lot easier, since last year’s lecture notes only need a little adjustment here and there. ‘Oh no,’ she exclaimed, ‘I could never give the same lecture twice.’ Each year she would share with the students her impression of, say, Wuthering Heights. But the book must be read afresh and she would have totally different feelings about it, say different things this year from those said last year. Should a university pay faculty to pass on subjective opinions? And should a government fund students to listen to them? In the first lectures on linguistics we say what a language is, and how human languages differ from the programming principles for computers, or the inter- active messages between bees. Being a bit of a writer of fiction, I got curious about the theory of literary scholarship. The most fundamental point, it seemed to me, was why people categorise novels by Saul Bellow as literature (to be studied in a university course) but not those by Dick Francis. Why is a report in a newspaper not considered an item of literature, to be mulled over and its message interpreted? I obtained permission from the Professor of English (one of A. D. Hope’s successors), and went along — with great expectations — to the 134 I am a linguist

freshman course he gave. How is ‘literature’ defined, I wanted to know. What criteria are involved? What are the parameters of investigation for the study of literature? Alas, I never did find out. At the first class, the professor simply read out a poem and said what he liked about it. I read all of that book of poems (but finished it in my own time, at home). There is, nevertheless, a lot of worthwhile stuff in universities. Some fine researchers, a minority of first-rate teachers, a fair number of dedicated and honest students. They find it increasingly difficult to operate efficiently because of a further factor, the most insidious of all — the burgeoning of bureaucracy and administrators. This has certainly happened in universities right across the world, but it may in some respects be worse in Australia than elsewhere. A university does require a certain number of non-academic administrators, whose role is to facilitate its academic faculty getting on with the main business of the institution. A business manager at the ANU (a really good man) once told me that in his opinion every administrator should have a large notice framed on their wall: ‘The university exists for two purposes, teaching and research, and all my efforts should be directed towards ensuring that these proceed with minimum impediment’. My observation is that over the past thirty years the number of administrators, as a proportion of the total staff of a university, has increased exponentially. And the more of them there are, the less they think in terms of the business manager’s manifesto. An outside observer might gain the idea that administrators are the central axis of a university, with the main task of an academic being to ensure that proper bureaucratic procedures are followed, and that the steady stream of information required by administrators is supplied, with teaching and research being fitted into whatever time may be left over. I’ve always had a strong antipathy to filling in forms. One has to do an annual tax return and fill in a census form once a decade but, apart from these, the waste basket is a favourite receptacle. In the 1960s, universities were wonderfully form-free. Then it started and — like an avalanche — gathered intensity. Some are required by the federal Ministry of Education but many emanate from within the university. Most are irrelevant, unnecessary, never looked at. To complete them can be unbearably time-consuming. About 1974, the ANU sent around a long form which had to be completed by all Science departments but was optional for Arts departments. Straight into the basket. Next year it was obligatory for all departments. Again into the basket. The form requested information about every item of research in the the role of universities 135

department, by faculty members and by students, including statement of how many people-hours were involved. I’d have to have circulated it among all my colleagues and the senior students, reminded and reminded them to supply the figures, collated everything. It would have been an imposition on the teaching and research time of everyone in the department. A month or so later, a senior administrator called up and gently enquired — administrators were deferential towards professors in those days — about the form. The form? Did I still have it? I didn’t think so. It did have to be completed. Really? Should he do it for me, on the basis of my last year’s annual report? Sure, if he wanted to; I had no real objection. And then would I sign it? Yes, alright. The administrator used his imagination in completing the form and I fully concurred. It wasn’t at all what it would have been if I and my colleagues had completed it accurately and honestly. But the whole point is that this didn’t matter. No one looked at the form. It was of no consequence at all and not worth wasting any time over. The same pragmatic way-around-things was followed for this form each year during the next decade and more. I could quote many other examples of how I was able to build and maintain a first-class teaching and research team by protecting my colleagues from such instances of administrative busy-work. Some of the main administrators are chosen from among the academics. At one time they still functioned as academics, simply doing an additional job. In 1970, the Dean of Arts at the ANU — the man who, as mentioned in the last chapter, wrote to the Vice-Chancellor about Dr Blossom just before I arrived — was also head of the Classics Department with pretty much a full- time teaching load. Nowadays a dean is someone who used to be a colleague; administration takes up almost all of their time. As deans and vice-chancellors and the like become more detached from the prime business of a university, so they tend towards a lack of appreciation of the problems academics face. There are occasional exceptions: CEOs who have a vision of what they would like a university to be — which is, in large part, what a traditional university used to be — and the ability to at least partly achieve this. To an outsider looking in on an Australian university, perhaps the most amazing — and disturbing — feature would be the plethora of meetings. In a North American university, a department puts forward the proposal for a new course and the dean approves (or queries) it. Not so in Australia. Any new idea is likely to go to a curriculum committee, perhaps over several meetings. Then to the faculty board for further navel gazing and perhaps amendment. Every- thing must be discussed in detail, in true ‘democratic’ manner. 136 I am a linguist

My experience of universities in Europe and the USA is that a meeting of a faculty or professorial board will be scheduled for four or five in the afternoon. Keep the best hours of the day for research and teaching; meetings can be fitted in when one’s mind is a little tired. They seldom last for more than an hour; people want to go home for supper. But down under one encounters what I call ‘the Australian disease’. Meetings typically commence at nine thirty. Not at nine o’clock, when the working days is supposed to start. (What can one usefully do between nine and nine thirty?) Sometimes an item is dealt with quickly. But once any discussion has started, it gathers momentum. The more people speak, the more people want to speak. Even if the previous speaker has made the same point, you’ve thought of it yourself, gone over in your mind what to say, and you’re going to exercise your right to say it. By a corollary to Parkinson’s Law, a meeting which commences at nine thirty will more often than not extend until lunchtime. Only after about twelve thirty will people think about not speaking rather than think about speaking. When I first became professor at the ANU, the amount of time spent chat- tering round a table — and also the way meetings were run — was a source of amazement. Then we had our student revolt (as they spread around the world) and occupation of the main administration building. The students didn’t like the way the university was being run, the priorities involved. I felt so sympathetic towards them. Went along to a student gathering, in the familiar meetings room. Never have I come away from anything more disillusioned. They seemed to be parodying the faculty, but in absolute seriousness. It was far worse than the real thing! ‘Once the present motion has been deliberated over and voted on, and the one lying on the table has been reactivated, I’d like to foreshadow a conciliatory motion enabling the motion that was just rejected to be redefined as a point of procedure.’ Student politicians tend to become the real politicians of the next decades. Or else toadies in the Ministry of Education, spawning forms. The way in which those students behaved in 1973 should have rung out a warning of things to come. I was naive in many ways. I really thought that in these committees it might be possible to achieve something. A new public holiday was announced, for Canberra Day, on a Monday in mid March. We had short semesters — thirteen weeks — and lots of public holidays already. There were scarcely enough hours available to teach a subject properly. Who needs a further holiday, especially one in the second week of teaching? We should surely continue as usual on this public holiday. I received quite a lot of support but just lost, by about fifteen votes to seventeen. Over the years I kept on trying to introduce what the role of universities 137

I thought were good ideas, or argue against proposals put forward by administrators which seemed misconceived, and generally lost by about fifteen votes to seventeen. Sometimes, however, my motion prevailed (by about seventeen votes to fifteen). But not for long. The administrators would bring in another motion, a couple of months later, to override the one I’d just got through. They always won in the end. It took me years to realise that committees were, except on very rare occasions, simply window-dressing (more specifically, time-wasting window-dressing). The vice-chancellor and deans decided what should be done and there was really nothing anyone else could do about it. (Except permit one’s name to be put forward for election as dean, but I always found an excuse for declining this.) Probably that’s the way it should be. It’s the way a business is run; one or two managers make a decision, they don’t call a meeting of everyone working on the shop floor. If one has good deans and vice-chancellor, the decisions should by-and-large be beneficial. As it is, universities thrive on committees. Often, it seems to be an excuse for not settling down to the hard business of research or preparing lectures or carefully annotating assignments. And there are also the memoranda. Some- one writes up the principles for choosing graduate students (I’d say it in one word: quality). A thirty-page administrative manual. How long did that take to write? How many committee hours were spent discussing it? All absolutely unnecessary. The ideal meeting is at lunchtime, where one can talk while munching sandwiches, in between teaching in the morning and advising graduate students in the afternoon. Not a whole half-day. And certainly not a whole weekend. Back in 1989 all heads of department at the ANU were invited to a two-day meeting at a motel on the coast (three hours drive away) with the vice-chancellor and deans. I originally agreed to attend. But just at that time the federal Minister of Education was attempting — with the vice-chancellor’s connivance — to amalgamate the ANU with the Canberra College of Advanced Education, an institution of totally different character, devoted to vocational training. I’d spent lots of time campaigning against this ill-thought idea. (And we won. This is perhaps the only instance in my experience of the body of the university fighting for academic dignity, with success.) I needed the weekend to catch up on missed research and marking, and so pulled out of the coastal junket. The administrator-in-charge was perturbed. ‘But, as a senior head of department, you’d have so much to offer,’ he pleaded. I had been head for close on twenty years and was considered reasonably successful. Then he began 138 I am a linguist

on flattery: ‘You could share with others the secret of how to handle a headship.’ ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘efficient time management, which involvesnot attending weekend meetings at the coast.’ Then the strategy turned to threat: ‘If you don’t come to the meeting, you won’t be able to continue as head of department.’ ‘Good, I’ve been trying to get out of doing it for the past two years.’ My colleagues who did attend reported that they had a relaxing time, good food and wine, a nice tennis court and invigorating walks along the beach. There were meetings and lots of talk but they considered that, besides a spot of fraternisation (or sororisation), nothing was achieved. (And it must have cost quite a bit of money.) In times gone by, the vice-chancellor and deans would keep an eye on events and step in if they perceived that a department was not fulfilling its mandate. That was all that was needed. The 1970s saw the introduction of formal reviews, every few years, of each department. Six or ten people (including a couple from outside the university) would sit in a room for several days, talking to members of the department and each other. They’d write a report. In principle, it might seem a fine idea. But scarcely anything ever eventuated; just another example of misspent time and money. In the 1990s I was asked to chair a review committee at the ANU and approached it a little differently from the norm. I actually visited the department in advance, sat in on some lectures, studied syllabuses and exam papers. It was plain that there were serious difficulties. As soon as it became known that I was to be chair, a steady stream of faculty members and students came to talk and ask whether they could make a confidential submission to the committee concerning the professor. Well, no, that wasn’t possible. Under freedom of information provisions, the professor (or anyone else) could view all the paper- work once the review process was completed. They were afraid of retribution. I suggested a crafty alternative. They should write a confidential letter to me, personally; I would read it out to the committee and then destroy it (which I did). I was later told that it was quite improper for me to have acted in this way. If I’d fully followed the rules, the committee would scarcely have heard the things they needed to hear (with whistle-blowers being protected from recrimination). It was a good committee and we produced a good report, absolutely to the point. Our unanimous opinion was that the professor wasn’t doing his job properly and should be moved sideways (there were a number of possibilities). There was no suggestion that he be dismissed. This is a university, you just don’t do things like that, however strong the justification. the role of universities 139

A first draft of the report went to faculty. There was some minor technicality which needed to be fixed and it was to be brought back to the next meeting of faculty in slightly revised form. The professor, who was overseas at the time, heard about things and threatened to sue. It’s unlikely that he could have succeeded, but the threat was there and threats are unwelcome. I was under pressure from the top brass to completely change our recommendation. Like a good boy, I agreed, and so did the internal members of the committee. We had two outside members. One, an eminent retired professor from another university, was sent into a frightful tizzy at the thought of being sued and begged me to make the requested change. The other outside member didn’t belong to a university — but was a leading expert in the discipline taught by the department — and he reacted in an entirely different way. He’d been asked to assess a situation. It had been a mistake to appoint the professor in the first place. He hadn’t done the job and should now be got rid of. Every member of the committee had agreed. To change the recommendation because of political pressure from within the university made the whole review process a farce. But, okay, he’d agree to the change if I really wanted him to, not to rock the boat. The change was made. The professor stayed there (until he reached retirement). And any respect which the eminent outside expert (or his friends and colleagues) had for universities went right out of the window. Let me recount one more story to illustrate the way in which universities too often work. This is from thirty years ago and the details can be retained. There was an English-Malay dictionary project at the ANU. It had been financed by the federal Department of Education for six or seven years and they were getting a little edgy about how long things were taking. An advisory committee sat in a room and was told things by the professor in charge; the project should be finished in six months, or twelve at the most. The committee included the deputy vice-chancellor, who sat on ten committees each week, and a couple of deans, who were on four or five. And me, who wasn’t on any other specially set-up committee at that time. I did an unusual thing — actually went around and talked to the four people who made up the project, to see what was happening. There was an elderly lady who prepared the head words, in English, for which Malay definitions would be provided. She knew no Malay but sat surrounded by English dictionaries — Oxford, Webster’s, Chambers, Random House. She was on letter ‘S’ and said that, as the alphabet advanced, her progress got slower and slower; ‘Z’ was a least a couple of years off. There were a couple of Malay scholars, providing definitions for the head words; they were on letter ‘F’. Finally, a linguist sec- 140 I am a linguist

onded from the Department of Indonesian and Malay Studies, who provided final editing of the definitions; he was just starting on ‘D’. I reported my informal observations to the next meeting of the advisory committee. Not six or twelve months to completion, more like six or twelve years. My visit to the project had been strictly unofficial. A subcommittee consisting of the Dean of Arts and the head of the ANU press was deputed to undertake a formal investigation. They reported back — yes, what Dixon had said was perfectly correct. What to do now? The Ministry of Education had run out of patience, and the university didn’t have funds to support the required work. In fact, a fine solution was reached. It was decided to donate the project to the Government of Malaysia, as a gesture of goodwill. The Vice-Chancellor flew to Kuala Lumpur for a grand handing-over ceremony. A first-class dictionary was completed, fifteen years later. But what might have happened if I hadn’t shunned the four walls of the committee room, with piles of papers on the table, and gone out to look?

Originally, universities were institutions quite different from any commercial enterprise. The advancement of knowledge and inculcation of how to think could not be compared to a business. But, as considerations of quality have been augmented by — and gradually replaced by — demands of quantity, a university could be said to have become more like a business. People argue about this. What is surely not open to dispute is that a university should be run in a business-like manner. With a few exceptions, this is — in Australia at least — not what pertains at the present time. Over a period of several years more than half the letters sent out by a personnel department included errors. A critical paragraph had been omitted, or the addressee was wrong (I frequently received copies of confidential letters intended for someone else in the university). A correcting letter had to be drafted and dispatched. The people in personnel said they were overworked. Well, they would be when so often two letters had to be sent when one would have done. (Quite apart from the frightfully bad impression which this created.) If these administrators worked in a business they would simply be sacked; they’d have to be, or the business would go bust. But in a university (as in parts of the public service) nothing happens. They are able to continue along, impeding those academics who are trying — against odds — to get on with the main business of the institution. Not that today’s academics are beyond reproach. Some years ago the Aus- tralian government decided to reward universities by providing a ‘research the role of universities 141

infrastructure’ grant, calculated according to publications by faculty members. Lists of publications were duly provided. Then the government did a spot check and found that a great big fudge was being perpetrated. About one quarter of the information provided was wrong. A book might be claimed for twice, in separate years. A number of the publications listed had never actually appeared. Some were of dubious status and value — a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, and a co-authored one-page obituary in a newsletter with a circulation of 85. A portion of this mis-reporting was due to sloppiness, a portion to cheating. So a strict accounting procedure was instituted. It now takes a departmental administrator weeks of effort to annotate and photocopy and delineate every item which is claimed. Indeed, it may cost almost as much in salary-hours as what one gets back from the government in extra funding.

Fifty years ago, universities were held in high esteem by the general population, right across the world. A university degree was regarded as a rare and valued training (as indeed it was). Universities were funded appropriately. They were able to operate in a satisfactory — if not always totally efficient — manner. Priorities have gradually shifted. Universities have changed. The public’s perception of them has changed. The esteem in which they are held — by politicians (who dole out the money) and by the populace (who elect the politicians) — has waned. As an observer from the inside (trying also to see things as they would be viewed from the outside) it seems to me that this generally poor opinion of what are called universities is pretty appropriate. Let me justify this by discussing, in turn, faculty, students, and then the systems of research and of teaching. One point must be emphasised. There are a goodly number of university faculty who are devoted to their calling. They assign first priority to teaching — preparing courses, conveying to their audience an aura of the excitement their discipline holds for them, marking assignments with care, providing detailed comments and feed-back that will assist the student to think and assess. One cannot possibly succeed in a university post by working a seven or eight hour day. In order to properly fulfil teaching duties, attend at least some of the plethora of meetings, and to advance one’s research — in order to satisfy all these goals it is necessary to work at home for at least several evenings each week, and for a bit most weekends. These are the dedicated academics, the heart and soul of a university, those who keep the institution going. But for every one such, there are one or two or three of another ilk. At a university one can work very hard indeed or be 142 I am a linguist

extraordinarily slack. There are many people who show up on just three or four days a week, arriving at ten and leaving at four (‘to avoid the rush hour traffic’) with a lengthy lunch break and a good deal of chatting around in the corridors. Their neighbours at home perceive them mowing the lawn on a Thursday afternoon or going off to play golf on a Friday, and get the general — and correct — impression that a lot of people in universities have a rather undemanding life. To be effective, a lecture course should be an integrated whole, fully prepared in advance. I used to opt to spend a month in the long vacation, preparing the thirty-six or so lectures in a semester course. Then it would just be a matter of looking over the notes for half-an-hour before each class, the rest of the day being available for other things. Many people don’t do this. They arrive at work in the morning with only a vague idea of what to put into a lecture at four o’clock, and spend all day stewing over it; the same for the next lecture in two days’ time, and so on. Just last year one lecturer at my university came down with flu as their course was due to begin. Someone else would have to take over the first week of lectures — what topics were to be covered? The lecturer hadn’t yet decided. Well, what chapter of the assigned text book? The lecturer said that they hadn’t yet looked at the text book. (Not everyone behaves in this way, but the story is far from exceptional.) Can’t someone do something about this — the head of department, the dean? There are in fact procedures in place. When I was head of department at the ANU in the 1980s, a form had to be completed every two years by each faculty member, saying what teaching they had done, what had been researched and published, administrative duties discharged, extramural activities undertaken relating to the discipline. The head of department then commented on each item and the form was sent on to the dean and presumably to the vice- chancellor. I commented honestly. Dr Z had done no research during the past few years (and research is supposed to take up at least a third of one’s time). Dr Y turned up between five and ten minutes late for every lecture, and went on too long at the end so that students couldn’t get to their next class on time. (Dr Y had been doing this for more than ten years but it seemed like an incur- able disease; my suggestion of having his watch set ten minutes fast hadn’t helped at all.) Dr X was the worst problem. His lecturing style was so ethereal that he wasn’t trusted with anything other than specialised courses for senior students, expecting an enrolment of about six. But on several occasions no one at all would register for a course due to be taught by Dr X. ‘I think I’ll put it off till next year, when Dr V is due to teach the course,’ I’d be told. Professor W just wouldn’t undertake any administrative duties, considering her research far too the role of universities 143

important (more important than anyone else’s research, it seemed). The forms — with explicit annotations by me — went on to the dean. What happened? Nothing at all. Just another of those forms which universities are full of, which get lost in the abyss of apathy. Why did I ever think anything could happen? People who have all their lives worked in a commercial enterprise just wouldn’t believe the slackness in a university. A parent whose child has a bit of a sniffle — so that it can’t go to school — will bring it to work, to sit in a corner of an office all day while student interviews are taking place. (Imagine a lawyer or a bank official or someone in the retail industry doing that.) Or a man who comes to a three o’clock departmental staff meeting — discussing the progress of students and teaching plans for next year — and gets up to go at three thirty. ‘I have to take my child to their piano lesson.’ ‘Couldn’t their mother do it.’ ‘No, she has a real job, she’s a high school teacher.’ (This happened in my hearing. It may not be typical but it is certainly not exceptional.) Students, like faculty, run the wide gamut from dedication and excellence to lethargy and mediocrity. Teaching those with fine brains and industrious attitudes — at both undergraduate and graduate levels — is what makes life worthwhile for a university faculty member. But, as student numbers are increased and entry levels relaxed, there are more and more of a different breed, who opt for courses with the least workload and highest expectation of a good grade. Plus a touch of cheating along the way. Copying other people’s work has always been a bit of a problem (long before it became ennobled by the label ‘plagiarism’, from the Greek word ‘kid- nap’). I’d often give the lectures for a course of, say, forty students, and take two tutorial groups while a graduate student assistant took the other two groups. But, rather than us each marking the weekly problem for our own students, I’d do all forty one week with the assistant doing them all the next week. That way we could be on the lookout for excessive cooperation. Watch out for A and B, I’d say, their solutions this week were remarkably similar. If the same thing happened with the next assignment, I’d get them in for a warning and after that we would see individual work. One couldn’t in the same way ferret out cheating in a freshman class with more than a hundred enrolled; it was just too much for one person to mark all hundred assignments. So at that level it was necessary to retain a formal examination. Students would also copy essays, handing them down (generally, for a small cash consideration) from one year to the next within a hall of residence. And now, of course, with electronic means available, it is all so much easier. An analogy to computer viruses is not unapt. Viruses which are more and more 144 I am a linguist

ingenious require more vigilant programs for virus protection. And just as plagiarism exploits new web possibilities, so universities try to devise ever more sophisticated ways of detecting this. It’s not at all nice to compare the behaviour of students cheating to the ways of those who perpetrate viruses, but that’s what it is like. Surely a university system in which this sort of thing happens is in need of radical reform. How does the system work? Universities are concerned with research and teaching. Let’s take these one at a time. Research consists in thoroughly investigating some particular topic and, if interesting and significant results are obtained, publishing a paper (or a book) with statement of the problem, methods employed, results, and conclusion. In science, one may work in a laboratory and pursue experiments. In scientific linguistics, one investigates the structure of a language — based upon a collection of texts — working out the general principles on which the grammar operates. Or one can generalise across languages. When in 1966 the anthropologists in London remarked on the value of my analysis of the meaning basis for the four genders in Dyirbal (see chapter 6), I decided that this must be worth publishing; but not on its own. So I read up on gender systems in other languages, right across the world, and wrote a general paper setting out criteria for recognising something in a language as a system of genders, leading up to discussion of possible semantic bases, with particular reference to Dyirbal. Many academics are like me in that we publish when we feel we have something to say to others in the discipline. We want people to read our papers and books and quote from them, just as we will read and quote from theirs. Quite naturally, we acquire a body of good-quality publications which will help justify a promotion or new appointment. This is the top layer of academic endeavour, common to dedicated researchers and teachers (those who are not clock-watchers). The lower level is more muddy. One needs to publish to get a job, secure promotion. Publish what? Publish anything, anywhere, just so long as there is something to shove into the old Curriculum Vitae (CV). A decade or so back the powers that be became aware of this ‘publish for the sake of publishing’ (rather than ‘publish for the sake of saying something worthwhile’) stance. They would only count papers which appeared in a ‘refereed journal’. That is, where the editor asks the opinion of independent referees concerning whether a paper is worthy of publication. This only works well on some occasions. Quite often the referee is somewhat less clever than the author of the paper and can’t really understand it; verdict: reject. Or the results in the paper (although sound) go the role of universities 145

against some current endeavour of the referee’s, and would make redundant a paper the referee is working on; verdict: reject. Or the referee knows that the paper is not very good but can recognise who its author is (even though the paper may have been sent to him with name removed) and would like to repay a favour; verdict: accept. Even with honest refereeing, there are still ways of playing the system. I recently heard a researcher — someone who is quite clever but rather lazy — expound his modus operandi. Write lots of papers, all about fifteen pages long (no need for anything more extensive) on different aspects of the same problem. Re-use the same example sentences (from a South American language he had worked on) in each paper. Send them to different academic journals who would be expected to use different referees. You’ll soon have five papers for the CV. In fact, because of the overlap of contents and exemplification, they really amount to about a paper and a half. It’s now time to consider the system of instruction followed in all universities, which centres on the lecture. Today, no one appears to question this. But Dr Johnson did, at the end of the eighteenth century, suggesting: ‘Lectures were once useful; but now, when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary. If your attention fails, and you miss a part of a lecture, it is lost; you cannot go back as you do upon a book.’ And: ‘People have now-a- days got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry [sic] by lectures.— You might teach making of shoes by lectures.’ Johnson overstated the case. A fine lecturer can inspire their class, make the topic come alive, elucidate difficult points, communicate an enthusiasm for the discipline. They can instil the desire to learn more and to become a practitioner in this subject. But good lecturers are rare. I’d say that about half of the people employed by universities to deliver lectures do not perform any better than they would by just reading out from a book. Indeed, some of them do just read from a book (or perhaps from a photocopy of a book, which is less obvious). Johnson’s remarks certainly apply to them. A student should pay careful attention right through a lecture which they attend, take notes, and ask questions (if these are permitted) about any point which is not clear. Some do. Others daydream, especially if the lecturer is of the dull brigade. I recently sat in on a class where some students took in laptops, ostensively to take notes; but the student next to me played a card game on 146 I am a linguist

the screen for the whole hour. Lectures can provide a pretence of learning. It’s not hard work, sitting with lots of other people in a big room. And you might listen now and again. The most effective way of teaching and learning has several components. First of all, the students should — as Dr Johnson said — read the relevant literature, as assigned by the lecturer. Then can come a lecture, with the teacher explaining difficult bits from the literature, making sure they are fully understood. An effective lecture is a dialogue. ‘We assume X; we know Y; what follows from that?’, the teacher will enquire of a class. Don’t tell them the answer. Let students suggest possible answers. Weigh these; examine the pros and cons of each. Assist the class to see what is important, what the appropriate criteria are, how to arrive at a reasoned conclusion. After the lecture, students should read further, with greater understanding. Then a tutorial class, whose members give mini-presentations, debate crucial points, attain a deeper mastery of the topic. All this requires keen, hard-working students interacting with a faculty member who is dedicated to their vocation, and is a charismatic teacher. Every university will include some of both sorts; but — as popularisation progresses — they are increasingly outnumbered by students and faculty who are there because they are attracted to an undemanding way of life. As universities descend in public esteem, the money allocated to them dwin- dles (in real terms). What is to be done? The industrial relations system is such that poor performers may be dismissed only with extraordinary difficulty. They can be made redundant, but then union rules say that they may not be replaced for five years. Universities need to get more money, somehow. One way is to take in overseas students, from ‘developing countries’, even if many of them are more-or-less unteachable. Another way is to enrol local students who don’t meet the entry requirement, charging a hefty fee. A little more money, even lower standards. (Education for all? For all the rich.) With an emphasis on quantity, governments press universities to become simply conduits for vocational training (nursing, teaching, hotel management, business studies, optometry), brushing aside their traditional purpose — the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. What can be done? One course of action would be to wipe out universities as currently constituted, replacing them with a range of differently-focussed institutions, each properly funded for its purpose, some being founded on intellectual quality. Probably, nothing will happen. Mediocrity will continue its merry acceleration. But I offer some guidelines as to what could — and should — be done. the role of universities 147

A. Reduce the administrative infrastructure. Every form, every committee, every rule book — whether put out by a government department or by the university itself — should be closely examined to see whether it is really necessary. Most could be eliminated or greatly simplified. The number of non-academic administrators in a university should be drastically reduced — by at least two-thirds, probably by three-quarters — until the ratio of administrators to faculty returns to what it was two generations ago. The few administrators who remain should be chosen carefully, paid well, and their performance closely monitored. It must be inculcated that their job is to facilitate the two roles of a university — teaching and research.

B. Appoint only the best scholars to academic administrative positions. At present, being a head of department or faculty involves such an administrative load that the best scholars shun these duties (they would have no time for anything else). Lesser people move into them; they may enjoy the power but lack the competence or academic stature to wield it to good effect. A mediocre person is unable to provide leadership or vision. Once the administrative burden is reduced, top professors will no longer decline to take on a headship, or be nominated for a term as dean. Only a good researcher can guide and inspire the research of their colleagues. Only a fine teacher can monitor the performance of others, and work to achieve improvements. If a university were efficiently run, a head of department should have to spend no more than about ten per cent of their time on administrative duties, a dean no more than about thirty-five per cent, and a CEO (vice- chancellor, or whatever the title is in each institution) no more than about sixty-five per cent. They would have time left to function as academics. This is what happens in some countries. Professor Georgios Babiniotis, Rector (that is, CEO) of the University of Athens — and himself a linguist — told me he was able to devote about two days each week to his own research. The CEO should be a medium-term appointment (ideally, just before retirement) but most lower-level administrative appointments ought to be short-term. A dean or head of department should be able to maintain contact with their discipline during, say, a four-year term of office and should then return as a full-time teacher and researcher. 148 I am a linguist

C. Have a clear chain of command. This would be, from the top down: vice- chancellor, deputy vice-chancellor, dean, head of department. Each decision should be made and then approved (or amended) by just one or two people, without the extravagant time-wasting of lengthy memoranda and drawn- out committee meetings. This could not work at present, where inferior people tend to be in positions of minor power (while true academics avoid them). But if the administrative structure were streamlined, so that the best people were attracted to administrative positions, then they could be trusted to make good decisions — for the benefit of their colleagues, the university and the community. There is another bugaboo which has recently intruded into many universities in Australia and the UK (but perhaps not elsewhere) — an intermediate level of ‘school’ between faculty and department. Another node in the chain of command, more administrative salaries to fund, more committees ...

D. Abolish academic tenure. As presently constituted, this works in varied ways in different countries, but it is never beneficial (except to those who do not work effectively). In the North American system, an Assistant Pro- fessor position may be ‘tenure track’ but the chance of an incumbent being kept on after six years varies, according to the university, from perhaps eighty per cent to less than ten percent. However, once an academic is granted tenure, it is almost impossible to remove them. Work hard for six years, publish a few good things, teach reasonably well, get tenure. Then you can sit back for several decades doing the absolute minimum. In the UK and Australia, it is rare for someone once appointed to a tenure track position not to be kept on. Once they’ve satisfied the appointing committee, that’s it. Many academics do continue to provide satisfactory — or exceptional — performance. But there are also many who don’t. A faculty member may publish a couple of good papers or a book, and then almost nothing for the next thirty years. But still the pay check continues. Someone who is a bright, lively and well-prepared teacher in their early years may retreat into introspective incomprehensibility. The matter of tenure often comes up for discussion. During one debate, a couple of my colleagues at the ANU argued very strongly that if an academic didn’t have security of tenure they wouldn’t have the peace of mind to settle down to a worthwhile piece of research, such as writing an important monograph that expanded the frontiers of knowledge in a the role of universities 149

significant way. They almost had me persuaded. Then I got back in touch with reality and realised that the two people putting forward this line of argumentation had each had tenure for twenty years and had achieved just about nothing! It would not be sensible to appoint academics on yearly contracts; something between this and lifetime tenure is surely appropriate. I’d suggest that a newly-appointed academic should be provided with a five- or six-year contract, time enough to establish themself as an effective teacher and to complete (or to have close to completion, and available for inspection) some useful research. There should then be an honest and tough appraisal. Some- one who is not a good teacher must not be kept on in a job which includes teaching responsibilities. Similarly for research. Satisfactory performance will lead to another fixed-term contract, of perhaps five years; then a similar assessment, and so on. People should be let go at any stage when it becomes clear that they are not performing adequately. At present, one can encounter an academic who does the job well up to the age of forty, and then simply marks time until retirement. Under my proposal, their employment in a university would ter- minate at about the age of forty-five. They could retrain for a more suitable job elsewhere. (Or, this system might encourage people to try a bit harder, and justify being kept on.) Regular appointment reviews would only be effective if applied strictly and honestly, without considerations of friendship or group solidarity. (The in-built ‘mutual support and damn-questions-of-quality’ syndrome which operates in many universities is mentioned in chapter 11.)

E. Concentrate on quality. Only students with an appropriate level of intelligence, previous training, and motivation should be taken into a course (rather than taking as many students as needed to achieve some quantitative target). Similarly for faculty appointments. If there is no top-calibre candidate for a position, then it should not be filled at that time.

F. Or ganise instruction in the most effective way for the discipline. For some subjects, formal lectures may be inappropriate, with reading, electronic learning methods, and small group discussion proving more effective. Each discipline must be assessed in its own terms, in contrast to the present system where a university may legislate that each and every course shall have so many hours of formal lectures each week. 150 I am a linguist

It will take time to develop new instructional strategies. These should be continuously assessed, and revised in order to provide the best training in thinking, and in mastering the skills of the discipline.

G. Monitor research topics. People with research-only positions generally have to obtain approval for a planned project, and produce results within a certain time-frame. Most academics are employed for a combination of teaching (expected to take between one-half and two-thirds of their time) and research (the balance). They must fulfil certain teaching obligations. But for the research component — generally, anything (or nothing) goes. A junior academic may, in the absence of suitable advice, embark on an un- productive line of enquiry, which produces no worthwhile results. Or they might pick a topic which is without interest. It may well produce an easy publication for the CV, but not something which anyone else would want to read or refer to. All research projects by junior faculty should be vetted, and work on them checked periodically. This must be undertaken by a senior academic with competence in the discipline. And it must be done in an imaginative way. If a bright young scholar suddenly gets a new idea, they should be free to pursue this at the expense of the original project, so long as useful results are obtained. What is not acceptable is to keep flitting from one idea to another, never bringing anything to fruition. Senior faculty — those who have proved themselves and continue to prove themselves — would set their own research agenda. The results would simply be the publications produced — the quality of the work, and the quality of the journal or book publisher involved.

H. Ba lance teaching and research responsibilities. Certain questions are sometimes asked. Why should almost all university faculty be expected to teach and to undertake research? Some do little research; surely they should be told to take on more teaching? Some are poor at teaching; surely they should be directed to concentrate on research? Why burden top flight researchers — the Nobel prize winners in science and their equivalents in the humanities — with any teaching at all? Well there are exceptions but, by and large, the leading researchers are the best teachers. People who are not too good at one of these tasks are generally pretty poor at the other. The best possible training for bright students is in the form of lectures by people like Nobel Prize winners, who are the role of universities 151

in many cases more than happy to undertake some teaching (so long as the students are of good quality). It keeps them in touch with the next generation. And going back to the beginning, explaining complex scientific results in terms of basic assumptions — in a freshman lecture course — can help a scholar focus on the essence of a new line of enquiry in their research. There should be some give-and-take. After several decades of productive teaching, a leading researcher might well decide to lessen the load or to get out altogether, and should be permitted to do so. There are some people who are good university teachers, at an elementary level, but have no ap- petite for research. It may be appropriate to employ them for certain kinds of instruction, in some subjects. No rigid formula should be imposed. Different profiles will be appropriate for different disciplines. But, in most cases, the dedicated and productive scholar should be encouraged to combine teaching, in moderation, with research. Those who are little use at either would be naturally discarded, under the scheme set out under point D.

I. Define the role of universities in society. As societies evolve, so will the character of the universities they support. By its nature, a university (as this term has always been understood) is concerned with finding out. The core disciplines are concerned with extending the boundaries of knowledge, for its own sake. Scientists study the properties of things and animals and people, to understand how the world works. There may be no immediate application of some new scientific insight to practical life. But it is now there, ready for an appropriate application at any time in the future. Mathematics aims to understand the nature of number, quantity, arrangement and space. A pure mathematician simply produces mathematical results, for their own sake. They may then be open to a range of applications — by engineers, stat- isticians, astronomers, market analysts, and other practitioners in natural and social sciences. Linguistics studies the basic nature of human language — the ways in which languages are similar, the ways in which they differ, and why; the reasons for language change and language loss. This pure body of results — similar to the results of pure mathematics — may be drawn on and applied in a variety of ways: to facilitate better teaching, and more effective translating; to better understand the nature of bilingualism and social problems of immigrant populations; to gain a window on the operation of the human mind, as far as communicative ability is concerned, and how this relates to other kinds of cognitive ability. And so on. 152 I am a linguist

A university must have a high-quality core. And then the society which supports it will decide what sorts of applications of the core should be pursued. An institution encroaching on mediocrity — as many modern universities are — will serve to dull the mind. A well organised, well funded university, with emphasis on quality, will sharpen intellects, supplying a zest to its own members and to the whole community. And once universities are again seen to be a haven of excellence — with dedicated staff and students working (hard!) to the best of their abilities — they will again attain the respect of the world around them.

Let’s now return to the main plot, the research which I was able to do — between teaching and administration — during the 1970s.

SOURCES Statistics on university enrolments in Australia (up to 1981) from pages 20-1 of Access to privilege: patterns of participation in Australian post-secondary education, by D. S. Anderson and A. E. Vervoorn, published by the Australian Na- tional University Press; later figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics website, http://www.abs.gov.au/. Abraham Flexner’s Universities: American, English, German was published by Oxford University Press in 1930; quotations from pages 213 and 215 of the 1968 reissue, also by Oxford University Press. Dr Johnson’s remarks are from Boswell’s Life of Johnson, entries for 15 April 1781 and February 1766. 8 More lovely fieldwork, and some comparison

When I took the considerable step of emigrating, in July 1970, there were three main reasons. Most of all, I considered Australia to be the most congenial place in the world in which to live. It’s fresh and lively, with wide open spaces, lots of sunshine, and great opportunities. A striking contrast to dull, class-ridden Brit- ain, clinging to the past of having once been ‘a great power’ (tsk, tsk, tsk). And to the blinkered arrogance of the USA, ‘we are the finest nation in the world’ (blah, blah, blah). Australia is just happy to be itself, a relaxed milieu where people work hard and are judged by what they are and how they perform, not by who their father is or how they speak. Secondly, there was the challenge of developing a top-class department of linguistics, where the graduate students and every (or almost every) faculty member would undertake fieldwork, documenting some previously undescribed language and making inductive generalisations about the pervasive nature of human language. This aim was achieved by the end of the ‘seventies and we remained one of the leading departments in the world through the middle ‘eighties, only beginning to drop off a little in the late ‘eighties. Lecturing was fun and — as mentioned before — a great learning process. Teaching the first year course, one has to blank out one’s mind, and gradually introduce to students the principles of the discipline in an ordered and articulate manner, trying to convey something of the delight of linguistic analysis and the satisfaction of providing an explanation for why things are the way they are. I’ve always found that teaching a beginners’ course can assist with working through an abstruse research conundrum; going back to first principles in class may help in searching out the basis of one’s current analytic preoc- cupation. Teaching higher-level courses entails reading widely on a topic; one has to really understand something in order to teach it properly. A scholar never stops learning. Now, just past the age of seventy, I feel I’ve mastered just a fraction of what I want to know in linguistics. It would undoubtedly require more than one lifetime to acquire a really adequate competence. 154 I am a linguist

Being head of department brought with it administration, but in the 1970s this was a small burden (unlike today). There were quite a few meetings to attend — the Arts Faculty, the Asian Studies Faculty (we were members of both), and the Academic Board, all at the unsuitable time of 9.30 a.m. I have the ability to listen to what is being said — and join in as appropriate — and to do something else at the same time. So it was a fine opportunity, during all those meetings, to read linguistics journals and work out problems to put to students in class. University administration (even then) involves shoals of paper. Everything should be skimmed. It is important to have the ability to discern what are the important items (those relevant to my department) and focus on them. Lots of forms come in; many can be discarded but some require completion. Decisions are needed. Some require considerable thought; one must weigh things up and choose carefully. Hasty decisions may need to be later reconsidered; measured ones will stand. Motivating and pervading everything was my vision for a linguistics department with the highest academic standards. The third reason for moving to the edge of the world was to continue working on the fast-disappearing indigenous languages of Australia — to engage further in that most glorious of occupations, fieldwork, and to describe and crack open another grammatical system or two. First of all, though, there was Dyirbal to finish. Once the end of year exams were over, in late November 1970, I was able to pop up to North Queensland (a mere two thousand kilometres away) for a third field trip, with Chloe Grant and George Watson and all my other friends. More narratives were recorded, and explicated. My grammatical generalisations needed to be checked and refined. And then there was more of the mother-in-law language style, Jalnguy, to be excavated. Chloe knew a good deal but — since Jalnguy hadn’t been actively spoken for about thirty years — she welcomed help from other old people on some of the more obscure words. We went across to a camp at Bellenden where there were five or six elders. I’d go through each word in the everyday style vocabulary, Guwal, and ask about its equivalent in Jalnguy. There’d be head-scratching and thinking back, odd suggestions, until someone came up with a response that everyone in that veritable Dyirbal Academy agreed was correct. One of my favourite adjectives is rawurray ‘lazy, doesn’t want to do anything, no life in him (or her)’. How would one say that in Jalnguy? ‘Malu’, was the considered response. And what about marma ‘mean, selfish, wants to keep it all for himself (or herself)’? Lots of introspection. Then tiny vivacious Runaway (see plate 14) cries outngarrngay , and half-a-dozen heads nod in agreement. more lovely fieldwork, and some comparison 155

It took just about the whole of my research time in 1971 to revise the PhD dissertation for publication. Most of the headings remained the same (the basic organisation of the grammar) but every section was revised, improved and enlarged. (Everything I’ve written in linguistics has been through at least four drafts, often more). Just a few outstanding points remained to be clarified on the next field trip, in November 1971, and the book came out a year later. (Sadly, Chloe died in December 1974, aged about 71.) And now to work on another language. I’d had an eye on Yidiñ, spoken to the north of Dyirbal (around the city of Cairns) but not at all similar to it. Dyirbal and Yidiñ are about as different as English and Italian. In 1963 and 1967, a few hundred words were recorded, from speakers who had since passed on. I’d planned during the December 1970 field trip to begin serious work on Yidiñ, but the checking needed for Dyirbal (and a bit more on Mbabaram from Albert Bennett) took up nearly all the available time. There was a single day available to suss out the situation on Yidiñ. I knew that most of the Yidiñ people had been removed, around 1900, to the Anglican mission at Yarrabah, across the bay from Cairns. This was now a government settlement. At Yarrabah, on Tuesday 15 December 1970, I met Dick Moses (or Moses Dick, or just Moses), one of the four or five people left who knew Yidiñ well (see plate 15). The friendship that grew up between us framed my research for the first half of the ‘seventies. Other old people — who did not themselves retain more than a few words of the language — told me that in his youth Moses had been a ‘hard case’, running away from the mission school in order to talk with tribal elders camped on the other side of the peninsula, and absorbing all he could of traditional culture and language. It was as if all his life Moses had been waiting for someone like me to come along and, as he said, ‘put it all in book’. He was a little wary at first, sizing me up, as we went through names for body parts and flora and fauna, pronouns, and a few simple sentences. I played a short text by George Watson in the Mamu dialect of Dyirbal, to show the sort of thing I’d really like. Dick nodded. He’d record a story. After lunch, when he’d had time to think about it. In fact he recorded two. The first concerned a rainbow snake and ceremonial exchange. It lasted just over four minutes and within an hour or so I was able to transcribe it, with Moses’ expert help — teaching me how to speak Yidiñ as we went. Then he recorded a long legend about two storytime brothers who gave the Yidiñ people their foodstuffs. Guyala was the sensible and kind brother. The foods he provided were easy to obtain and prepare. Damarri, however, was a 156 I am a linguist

cussed fellow who made things as hard as possible. He placed a yam deep in the ground, so that it required a great deal of digging. And he ensured that one staple food should require lengthy soaking and roasting before it was ready to eat. Dusk was approaching and there was no time to transcribe this story. But Moses was plainly looking forward to my return the following November when he would really teach me his language, in all its wealth and pomp. I went back for five further field trips over the next five years (all in the university vacations), from seven weeks to two weeks in duration. Each time I arrived at Yarrabah, Moses was waiting for me, sitting cross-legged under a spreading fig tree next to the church. We recorded fourteen more stories in all — some legends about the first Yidiñ people, historical stories such as one about the first aeroplane in the area, and an account of Dick’s early life in the mission. A vocabulary of about two thousand words was carefully assembled. And, by analysing the texts, I gradually built up a picture of the grammar of Yidiñ, making up sentences to check a point and putting them to Moses for approval or correction. He’d wipe away a perpetual snot, spit neatly off to one side, and point with his stub of a pipe at the page I was writing on. ‘That be right, what you got there,’ Moses would say, ‘and ‘nother fellow he answer back like this ...’ Starting from a simple query, Dick would elaborate a dialogue which might continue for the rest of the morning. One person would say this, he’d explain, and then quiz me as to what an appropriate response might be. My attempt might be adjudged ‘not quite’, corrected, and we’d move on. Sitting under the fig tree — but in spirit ranging far back in time and space, going on a hunting expedition, gathering fruits, preparing for the advent of a cyclone. I never heard Yidiñ spoken between two people, but Moses recreated what it had been like, making the language shine forth from amidst the shadows of its decline. There were three other speakers of Yidiñ remaining in the early 1970s and they all assisted in my education. Pompey Langdon, living next to Blackfel- low Creek on the main highway, performed an ancient mourning incanta- tion. He didn’t tell stories, but just talking to Pompey helped clarify knotty points of grammar. George Davis had been brought up by his grandfather, in the bush. After the old man died George attended school for a couple of years, commencing at the age of fifteen or so. Unlike Moses and Pompey, he was fully literate and read books on Aboriginal anthropology. George went over dozens of traditional place names, and recorded in Yidiñ the story of the origin of fire. more lovely fieldwork, and some comparison 157

And there was Tilly Fuller (see plate 16), who found it easier to talk to me in Yidiñ than in English. She’d been brought up ‘in tribal way’, and recorded a story of how fine life was then. There had been a natural calendar. When the tail and breast feathers of the willy wagtail bird turn white, it is time to gather rickety nuts, on the small hills in coastal country. Then, when the black scrub locust first cries out, around Christmas, it is a sign to go up to the tablelands and feast on black pine nuts. The tribal group would camp by a river and children like Tilly enjoyed playing in the water. ‘Always swim after eat,’ she exclaimed, ‘happiness and fun.’ The last time I saw Tilly Fuller she was in hospital, but still eager to indulge my passion for more information on Yidiñ. She died in 1974, and then Moses passed away in 1977, about the same week that my 586-page grammar of Yidiñ was published. Pompey lasted until 1991, when he was well into his nineties. Finally, George Davies, the last speaker of the Yidiñ language, returned in spirit to his conception site on 21 September 2002. Thus did a language pass into extinction. Doing linguistic fieldwork is a little like being on a roller coaster. A period of intellectual exhilaration will be punctuated by moments of self-doubt. A feeling of ‘I’ve got lots of material; I’m getting a good understanding of how the language works; soon all my analytic problems will be solved’ can be quickly succeeded by ‘The data I’ve got is pitifully little; I really don’t understand how the bits of the language fit together; it’s hopeless, I’ll never get it properly done.’ But maybe all of life is like this. I had the whole of December 1971 and January 1972 working with Moses and Tilly Fuller and Pompey Langdon. The grammar of Yidiñ was undoubtedly hard, much more tricky than that of Dyirbal. For example, the locative case ending (meaning ‘at’ or ‘in’ or ‘on’) was, depending on the nature of the word to which it was added, -da or -ja or -ba or -la or just lengthening a final vowel; buri is ‘fire’ and locativeburii is ‘on the fire’. Even the basic forms of words seemed to vary. Compare:

BASE FORM LOCATIVE FORM ‘moon’ gindaan gindanula ‘possum’ gajaarr gajarrala ‘initiated man’ mulaarri mularrila

One adds -la for locative, but to what? To the base form for ‘initiated man’, but shortening the middle vowel, making mulaarri into mularri. For ‘moon’ one shortens the vowel of gindaan, giving gindan, then adds -u and locative 158 I am a linguist

-la (gindan-u-la). For ‘possum’, gajaarr is shortened to gajarr, then -a is added before locative -la (gajarr‑a‑la). Why add -u in one case and -a in the other? Aha! Maybe the underlying forms are gindanu and gajarra, with the base form being formed by deleting the final vowel (u or a) and lengthening the preceding vowel. But if that’s the rule, why isn’t the base form of ‘initiated man’ mulaarr, instead of the actual form mulaarri? I gathered a fair few examples, for the 80 or so words like ‘moon’ and ‘possum,’ and for several hundred regular nouns like ‘initiated man’. Back in Can- berra I worked all year — in between teaching and administration — on what the rules should be for describing and explaining all this. Back to the field in late November 1972; just a few questions to ask in order to check that my hypotheses were correct. Disaster! I’d predicted what a certain form should be and in a number of cases these predictions were wrong! Moses gave something else, with different vowels. The error was quite simple: I’d been trying to generalise — prematurely — based on just a part of the full set of data. So it was back to the drawing board. I’d need the full forms for all of these slightly unusual nouns, in locative and also each of the other seven cases (genitive, dative, ergative, etc.) Once all (or almost all) the data was in, I started again to describe and explain the whole phenomenon. Then a draft paper was sent to the journal Linguistic Inquiry, with a note telling the editor that I’d want to wait until after one more field trip before publishing. They accepted the paper, subject to minor revision. But I waited not one but three more field trips before sending in the final revision, in order to ensure that every possible check had been made. I’d believed people when they’d said that all languages have about the same degree of overall complexity. If one language has a difficult phonological system — perhaps, with lots of tones — it should have a relatively straightforward grammar. If the structure of words (morphology) is complex, then the way words are put together to form sentences (syntax) will be rather easy, and vice versa. They were wrong. Yidiñ is a much more complex language — more difficult to learn, harder to analyse — than Dyirbal, at every level. The phonology is far more intricate, with rules for lengthening vowels, dropping off the ends of words, and so on. The morphology is daunting — just look at all those forms for locative. And the syntax is simply mind-boggling. In Dyirbal each type of situation demands a single construction type. In Yidiñ there is likely to be a choice between several, with subtle factors determining which is most felicitous. If I’d started off on Yidiñ it might have all been too much. But describing Dyirbal was a useful apprenticeship, suitable preparation for the considerable demands posed by analysis of Yidiñ. more lovely fieldwork, and some comparison 159

The harder a task, the more fascinating it is to try to find a solution. The intellectual thrill of gradually working out the grammatical and phonological system of Yidiñ can’t properly be described. One bit of the puzzle falls into place, and that embodies a clue to solving some quite different problem (which may have been worrying me for a year), and then that in its turn shows how to knit together two things which I’d never conceived of as related, which leads to the solution for a further conundrum. During some of this time I had personal difficulties, but they were drowned in the exhilaration of working out the system of such a magnificent language.

There were other languages in that region which had fallen into disuse but were perhaps remembered a little. I prefer to start projects one at a time. The field trip commencing in December 1971 was to finalise the grammar of Dyirbal and commence intensive work on Yidiñ. In November 1972 I continued with Yidiñ and also searched out the last couple of speakers of Warrgamay, around the Herbert River (to the south of Dyirbal); this work continued until 1980. When I went north again, in August 1973, to work further on Yidiñ and Warrgamay, a third language was added to the fieldwork roster — Nyawaygi, spoken between the towns of Ingham and Townsville (to the south of Warrgamay); this study continued until 1982. John Tooth had been brought up speaking Warrgamay, but that was fifty years in the past. He welcomed me to the Glen Ruth cattle station where he worked and thought back over the language whilst pursuing daily chores. I helped a bit (but mostly watched) as a suppository was inserted in a new-born foal to ensure that it passed a motion (otherwise it might die, John explained). We chatted about his language all the while. On Palm Island in 1964, Alf Palmer had provided some Warrgamay words and sentences, carefully distinguishing them from Warungu (his own language) and the Girramay and Jirrbal dialects of Dyirbal. John Tooth knew Girramay, so we were able to chat in that dialect. He also took great pains not to muddle any Girramay into his Warrgamay. John had a keen and systematic mind, a pleasure to work with. However, the other remaining speaker of War- rgamay, Lambert Cocky, wouldn’t respond to a direct question. Lambert just talked — in and about Warrgamay — so I simply listened and recorded. There was a further dialect, called Biyaygirri, remembered by a rather wonderful old lady called Nora Boyd — alert and active but really old. So old that she had a son in the old people’s home at Charters Towers (she hadn’t yet reached that stage herself). 160 I am a linguist

I was able to document just a little of these languages, on the verge of the abyss of extinction — a hundred-page grammar of Warrgamay (plus about 940 words) and a seventy-page grammar of Nyawaygi (plus about 680 words). John Tooth recorded two short texts in Warrgamay, but not even that was available from Willie Seaton, now the last speaker of Nyawaygi. (He was the first Aborigine I had spoken to, on Monday 21 October 1963.) Think what it must be like, casting your mind back to childhood days, to a language you haven’t used or heard for scores of years. Willie Seaton did it wonderfully. Nyawaygi has two r-sounds (or rhotics) as against just one in English. When he gave wuruwuru ‘frog’ (where the r is like that in British or Australian English, but with the tongue tip turned back a bit), Seaton cautioned that this should not be confused with wurruwurru ‘ibis (a wading bird)’, where the rr is a trilled sound, as in Scottish English. I’d fly from Canberra to Townsville, pick up a vehicle, and stop off in Ingham for a few days en route to Yidiñ at Yarrabah. Lambert Cocky worked at the cane farm belonging to Dan Sheahan (author of the poem on which Slim Dusty’s song ‘Pub with no beer’ was based), at Abergowrie, just north of Ingham. An hour or two with Lambert and then I’d switch languages over a lunchtime hamburger, ready for Nyawaygi with Willie Seaton in the afternoon. The two languages are about like English and German, lots of similarities and also many differences. About 45% of the vocabulary is shared, but it is pronounced differently. For jambun ‘wood grub’ the j has the tongue against the front of the hard palate (like saying d and y together) in Warrgamay, but the tongue tip is against the teeth in Nyawaygi. It was an easy matter to make the switch, once I entered Willie Seaton’s linguistic milieu. In other languages which I’d worked on, the base form of every word had at least two syllables; ‘give’ is wuga- in Dyirbal and wugi- in Warrgamay, for instance. At first it seemed that Nyawaygi had lots of words for ‘give’. Then I realised that each has a different meaning: wuna ‘gives’, wugi ‘gave’, positive imperative wuga ‘give!’, and negative imperative wujam ‘don’t give!’. These have a monosyllabic (not a disyllabic) base, wu-, to which suffixes are added for tense and mood. Nyawaygi has an archaic verbal system, a relic from an earlier stage of development. Dyirbal and Warrgamay have taken over old- base-plus-affix as the new base, wu- plus past -gi giving wugi- in Warrgamay and wu- plus positive imperative -ga giving wuga- in Dyirbal. Suffixes are then added to these disyllabic bases: Warrgamay has wugi ‘gives’, wugi-ñu ‘gave’, positive imperative wugi‑ya ‘give!’ and negative imperative wugi-lja ‘don’t give’. Knowledge of this monosyllabic system, and the other marvels of Nya- more lovely fieldwork, and some comparison 161

waygi grammar, would have been lost but for the friendship and intelligence of one old blind man, Willie Seaton.

There were other tasks, of social value, and the ‘seventies was a great time for them. Ken Hale had brought speakers of American Indian languages to MIT to train them as linguists. I put a similar scheme to the big brass at the ANU, but to no avail. Then, in late 1972, Gough Whitlam’s Labor government was elected, with an extravagant reform agenda. Aim as high as the sky. We were able to establish, in the far north, a School of Australian Linguistics. The students (and, we hoped, eventually the faculty) would be speakers of indigenous languages who would apply linguistic methodology in devising orthographies, compiling dictionaries, and writing school primers and reference grammars for their own languages. (SAL eventually faded away, without notable success, but that was way in the future.) At the community’s request, I produced lessons in Yidiñ, to be taught in the Yarrabah school and to adults, and — in the late ‘seventies — lessons in Jirrbal and Girramay for use in the Murray Upper school. The Girramay and Jirrbal people were living scattered around white farms. Whitlam promised land rights. I was able to set in motion the process for government purchase of a property at Murray Upper and the erection of houses on it — an integrated Aboriginal community. It was called after ‘wood grub’, jambun, but unfortunately misspelt Jumbun. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies benefited from Whitlam’s largesse and in 1974 we had a grand conference on ‘Grammatical categories in Australian languages’, with 95 presentations spanning more than 120 languages (a volume was published in 1976). In the late 1970s I initiated the Handbook of Australian languages, each volume including shortish grammars of three or four languages, written in terms of a standard framework. (This reached volume 5 by 2000.)

There were originally more than 700 Aboriginal tribes in Australia but, in many instances, contiguous tribes would speak mutually intelligible dialects of what linguists consider to be a single language (just like American English, British English and Australian English). There was no well-founded information on how many distinct languages there were, nor any full list of materials on each. For some time I’d felt the need for a comprehensive documentation project and — once established in Canberra — set out to achieve this. But how to go about it? Well, I followed the same technique that John Go- drich and I had applied so successfully in blues and gospel discography, de- 162 I am a linguist

scribed in chapter 4. We had faced the problem of how to gather together information on all the recordings by a particular artist, and how to know when the listing is complete. What we did was to document all relevant record labels, and thus assemble complete discographical information for all blues and gospel artists. Many items were put out in special ‘race’ (that is, African-American) series, and we documented these in detail. Others were in general series, which were fully listed in outline, with particular attention to the blocks of issues by black artists. There were a number of nineteenth century publications which included comparative vocabularies of Australian languages (a bit like the ‘race series’). There were almost 300 vocabularies in Curr’s The Australian race (1886), 50 in John Mathew’s Eaglehawk and Crow (1899), 36 in Taplin’s Folklore, manners, customs and languages of the South Australian Aborigines (1879). The pioneer ethnographer Norman B. Tindale had let me have copies of the 130 manuscript vocabularies he had taken down between 1938 and 1953, with instructions to make them available to other Australianists at my discretion. (All who asked were given.) This is just a sample of the forty or so vocabulary compilations that were consulted. In addition, any journal which had at any time published any material on Australian languages was scanned in full, and relevant material photocopied (these were like the general record series in which some race items had appeared). There were dozens of these, ranging fromAmerican Anthropologist to the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, and from the Queensland Geographical Journal to the Journal of the Royal Anthropo- logical Institute. The various state libraries and archives were scoured for the manuscript materials they secreted. And every reference in each publication was followed up. In this fashion — with the help of a succession of research assistants — an archive was created which comprised an extremely high proportion of all materials for the 100 or so languages that were extinct, and all the old materials for the 150 or so living languages. I also, of course, tried to keep up with current work on the latter (a good deal of it was being done by my students). Some of the vocabularies and short grammars bore the name of a tribe or language, others just a location. The task now was to assemble them into languages. For this, care and caution were required. To mention just one example, there were two vocabularies for ‘The Tatiarra country’ (near Bordertown in South Australia) in Curr’s Australian race, volume 3, pp 456-9, and also a vocabulary for ‘Bordertown, Tatiara’ in Taplin’s volume. These relate to different more lovely fieldwork, and some comparison 163

languages — the Taplin list is from Bungandik, spoken to the south of Tatiara whereas the Curr lists are from the Wergaya dialect of Wemba-Wemba, spoken to the west. In fact, the lists have no more than 37% vocabulary in common. This shows that a vocabulary taken down in a certain location wasn’t necessarily of the language originally spoken there; after the white invasion and settlement, Aborigines would have converged on a newly-established town from different directions. Generally, when lists have 70% or more words in common, they probably relate to the same language, although other factors (such as grammatical forms, if available) should also be taken into account. Happily, the tentative judgements I came to were supported by circumstantial accounts. An early missionary, thoroughly conversant with dialect X, stated that he could not be understood by the community speaking Y, confirming that X and Y related to distinct languages. I used to teach a full-year course on ‘Australian languages’ and, for a major assignment, a student might take all the materials on some extinct language, and make out a card for each noun, verb and adjective, listing all the different spellings in the sources. They’d attempt to reconstruct the phonetics and phonology and as much as possible of the grammar of the language. These assignments would take me many hours to assess, since the materials and the argumentation employed had to be thoroughly checked. The resulting essays were a great asset to understanding the linguistic personalities of the various languages, and their systematic similarities and differences. Gradually, a comprehensive library was assembled including the materials (and interpretations of them) for each of the 250 or so original languages of Australia. Any other scholar was (and is) free to consult this archive, and to photocopy anything I have which they are missing, so long as they reciprocate by letting me have a copy of whatever they have which I lack. Building on the courses I was teaching, and utilising this library of languages, in 1980 I published a 569 page monograph, The languages of Australia. It reflected the state of the art at that time, summarising the parameters associated with nouns, pronouns, verbs, syntax and phonology. There is, in addition, a short history of work on Australian languages, notes on speech and song style, and on the current role of language in Aboriginal society. Somewhat to my embarrassment, it came to be referred to by Australianists as ‘the bible’, just as Blues and Gospel Records was called ‘the bible’ by specialists in that field. As time went by, more information on living languages became available and my theoretical ideas matured. All this led to a more definitive volume, Australian 164 I am a linguist

languages: their nature and development (777 pages, with 33 maps), put out in 2002. (See chapter 15.)

A discipline such as linguistics has an established set of terminology. And as the subject’s scope expands, new terms are needed. Many Australian languages have a suffix which goes on nouns with the meaning ‘for fear of’, as in ‘Don’t go too near the fire for-fear-of-flying-sparks’ and ‘Hide for-fear-of-the-policeman’. Cambridge University Press had asked John Lyons to oversee my writing of The languages of Australia, and John wasn’t too impressed with my talking of a ‘fear’ case suffix, suggesting instead the Latinate label ‘aversive’. I don’t know whether Australianists who now use the term realise who coined it (or whether John Lyons is aware of what he started!). Sometimes a new term just comes into being of its own accord. In March 1972, I was teaching the ‘Australian linguistics’ course for the first time and put up on the board the typical Australian consonant system. There is a series of stops (b, d, g and the like), a series of nasals (m, n, and so on), a series of laterals (up to four l-sounds). One fairly special feature of Australian languages is that most have two r-sounds (some, in fact have three). Without thought, I wrote on the board that there is a series of rhotics (on a par with stops, nasals and laterals). People had previously talked of rhoticisation (based on the Greek letter ρ, called rho), but this may have been the first use of ‘rhotic’ to describe a family of sounds. Some of my colleagues who were present — and some of the students — began using ‘rhotic’. I at first tried to dissuade them, saying that it wasn’t an established term, just something I’d made up on the spur of the moment. But they persisted and, lo and behold, it did become an established term. (The first syllable should be pronounced to rhyme with goat, not with got, to accord with the pronunciation of rho in Greek.) I mentioned in chapter 6 that to avoid the repeated use of unwieldy labels ‘intransitive subject’, ‘transitive subject’ and ‘transitive object’, I gave these terms a letter code — S, A and O respectively — simply as a shorthand (in my 1968 PhD dissertation, and its 1972 publication). This has also, somewhat to my surprise, become an established convention. The three letters are simply abbreviations, nothing more. (It is just like using ‘USA’ for ‘the United States of America’.) ‘O’ seemed the obvious choice for ‘transitive object’. It was harder to decide on abbreviations for ‘transitive subject’ and ‘intransitive subject’, ‘S’ seemed appropriate for one of these, and I opted for ‘intransitive subject’, then using ‘A’ for ‘transitive subject’. However, this has confused some linguists. They say that ‘A’ must stand for ‘agent’ and then prefer ‘P’ (for ‘patient’) in more lovely fieldwork, and some comparison 165

place of ‘O’. But ‘agent’ and ‘patient’ are semantic labels, rather different from the grammatical labels ‘transitive subject’ and ‘transitive object’. For example, in the English sentence John saw Mary, John is the A (transitive subject) and Mary the O (transitive object) but no one could sensibly say that John is an agent and Mary a patient here. In retrospect, I should have used ‘T’ for transitive subject, to avoid this misunderstanding. As described in chapter 6, Dyirbal is an ergative language in that, on nouns, A is marked (by ergative case suffix) differently from S and O. In addition, S and O are treated in the same way (differently from A) in the way clauses are combined to form complex sentences. I read widely on other languages with ergative characteristics, worked out the theoretical principles underlying these systems, and published an 80-page paper in the journal Language in 1979. (In a 2003 editorial note, the editor mentioned that this was one of the six most-cited papers in the first 75 years of the journal’s publication.) Besides the joys of teaching, and the satisfaction of building and administering a flourishing department, the ‘seventies (which were more or less my ‘thirties) had been a fruitful decade for research. It was great to be amidst a team of like-minded colleagues and students, all more-or-less working within the conception of linguistics as a science, as outlined in Chapter 2. But there are, of course, other approaches to the study of language, which are briefly surveyed in the next chapter.

PUBLICATIONS

My grammar of Yidiñ and The languages of Australia were published by Cam- bridge University Press in 1977 and 1980 respectively. ‘Ergativity’ appeared in the journal Language, volume 55, pages 59-138, 1979. (Its citation status is mentioned in Language volume 79, page 403, 2003.) Grammatical categories in Australian languages, edited by Dixon, was published by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, and Humani- ties Press, New Jersey, in 1976. Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of The handbook of Australian languages, edited by Dixon and Barry J. Blake, were published in 1979, 1981 and 1983 respectively, by the ANU Press, Canberra, and John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Volumes 4 and 5 were published in 1991 and 2000 by Oxford University Press, Melbourne. My grammars and vocabularies of Warrgamay and Nyawaygi are in volumes 2 and 3 respectively.

9 The science of linguistics, and other approaches to the study of language

Michael Halliday’s invaluable letter of 24 February 1961 is reproduced in chapter 3. He referred to ‘the sort of linguistics we do here’ (Edinburgh), and ‘the sorts of linguistics we don’t do here’, divided into Saussurean, Bloomfield ian, Hjelmslevian, Prague, Sapir and Whorf, and Chomsky. (Chomsky’s light was then just beginning to wax.) This struck me as slightly odd, since there weren’t different ‘sorts’ of mathematics, or of chemistry or physics or geology or biology. ‘Sort’ was a mild label. Others, at the time, would use ‘school’ — the Prague School, and so on. Soon the term ‘theory’ came into fashion — if you belonged to the Chomskian school, you used ‘transformational generative theory’ (TG for short). By the late 1970s, there was an almost uncountable number of ‘theories’, each claiming to be the sole true path to enlightenment concerning the nature of language. ‘Linguistics’ is most often defined as ‘the science of language’ or ‘the scientific study of language’. Each of the natural sciences has a single theory — chemical theory, and the like. A natural science does not have a swathe of competing ‘theories’, each with a different agenda and a dismissive attitude towards other ‘theories’. What is happening here? It is plain that the term ‘theory’ is used in two quite different senses. Some people in linguistics use them interchangeably — without distinction — causing great confusion. What it boils down to is that there are two angles of attack to the study of language, one similar in its approach and methodology to the natural sciences, and the other akin to philosophy and the social sciences.

(a) The scientific approach entails observation of the full gamut of facts of human languages, offering description, explanation, prediction and evaluation, generally proceeding by inductive generalisation. All practitioners work in terms of a common, cumulative linguistic theory (in the singular), similar to the theory underlying each natural science. 168 I am a linguist

(b) The philosophical (or social science) approach gives rise to a number of competing ‘schools’, and a corresponding set of ‘theories’ (in the plural). This is similar to the schools of thought in literature, economics, and the like. Far from being cumulative, each school puts forward its own set of a priori ideas concerning some aspect of language, and looks at facts from individual languages only insofar as they relate to its specific agenda.

Linguistics, the science of human language, has points of similarity with social anthropology, the study of human societies, cultures and customs. The eminent anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown remarked ‘I have been described ... as belonging to something called the “Functional School of Social Anthropology” and even as being its leader, or one of its leaders ... The statement that I am a “functionalist” would seem to me to convey no definite meaning.’ His next paragraph is as appropriate to linguistics as to social anthropology. ‘There is no place in natural science for “schools” in this sense, and I regard social anthropology as a branch of natural science. Each scientist starts from the work of [their] predecessors, finds problems which [they] believe to be significant, and by observation and reasoning endeavours to make some contribution to a growing body of theory. Co-operation among scientists results from the fact that they are working on the same or related problems. Such co-operation does not result in the formation of schools, in the sense in which there are schools of philosophy or of painting. There is no place for orthodox- ies and heterodoxies in science. Nothing is more pernicious in science than attempts to establish adherence to doctrines. All that a teacher can do is to assist the student in learning to understand and use the scientific method. It is not [their] business to make disciples.’ In his monograph The structure of science, Ernest Nagel describes ‘the almost complete unanimity commonly found among competent workers in the natural sciences as to what are matters of established fact, what are the reasonably satisfactory explanations (if any) for the assumed facts, and what are some of the valid procedures in sound inquiry. Disagreement on such questions undoubtedly occurs ... But it is usually found at the advancing frontiers of knowledge and ... such disagreement is generally resolved with reasonable dispatch when additional evidence is obtained or when improved techniques of analysis are developed.’ He then contrasts this with the situation in the social sciences which ‘often produce the impression that they are a battleground for interminably warring schools of thought and that even subject matter which has been under intensive and prolonged study remains at the unsettled periphery of research.’ the science of linguistics, and other approaches 169

I will reserve the term ‘linguistics’ (or ‘linguistic science’) for the approach to language study which is akin to that of the natural sciences. Just as there is a single geological theory, so there is a single linguistic theory. Under the social science/philosophy approach there are what can be called ‘p-theories’ concerning language. During recent years there have been many of these, an ever-shifting galaxy as new stars are born, briefly glimmer, and then fade into indistinct memory.

The science of linguistics Chapter 2 outlines the science of linguistics. As Stephen E. Toulmin states: ‘the task of science is to explain actual events, processes or phenomena in nature, and no system of theoretical ideas, technical terms, and mathematical procedures ... qualifies as scientific unless it comes to grips with those empirical data at some point and in some way and helps to make them more intelligible ... The facts in question may be discovered by using observational methods’ or ‘by using experimental methods.’ The scientific study of language basically involves observation. One records texts in the language under study and analyses them. Added to this is participant observation, recording what is said in the social round, and being prompted and corrected as one attempts to use the language oneself in everyday interaction. Once the linguist has a hypothesis concerning some principle of grammatical organisation, they may predict new sentences by applying that principle, putting them — in a kind of ‘experimental method’ — to speaker- consultants for their critical consideration. The main features of linguistics as a science were described in chapter 2, and can be briefly recapitulated here. The two basic elements — description and theory — go hand-in-hand, each requiring and explicating the other. A linguist will undertake fieldwork, live in a community where the language is spoken, and write a grammar of it in terms of linguistic theory. A descriptive statement can only be made in terms of a theory — the terms that are used, criteria that are employed, analytic decisions that are made. Each language has a greater or lesser number of novel features which feed back into theory, helping to expand and refine it. As in the natural sciences, theory in linguistic science is cumulative. Every new language that is described fills out certain interstices within the theoretical matrix, and may lead to the reformulation of some theoretical parameter. A dictionary must, of course, be compiled as an accompaniment to each grammar. This lists the items belonging 170 I am a linguist

to the major open word classes — generally, nouns, verbs and adjectives — with their grammatical profiles and meanings. The small closed classes are fully dealt with within the grammar — pronouns, prepositions and postpositions, articles, and the like. Description involves first of all asking ‘how’ a language is organised. Tied to this is the search for explanation, ‘why’ are things this way and not that? Explanation can be of varied hue. Why does go in English have a suppletive past tense went? The answer lies in the fact that the ancestral form in Old Eng- lish, gan, was an anomalous verb without a regular past form. The verb wend ‘go in a particular direction’ had past form went (parallel to send and sent). In the south of Britain, the use of went was extended so that it functioned as past form of go as well as of wend, and then just of go, with a new regular past form, wended, being created for wend. (However, in northern England and Scotland, a new past, gaed, was formed, based on present tense form gai in these dialects.) A ‘why’ question of a different sort concerns the reason that some adjectives in English form a verb by adding -en, whereas others do not. For instance, one can say deepen, meaning ‘become deep’ or ‘make deep’ but not *shallowen; quicken but not *slowen; harden, soften and brighten but not *ruden, *prouden or *politen. There are two principles involved here. Firstly, adjectives referring to dimension, physical property and speed take -en if they end in p, t, k (a voiceless stop), f, s, sh, th (a voiceless fricative) or d, but not if they end in any other sound. This explains the occurrence of en- in deepen, brighten, quicken, thicken, toughen, loosen, freshen, smoothen, harden but not with thin, shallow or slow. (In fact, slow and thin can be used as verbs without any suffix added; for shallow one has simply to say become shallow and make shallow.) Secondly, -en is never found with adjectives describing human propensities, such as rude, proud, polite, stupid, clever or loyal, whatever sound they end in. This is a somewhat simplified account, but it serves to indicate the kind of explanation which can be provided. One then wants to step back further, of course. Why do human propensity terms never accept -en? There appears to be a semantic reason. These adjectives describe more-or-less permanent properties. As a rule, people just are rude or stupid so that one would only rather occasionally have cause to say He became rude or She made him rude, whereas one often hears things likeThe river deepens after the bend or His pulse-rate quickened. And why should -en be acceptable on dimension, physical property and speed adjectives only after certain sounds? This is one of the myriad ‘why’ questions in linguistic science which remain in need of careful attention. (It may well relate in some manner to preferences for sound sequences in English.) the science of linguistics, and other approaches 171

The science of linguistics attempts to put forward general principles of organisation which apply across the wide variety of human languages. The methodology is to investigate how a certain grammatical category is organised in each of a representative sample of languages for which sound, theoretically- informed descriptions are available, and then generalise on an inductive basis. This can be illustrated with relative clause constructions, such asI know the man who wept in English, where the relative clause who wept provides further specification for the man in the main clause, I know the man. We can call the man the common element linking main and relative clauses; it is here in O (transitive object) function in the main clause and in S (intransitive subject) function in the relative clause. For relative clause constructions in English, the common element can be in any function in the main clause and in any function in the relative clause. But in other languages there are restrictions on the function of the common element in the relative clause — it may be confined just to transitive and intransitive subjects (A and S), or else to A and S and O, and so on. Edward Keenan and Bernard Comrie studied a selection of languages which have restrictions on the function the common element can have in a relative clause, and came up with an inductive generalisation. They postulated a hierarchy:

subject (S and A) > object (O) > indirect object > oblique object > possessor within a noun phrase > object of comparison (for example, after than)

The generalisation is that, in a given language, the possible functions for the common element in a relative clause extend from the left of the hierarchy, as far as one of the places marked by ‘>’. For example, they can be S, A, O and indirect object, but not S, A and indirect object (omitting O). However, Keenan and Comrie did not include in their sample any languages with an ergative profile. In Dyirbal, for instance, the common element can only be in S or O function in the relative clause. This suggests that the hierarchy should be revised so that it begins: S/O > A > ... for an ergative language and S/A > O > ... for a non-ergative language.

Besides enquiring ‘how’ and ‘why’, linguistics — if it is to be a science — must be able to make predictions. Certain features are not so far reported to occur in any language. Could they occur? In some cases, we would predict that — as 172 I am a linguist

the sample of well-described languages is extended — the missing property may well be encountered. In other cases we would predict that the non-occurring feature is impossible. In every language there are a number of series of stop consonants; for example, Jarawara has three — b, pronounced with the lips; t, with the tongue tip; and k, with the back of the tongue. There are also a number of nasal consonants; Jarawara has m made with the lips; and n, with the tongue tip (there is no nasal corresponding to k in this language). Languages so far examined either have more stops than nasals, as in Jarawara, or the same number (as in Dyirbal, which has four of each). That is, I know of no language which has been unequivocally analysed as having more nasals than stops. There is, however, no reason why this should not occur. That is, I would predict that such a language might well be found, as competent descriptions are completed for more of the three or four thousand living languages. (Only a small fraction have thus far been adequately documented.) In some languages, like English, all vowels are pronounced with the air just coming out of the mouth (called ‘oral vowels’). In others, some vowels have air coming out of both mouth and nose simultaneously (‘nasal vowels’). French, for instance, has twelve oral and four nasal vowels. That is, there is a nasal vowel corresponding to four of the oral vowels — for example, bon ‘good’ has the nasal vowel correspondent of the oral vowel in mort ‘death’ — but not for the other eight — there is no nasal vowel corresponding to the oral vowel in loup ‘wolf’, for instance. In some languages there is a nasal vowel corresponding to each oral vowel but no language is known which has more nasal than oral vowels. I predict that there should be no such language. Nasal vowels are more complex in their articulation than oral vowels and we should not expect to encounter a nasal vowel for which there is no oral vowel correspondent. We can now essay some predictions concerning what might and what might not occur in the field of grammar. Most (but not all) languages have comparative constructions, as in English Mary is more intelligent than John. In some languages only adjectives can be compared (this applies to Korean and Finnish); in some adjectives and verbs can be compared (this applies to Eḍo from Nigeria); in some adjectives and nouns can be compared (as in Portuguese); in some only nouns (this applies in Hausa, also from Nigeria); and in some only verbs (as in Jarawara). I know of no language in which either a noun or a verb may be compared, but not an adjective. There is no obvious reason why this should not occur — although it would be highly unusual — and I predict that, as more languages are accorded a detailed description, such a feature may well be encountered. the science of linguistics, and other approaches 173

The grammatical coding of evidentiality was mentioned in chapters 2 and 5, whereby the evidence for relating that an event took place must be provided in the grammar. In Jarawara, each of the three past tenses has an eyewitness (you saw it happen) and a non-eyewitness (you didn’t see it happen) form; there is no evidentiality specification in non-past. Tuyuca, spoken in Colombia, has five evidentiality choices in past tense — visual (saw it), non-visual sensory (heard, smelled, tasted or felt it), inferred (saw something which showed it had happened), assumed (it generally happens in this way) and reported (someone told you about it). Tuyuca has just four evidentials in present tense, there then being no reported. Languages with evidentials appear to have either the same number of choices in present as in past, or fewer. No language is known which shows a greater number of evidentiality specifications in present than in past. I predict that no such language should exist. This is because source of information is most oriented to an event which took place some time ago, rather than to something currently in course. I have provided four examples of features that are not known, two in phonology and two in grammar, and essayed predictions as to whether or not they might occur. In two cases the answer was ‘yes, quite likely’ — a language having more nasal than stop consonants, and a comparative construction applying only to verbs and nouns, not to adjectives. In the other two instances, the answer was ‘no, would not expect to occur’ — having more nasal than oral vowels, and having more evidentiality specifications in present than in past tense. Many other predictive questions could be posed. Looking again at possible codings of evidentiality, it is interesting to see how this relates to the five senses — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Some languages have one evidentiality choice coding all sensory information (Quechua, spoken along the Andes, is like this). Others divide the senses between two evidentiality specifications; there is always one referring just to visual evidence and a second for evidence from the other four senses (as in Tuyuca). It appears to be a universal feature of human languages that we never get one evidential for hearing and another for seeing, tasting, smelling and touching; nor one for tasting and another for the remaining four senses, and so on. Nor, I would predict, are we ever likely to encounter such a language. Indeed, it may be a fact of human cognition that seeing is the most vital sense, so that only the sense of vision is likely to be singled out as a grammatical category. One more property is required if linguistics is to be truly considered a science — this is evaluation. Are some grammatical and phonological systems 174 I am a linguist

— indeed, are some languages — better for a certain purpose than others? This was briefly discussed in chapter 5 and will be mentioned again in chapter 16.

Why do human beings have language? Do we need language? Well, we would be able to achieve little without it. It is language which enables a group of people to function as a community. In its bare essence, language conveys a ‘meaning’ from a speaker to anyone who happens to be listening. The meaning may be a description of some event or state, an attitude, an invitation, a question or a command. Language exists to facilitate the communication of meaning within a social situation. Ideas are expressed through words which are placed in grammatical constructions, to be decoded and understood by other members of the speech community. Linguistics, as the science of language, must accept as its major task the description of meaning — in vocabulary and in grammar. And this has to be embedded within consideration of how a language is employed, in its many manifestations, within its social milieu, as the valued emblem of its community of users.

Other approaches to the study of language A fair proportion of the people who are on the payroll of university departments of linguistics do not conceive of linguistics as something akin to natural science, with a single cumulative body of theory, the theory providing a foundation in terms of which full descriptions of languages can be framed, these in turn feeding back into the theory, which provides a characterisation of the way in which human languages classify and code meanings in the daily round of communication. They instead boast membership of one of a fluctuating number of ‘schools’, in the way that there are schools of literary criticism, of philosophy, of psy- choanalysis, and of economic thought. Each school has its own ‘theory’, called here ‘p-theory’ to avoid confusion with the theoretical basis of linguistics conceived of as a science. By and large, p-theorists have little interest in the sorts of question posed — and answers provided — in the discussion just above. They see grammar as a formal system (in some ways like a system of mathematical logic). They argue between themselves as to whether the abstract formulation of grammar should or should not include rules of movement. One says, in English (the overwhelming majority of the discussion in p-theories is with respect to Eng- lish), John has beaten Fred and then Who has John beaten? Does the latter relate the science of linguistics, and other approaches 175

to an underlying structure John has beaten who?, with the who moved to the beginning of the sentence and then has moved to immediately precede John? Some p-theorists follow such an analysis; others proscribe any rule involving movement. To take another example, is a passive construction such as Fred has been beaten by John derived from the active construction John has beaten Fred, by interchanging John and Fred, inserting by before John, and substituting has been for has? Or should we have different entries in the dictionary forbeat and be(en) beaten (by), the difference between active and passive being treated, in part, as a choice of words? Each theory has its own array of high-flown terminology and intricate formulas, rather like formal logic. Indeed, the p-theories are often called ‘formal theories’, since they examine the formal properties of abstract con- ceptions of grammar. Today, no proponent of a p-theory attempts to write a full grammar of a language. The interest is in p-theory for p-theory’s sake. Each p-theory makes certain claims (slightly different from those of other p-theories) and odd bits of data from languages are considered — considered quite outside the context of the grammar to which they belong — for the relevance they may be thought to have for some particular idea within the p-theory. It would, indeed, be impossible to write a full grammar of a language in terms of a p-theory, since each p-theory only concerns itself with certain aspects of grammar. Or, if a p-theory were extended for this purpose, a grammar written in terms of it would run to thousands of pages (whereas a grammar in terms of the established theory of linguistic science would take a few hundred pages). The p-theorists conceive of a grammar as a self-contained entity, a sort of algebraic system, which exists in and for itself. They do not see grammar as a bridge between speaker’s intended meaning and hearer’s understanding, in a context of social situation, within an ethnically-based society. Their interest is in the nature of grammar, as an intellectual object. There is nothing wrong with this. It is just that it does not fall within the scope of a linguistics which is conceived of as the science of language (in the way that biology is conceived of as the science of living organisms).

The proliferation of p-theories, in present-day approaches to the study of language, may be better understood if placed in historical context. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) enunciated some of the basic principles for a science of linguistics, although he did not himself apply them to full description of a language. During the nineteenth century, 176 I am a linguist

philologists had discussed the history of words and of odd bits of grammar as items in themselves. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Saus- sure insisted that a language must be treated as a complete system, every part of which has meaning and significance only in the way it relates to other parts of the system. The proper object of study for linguistics is the full system of a language at a certain point in time (a synchronic study). One should then look at how a complete language system (not just a part of it) changes over time (this is a diachronic study). Saussure has been misinterpreted as saying that diachronic considerations ought not to be included in a synchronic study. Of course they can be, and should be — for example, the explanation of went as irregular past of go, mentioned earlier. Each synchronic linguistic system is the product of its history, and bears within its internal organisation the seeds for future development. Saussure’s idea of language as an interlocking system has been dubbed ‘structuralism’. However, this term has been employed with many other meanings. One of these relates to viewing the structure of a sentence, say, in terms of its components. For example, the structure of the English sentence Birds fly is that it consists of noun birds and verb fly. Another term used in language study, which has a wide range of meanings, is ‘functional’. This sometimes relates to a language being viewed in terms of the function it plays in society. Other times, ‘function’ relates to the grammatical role of a linguistic unit within some larger unit; for example, birds is the subject of the sentence Birds fly. The latter sense of function is thus complementary to the second sense of structure. In fact, both concepts are required for an adequate linguistic description. For example:

the English sentence Birds fly has structure: subject plus predicate a noun (such as birds) may function as subject a verb (such as fly) may function as predicate

In the years before World War II, a fair number of comprehensive descriptions of North American languages — all in terms of the cumulative theory of linguistic science — were published by Franz Boas (1858-1942), Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and their students. A third American linguist, Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949), produced fine grammars of Algonquian languages. There was not the same attention to grammar writing in Europe but major contributions to the science of linguistics, and other approaches 177

linguistic theory were made by two Russian émigrés, Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890- 1938) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). During and after the war, American linguistics went into a kind of hiatus. There was a group of scholars, none of very high quality, who came to be known as ‘Post-Bloomfieldians’, although this was a calumny on the fine reputation of Bloomfield. Halliday, in his letter — reproduced in Chapter 3 — erred by lumping together Bloomfield and the Post-Bloomfieldians. Roman Jakobson (head and shoulders above any of the Post-Bloomfieldians both in intellect and in achievements) fled from Nazi Europe to New York in 1941. His very presence in their country discommoded the Post-Bloomfieldians. A group of them met regularly in a bar and each provided a $2 bill (widely thought of in American folklore as a harbinger of bad luck) which every person present signed, to be sent to Jakobson ‘to pay for his return to Europe on the first available cattle-boat’. Despite this, Jakobson was soon appointed to Columbia University, and later to Harvard and MIT. And for the next few decades he remained one of the most exciting and productive linguists in America (and in the world). The Post-Bloomfieldians wanted linguistics to be recognised as a science but had their own entirely idiosyncratic idea about what this meant. Science deals with observables, they decided; meaning is not observable and so meaning should have no place in linguistics. (But what is linguistics about if not meaning?) They also put forward the idea that linguistic analysis should proceed according to fixed procedures (called ‘discovery procedures’). First one recorded the sounds of a language (phonetics). Then, by looking at the distribution of sounds, these were arranged into contrastive sound units or phonemes (like the letters of an ideal alphabet). Then, by looking at the distribution of phonemes, these were arranged into meaning-bearing units called morphemes (for example, the word untruthful in English consists of four morphemes, un‑, tru(e), -th and -ful). Then, by looking at the distribution of morphemes, these would be arranged into sentences (this was syntax). The sentenceBirds fly will consist of three morphemes, bird, -s and fly. (The unit ‘word’, as in bird-s, was discarded as irrelevant by some Post-Bloomfieldians.) This was absolute nonsense. Nobody ever has or ever could write a grammar in this way. (The Post-Bloomfieldians, one of the first groups of p-theorists, didn’t actually provide full descriptions of any languages; they just said how it should be done.) In fact, all levels of linguistic analysis — phonetics, phonemics, morphemics and syntax — must be pursued more-or-less simultaneously; each level relates to and assists analytic decisions on the other levels. 178 I am a linguist

Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of America, had been established in 1925 and by then had a wide circulation. Bernard Bloch became editor in 1939 and ran it as mouthpiece for the Post-Bloomfieldian school. Kenneth Pike (1912-2000), who had studied with Sapir, wrote a most important paper called ‘Grammatical prerequisites to phonemic analysis’ showing that one has to take account of grammatical factors in pursuing phonemic analysis. That is, the procedures put forward by the Post-Bloomfieldians were flawed. Pike’s paper was rejected by Bloch (it was published in Word, a rival journal with much lower circulation). In fact, Language never published anything by Pike and didn’t even review his books, which were some of the most influential of that time. (Pike was a missionary, which may have been a factor; but this does not obscure the fact that he was a magnificent linguist, right up there in the Jakobson class.) Bloch also rejected papers by Jakobson. It is reported that Bloch privately said that he felt obliged to publish any paper submitted by the senior Post-Bloomfieldians. This was more-or-less that group that had in 1943 signed the $2 bills to send Jakobson away from their shores. In the late 1950s there burst onto this scene Noam Chomsky — who had more intellect than all the Post-Bloomfieldians rolled together, along with a charismatic, messianic personality. He set forth the idea of syntactic ‘transformations’, presenting an explicit grammatical rule that would transform an Eng- lish sentence like John has beaten Bill into a passive like Bill has been beaten by John, and so on. He also stated that the sort of grammar he espoused (but never produced more than a few fragments of) was ‘generative’; by this he meant that application of grammatical rules would generate an indefinite number of never- before-uttered sentences of the language under study. It was asserted that previous grammars had been non-generative, in that they had simply described a closed corpus of data. This idea was unfounded. All decent grammars — before and since that time — are fully generative. An integral component of fieldwork involves hypothesising a certain grammatical rule and using it to generate new sentences, then checking these out with speaker-consultants. Chomskians have now discarded transformations, but still describe themselves as ‘generativists’. This has become a technical term, detached from its meaning in the language at large. Proponents of p-theories do not write grammars and they are thus not in the business of generating the (indefinitely large) possible set of sentences for a language. In contrast, linguists following the scientific paradigm pursue a fully generative agenda, in the normal sense of the word. The Post-Bloomfieldians had prided themselves on being ‘structuralists’. The label was fully appropriate since they focussed on structure, leaving out the science of linguistics, and other approaches 179

of consideration function. As described above, the sentence Birds fly would be said to consist of noun birds and verb fly (or just of the three morphemes bird, -s and fly), with no mention of ‘subject’ or ‘object’ or ‘predicate’. As Chomsky moved into ascendency, eclipsing the Post-Bloomfieldian paradigm, the term ‘structuralist’ shifted its aura to become a label of opprobrium — ‘You are structuralists’ (said with demeaning intonation), ‘we are generativists’ (on a high note of glory). The irony of it all was that Chomsky retained the basic structuralist principles of his predecessors. His grammar had two components: phrase structure rules, which generate strings of words, and transformational rules, which derive new strings from these. For the sentence Birds fly, only phrase structure rules are required:

Sentence → Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase Noun Phrase can be birds Verb Phrase can be fly

As with the Post-Bloomfieldians, no attention was paid to function labels such as ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’. English was – and is — the major language of consideration for Chomsy and his trend-setting inner group, and here a subject generally is a noun (plus appropriate modifiers) and a predicate generally is a verb. That such a scheme is simplistic and inadequate becomes apparent when one looks at a language such as Mandarin Chinese, where subject can be noun or verb. Consider the following simple sentences in Mandarin, with both structure and function marked:

(a) Daifu lai le (b) Lai tui le doctor come come be.right noun verb verb verb SUBJECT PREDICATE PARTICLE SUBJECT PREDICATE PARTICLE ‘The doctor came’ ‘Coming was right’ (that is, ‘It was right to come’)

The grammatical specification required for a simple intransitive clause in Man- darin is:

Sentence has structure: subject, predicate A noun or a verb can function as subject 180 I am a linguist

Only a verb can function as predicate Nouns include daifu ‘doctor’ Verbs include lai ‘come’ and dui ‘be right’

It will be seen that the phrase structure rule ‘Sentence → Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase’ is inadequate for Mandarin. Sentence (b) consists of two verbs, not of a noun and a verb — one of the verbs functions as subject and one as predicate. An adequate grammar of Mandarin requires specification of function as well as of structure, to show that, although the predicate can only be a verb, the subject can be either a noun or a verb. Many other examples, from hundreds of languages, could be added to demonstrate again and again the insufficiency of the Post-Bloomfieldian/Chomskian ‘structuralist’ approach. There were other, and earlier, p-theories. In the ‘thirties and ‘forties, Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev had developed some of Saussure’s ideas into ‘Glosse- matics’, awe-inspiring in its intricate terminology (but never applied to full description of a language). Stratificational Grammar was born just after Halliday’s 1961 letter, but died in infancy. Case Grammar emerged a little later and lasted a little longer. Halliday’s own Neo-Firthian theory (‘the sort of linguistics we do here’) was first called ‘Scale-and-Category grammar’, then ‘Systemic theory’, then ‘Functional grammar’ (adding further to the burden of use on this term). Inevitably, each p-theory was based on some part of the cumulative theory of linguistics as a science (which had steadily developed from the work of Indian and Greek grammarians, more than two thousand years ago). But each was held by its practitioners to be an independent system, the only correct way to investigate the nature of language, with competing p-theories held to be inadequate. This eclipsing stance can be illustrated from an interview Noam Chomsky gave in 1971. Journalist Ved Mehta recounts: ‘I ask him who he thinks are the other major innovators in linguistics today.’ Chomsky mentions just two colleagues at MIT, Morris Halle and ‘my former student John Ross’. Mehta tells how ‘I press my question. “Who would you say are the leading figures in the field as a whole, anywhere in the world?” ‘”There aren’t any,” he says, with a dismissive wave of the hand.’ Seminal figures such as Jakobson and Pike were passed over, together with the inventors of Stratification Grammar and Case Grammar and the Post- Bloomfieldians (who were still there, increasingly frustrated with the direction in which the world was turning). And it is interesting to note that, by the mid-’eighties, Ross’s ideas had fallen out of favour and he was bought out of his tenure contract with MIT (at which time he moved to Brazil). the science of linguistics, and other approaches 181

Without exception, p-theories had limited lives. Most often they just faded away, but sometimes continued in new guise under a changed label. The panorama of p-theories associated — directly or indirectly — with Chomsky is breath-taking. The version of Transformational Generative Grammar put out in the mid-’sixties came to be called Standard Theory. A great name, and surely one to stick with. But no, it was replaced by Extended Standard Theory and then Revised Extended Standard Theory (REST). There followed Government and Binding Theory (GB) which became subsumed under Principles and Param- eters Theory, and then the Minimalist Program. All of these had Chomsky at their helm. The later theories boasted a single grammatical rule, ‘move alpha’, where alpha could be anything (‘a variable over syntactic categories’). There was then a bevy of conditions which constrained the movement. Chomsky is far and away the best known name in linguistics (this being reinforced by his reputation as a writer on political matters). He has made a significant contribution to philosophical-type study of the nature of language as an abstract system (with glancing reference to English). But the ascendency of his ideas has led to neglect of the agenda for linguistics as a science. While p- theorists have introspected about the nature of grammatical rules, some scores of languages have passed undocumented into extinction. These languages’ undoubtedly novel stratagems of grammatical organisation, and the original ways of viewing the world associated with them — not to mention their encapsula- tion of an ethnic group’s history and laws — have been lost forever. There were splinter movements a-plenty off the Chomskian mainstem, navi- gated by his former followers. Generative Semantics flared brightly in the late ‘sixties, only to vanish quite abruptly. In the early ‘seventies came Relational Grammar. Its two captains soon agree to part ways, one retaining the original name (which soldiered on for a little while) and the other adopting ‘Arc-Pair Grammar’ (this was virtually still-born). Others of the Chomskian p-theoretic sproutings had stronger constitutions. Lexical-Functional Grammar (from the late ‘seventies and still continuing) decided that Phrase Structure rules had limited value and opted to include labels such as ‘subject’ and ‘object’ (taken over from the scientific theory). There was a move in the opposite direction in Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar, developed at about the same time as LFG. But, one might enquire: who needs so many p-theories? Thomas Wasow explained that GPSG and LFG could ‘be viewed as attempts to preserve certain attractive features of the earlier phases of generative grammar.’ Then in the mid-’eighties, there came Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, an offshoot of GPSG. And, in the mid-’nineties, 182 I am a linguist

Optimality Theory — a form which shows least violations of a set of general principles is considered ‘optimal’. (The general principles are set up so that occurring forms show the least violations of them.) These were all p-theories of grammar, with meaning assigned at best a pe- ripheral role. Most of the associated discussions of meaning dealt with truth conditions; for instance, if John would come yesterday or tomorrow is true and John came yesterday is false then it must be that John will come tomorrow is true. Truth conditions are a feature of formal logic but have little relevance for the meaning relations employed in human languages, as they are used in daily life. Leaving aside Hjelmslev, every p-theory was developed by a native speaker of English, and is in the first place overwhelmingly justified for and exempli- fied by English. Critical features of English — which are not found in other languages — were built into a p-theory, as a universal feature applying to all languages. English is unusual in having fairly strict ordering — subject, then predicate, then object; and adjective before noun within a noun phrase. Many p-theories state that every language has a fixed order of phrases, and of words. This is unfounded. Consider a sentence in Russian translated as ‘the big dog chased the little cat’. Textbooks for foreigners generally give the same word order as in English (here NOM and ACC code feminine singular nominative and accusative case endings respectively):

[Bol’sh-aya sobak-a] gon’ala [malen’k-uyu koshk-u] big-NOM dog-NOM chased little-ACC cat-ACC 1a 1b 3a 3b 1 2 3

But Russian is unlike English in that the three major elements, ‘big dog’, ‘chased’ and ‘little cat’ may occur in any order, depending upon their role in discourse — 123 or 132 or 213 or 231 or 312 or 321. In addition, an adjective can either precede or follow its noun. What is more, the words within phrases can, to some extent, be scattered about, providing different sorts of contrast and emphasis; one might hear 1a 2 1b 3a 3b or 1a 2 3a 3b 1b or 1b 1a 3a 2 3b. The fact thatbol’sh-aya sobak-a make up the subject noun phrase is shown by the fact that they both bear a nominative suffix; similarly, both malen’k-uyu and koshk-u have accusative ending, showing that they function together as object. That is, whatever the order of words, the overall meaning must be ‘the big dog chased the little cat’ (it could not mean, for example, ‘the little dog chased the big cat’). the science of linguistics, and other approaches 183

Dyirbal has even greater freedom of phrase ordering and word ordering than Russian. And more of the world’s languages are like Russian than are like English. At a late stage, Chomskians realised that not all languages are like Eng- lish in this respect. What to do about it? Generate the words in a fixed order, then have a ‘scrambling rule’ saying that they can be put into any order, at random. This is a bit like a parliament passing a law and saying, at the same time, that no one need abide by it. Why impose word order, and then dis-impose it? (The answer is: because the p-theory demands it.) None of the many people who have invented a p-theory ever did any substantial description of a language, let alone write a full grammar (even of English). However, in the ‘sixties there were some attempts to write grammars of languages in terms of Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Theory and in terms of Halliday’s Systemic Theory. All were partial endeavours and, when looked at today, are impenetrable. One can more-or-less appreciate the p-theoretic formulations and formalisms, but almost nothing of the linguistic character of the language. At that time, the boundary between the single theory of linguistics as a science and the varied p-theories was a little fuzzy. It became crystal clear in the late ‘seventies. An erstwhile cheer-leader for Chomskiana — who had not quite kept up with developments — was talking with a couple of recent PhDs from MIT. ‘Why don’t you guys write a full grammar of a language in terms of GB [Government and Binding Theory], show you can do it?’ he enquired. ‘Oh no,’ came the response, ‘that’s not relevant to the development of [p-] theory.’ It was held that GB and some other p-theories simply constituted claims about the abstract nature of grammar; each was sufficient unto itself. There was thus no interest on the part of p-theorists in working out the full grammar of a language, dealing with every aspect of its structure, paying heed to Saussure’s insight that each part has meaning and significance only in the relations it contracts with other parts. What p-theorists did was examine some bit of the grammar of a language (on its own, in contravention of Saussurean dictum) for the relevance it might have for some rule or constraint in their p-theory. There was some information in the literature on relative clauses in Mohawk, but need to check out a couple of points. Find a speaker. Make up a couple of sentences (without having any full understanding of or control over the language). ‘Can you say this?’ Request a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. (Apart from anything else, this is appalling field technique. In addition to ‘yes’, one should always get the speaker to say the sentence themself, to ensure the two of you are on the same wavelength.) 184 I am a linguist

Since about 1980, the division between linguists pursuing scientific study of languages — writing grammars and the like — and the p-theorists has been clean-cut. In 1988, premier American Indian linguist Margaret Langdon spent a semester in my department at the ANU. At a dinner to farewell her, I remarked on how wonderful it had been to host someone who was a linguist in the true sense of the term. ‘People in my department’ [in the University of California at San Diego, including proponents of several different p-theories], Margaret replied, ‘say that I’m not a linguist at all, since I don’t follow a [p-] theory. They say that I’m just a language describer.’ Here the distinction was clearly acknowledged. For those who follow the social-science/philosophical approach to language study — with its multiplicity of competing and ever-shifting p-theories —only they are the linguists. For those of us who consider the study of language as akin to the study of matter and energy, or of living organisms — a variety of natural science — this is what the term linguistics should be reserved for. Like physics and biology, it has a single scientific theory. At some level, many p-theorists do realise that they are not engaged in the real business of linguistics, that they are not adding to the store of knowledge by providing theoretically-informed grammars of some of the fast-diminishing stock of human languages — of such diverse character — across the globe. One form of self-defence is attack. ‘You don’t have a theory,’ they tell the grammar- writers. This has gone so far that some PhD students, introducing a dissertation which is a high-quality grammar of a previously undescribed language, excuse themselves in the preface by stating that the study is ‘a-theoretic’. This is nonsense. One can’t do any description without a theoretical basis. Working out the significant sound units (phonemes) of a language, deciding whether some feature in the grammar satisfies accepted criteria to be called a system of genders, deciding whether a particular construction type satisfies criteria to be considered a relative clause construction (and what its properties are) — all these decisions are made in terms of the theory which characterises linguistics as a science. There had been no specific name for this, whereas each p-theory had a cog- nomen with capital letters, which are often used alone — TG, GB, LFG, GPSG, HPSG, and many more. In the mid-’nineties, the term ‘basic linguistic theory’ (with lower-case letters) came into use to describe the single cumulative theory of linguistics as a science (the theory in terms of which almost all grammars have been and are being written). There has been a reaction. ‘Basic linguistic theory isn’t a theory at all,’ one of the p-theorists exclaimed. What he meant the science of linguistics, and other approaches 185

was that it wasn’t one of the proliferation of p-theories (it has no ersatz formulas and formalisms, for instance). Certainly it isn’t! It is the theory of linguistics as a variety of natural science.

The nature of linguistic analysis The different approaches of p-theories and of (basic) linguistic theory can be highlighted by the different meanings they accord to the notion of ‘linguistic analysis’. For someone working in terms of a p-theory, analysis of (a bit of) a language requires seeing how it fits into the framework legislated by the theory. Some p-theories require that every sentence has two (and no more) primary constituents, a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP). For a sentence translated by ‘The big dog chased the little cat’ it is just a matter of deciding which is NP and which is VP. For English, arguments can be given that The big dog is the NP and chased the little cat is the VP. For an ergative language like Dyirbal, one might argue that ‘the little cat’ (which is in O function, marked with a zero ending which is also used for S function) should be the NP with ‘the big dog chased’ being the VP (this includes the NP ‘the big dog’, which is in A function, marked with an ergative case suffix). Some p-theories include the notion ‘relative clause’; analysis then simply involves finding what is the relative clause construction in the language under study. In contrast, analysis of a language in terms of (basic) linguistic theory entails understanding how the language works — how each component interrelates with and interacts with each other component. The linguist begins by examining which of the established categories and construction types of linguistic theory are relevant for this language. Some will be, some won’t. And there may be features of the language which cannot be fully described and explained by the existing theory, so that refinement or extension may be needed. The overarching principle is that there is no requirement that any particular general category must be recognisable in each language. Is there any construction type which could appropriately be called a relative clause? Examine possible constructions in detail; look at their grammatical properties and their meanings. Do they accord with the general definition of ‘relative clause’ in linguistic theory? A p-theory which includes relative clauses has to find them somewhere. In contrast, basic linguistic theory enquires — with no prejudgement — whether any construction type in the language should appropriately be recognised as a relative clause construction. 186 I am a linguist

Similarly for the structure of a simple sentence such as ‘The big dog chased the little cat’. Basic linguistic theory does not require a grammarian to recognise that there are two primary constituents, or three (or any specific number). An appropriate analysis is arrived at according to the grammatical properties specific to the language under study. In short, for a p-theory ‘analysis’ involves relating a language to the theory. Analysis within the scientific pursuit of linguistics involves discovering the inherent nature of the language, with no requirements that this or that should be recognised. The analysis is carried out in terms of whichever elements of basic linguistic theory may fruitfully bear upon the analytic problems involved, and assist in their resolution.

The linguistic scene today It is important to understand that the people who today call themselves ‘linguists’ (in the non-polyglot sense of the term) belong to a number of different breeds. Perhaps the largest number — certainly in the eastern part of the USA and in some countries of Europe and South America — identify with a current p-theory. It can be satisfying to adhere to an orthodoxy, invigorating to defend your affiliation against those of others. The average graduate student is instructed in the p-theory of their department of study, and is likely to adhere to this for the remainder of their career. (For example, Stratificational Grammar lives on at a university in Argentina, three decades after it was decently buried in its homeland.) Some do keep up with the continually changing scene, and embrace whichever new p-theory is now in high fashion (having perhaps exhausted all that could be said about the previous one). It must be stressed that the leading p-theorists do include many fine scholars who make a significant contribution to elucidation of the possible nature of grammar as an intellectual object. P-theories are inevitably para- sitic on some part of basic linguistic theory. But some of the insights which their proponents achieve are illuminating, and provide feedback into the basic scientific theory. As mentioned earlier, proponents of p-theories are often called ‘formalists’. The label ‘functionalist’ has recently been used to cover all who are not formalists. This is, at best, unhelpful, adding as it does yet another nuance to a term which is already overloaded with a divergent basket of meanings. There is a further group, not mentioned before (and not deserving to be) who are not formalists and do not attempt to write grammars of languages, but the science of linguistics, and other approaches 187

essay statements of ‘typological universals’ on the basis of reading grammars of every imaginable quality or lack of quality. These ‘armchair typologists’ have not been through the indispensable apprenticeship of analysing a previously undescribed language in terms of basic linguistic theory. They do not have the perceptiveness or insight to discern what is a competent grammar, to pose significant questions, and to decide between competing solutions to them. Their work contrasts strongly with the insightful typological generalisations of people who move beyond the armchair and also produce significant descriptive and explanatory account of languages, based on original fieldwork (scholars such as Bernard Comrie and Marianne Mithun). There remains a sizable minority (several hundred in number) of scholars who conceive of linguistics as having a single cumulative theory in terms of which grammars of individual languages can be cast, with beneficial feedback to the theory. It is this group of scholars which is moving forward and enhancing the science of linguistics, seeking an elucidation of the nature of human language. Chapter 2 outlines what I see as the four necessary facets of linguistics if it is to be truly counted as the science of language, in the way that geology is the science of the earth and its composition. The first facet is well recognised — people who write grammars describe how a language is structured, how it functions within the social fabric of its community. Inductive generalisations build up to statements of how language works, in terms of cross-linguistic parameters. Less attention has been paid to ‘why’. It is not sufficient to say ‘this is the way it is, the language is of this sort’. Why is this so? Spanish has two genders and Turkish none. Why? Tuyuca has five evidentials, Jarawara two (just in past tense) and English none. Why? It may not be possible to provide reasons for everything, but if the relevant questions are not posed, there will be no answers at all. As the science of linguistics advances (and it is still in an embryonic state), increasing attention must be paid to ‘why’. And then to prediction — if a language has property X, is it the case that it can or must or cannot show property Y? And to evaluation. All languages have roughly equal complexity. But not exactly equal. Might it not be the case that some languages are better vehicles for communication than others? If we don’t ask the question, and then carefully enunciate the parameters involved and the criteria to be considered appropriate, we stand no chance of finding out. 188 I am a linguist

SOURCES The A. R. Radcliffe-Brown quotation is from pages 188-9 of ‘Chapter X, On social structure’ in his Structure and function in primitive society, essays and addresses, published by The Free Press, New York, and Collier Macmillan, London, 1952. (This chapter was his Presidential Address to the Royal Anthropological Institute, originally printed in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol LXX, 1940.) The Ernest Nagel quotation is from page 448 ofThe structure of science, Prob- lems in the logic of scientific explanation. Harcourt Brace and World, New York, and Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1961. The Stephen E. Toulmin quotation is from his article ‘Science, Philosophy of’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1984 edition, Macropedia Volume 16, page 382. Keenan and Comrie’s paper ‘Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar’ was published in the journal Linguistic Inquiry, volume 8, pages 63-99, 1977. Full information on evidentiality will be found in the monograph Evi- dentiality by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, published by Oxford University Press in 2004. Information about the $2 bills to be sent to Jakobson ‘to pay for his return to Europe on the first available cattle-boat’ was confirmed in a letter (from which this quotation is taken) from Charles Hockett to Morris Halle, 22 February 1989. In ‘A personal journey through linguistics’ (pages 5-17 of The 14th LACUS forum, 1988), Allen Walker Read reports ‘we felt that we were carrying on an American-based linguistics and were not cordial to the intrusion of certain refugee scholars.’ I published full informaton on this matter in a short paper ‘Roman Jakobson and the $2 bills’, pages 435-40 of Historiographia Linguistica, volume 34, 2007. Information about Bloch’s editorship of Language comes from his file cards and other sources, passed on by William Bright (who succeeded him as editor). In fact, Bloch was not alone in his nepotism. Linguistic Inquiry could be called the ‘house journal’ of Chomskian linguistics. I think it unlikely that this journal has ever rejected a submission by a member of the Chomskian ‘inner circle’. The inadequacy of Chomskian phrase structure rules for Mandarin was pointed out to me, in August 1980, by Zhu Dexi. The Chinese examples used here were supplied by Hilary Chappell. The Chomsky interview is quoted from page 191 of John is easy to please, Encounters with the written and the spoken word, by Ved Mehta, published by the science of linguistics, and other approaches 189

Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 1971. The quotation from Thomas Wa- sow is from his ‘Postscript’, pages 193-205 of Lectures on contemporary syntactic theories, an introduction to Government-Binding Theory, Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar and Lexical-Functional Grammar, by Peter Sells, CSLI publications, 1985. Examples of the freedom of phrase order and word order in Russian were supplied by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald.

10 Fijian, English and some novels

I engaged in a multiplicity of activities during the ‘eighties (my forties). A comprehensive grammar of a dialect of Fijian, based on fieldwork in a monolingual village. A couple of detective novels. A book on English grammar. Also further work on Australian languages — finalising the grammar of Nyawaygi (published in 1983); a volume on Yidiñ, with stories, place names and a full thesaurus/dictionary (published in 1991); intensive work on Dyirbal songs (book and CD out in 1996); and work on a comprehensive thesaurus/dictionary of Dyirbal (not yet published). The Australian work is described in chapter 12. In addition, I became intrigued by the linguistic wealth of Amazonia and evolved plans to undertake fieldwork there, which is the topic of chapter 13. And I completed a second decade as head of department, together with a fair teaching load (slightly lighter than in the ‘seventies), plus a steady progression of fine graduate students. Any linguist — wherever their fieldwork may lie — is naturally interested in the structure of their native language. During the two-and-a-bit years that I’d been employed as Research Fellow in Statistical Linguistics at Edinburgh, just one task had come my way — Michael Halliday’s examination of phrasal verbs in English (mentioned in chapter 3). Although the statistical study had yielded no results it did pique my interest in this phenomenon. Working steadily on the topic, I drafted an account of the grammar of English phrasal verbs in 1973, revised it in 1976 and prepared a final version for publication in 1980 (it came out in 1982). Chomsky, in his epoch-launching 1957 work, Syntactic structures, ruminated a little on phrasal verbs. He noted that one can say The police brought in the criminal or The police brought the criminal in or The police brought him in, but not *The police brought in him. Chomsky stated that ‘discontinuous elements cannot be handled readily within the phrase structure rules,’ and took the basic structure to be The police brought in the criminal/him. There is then a transformational rule which inverts in and the criminal/him; it is obligatory for a pronoun like him and optional for a noun phrase such as the criminal. This treatment is flawed. Some phrasal verbs behave in the way Chomsky describes, but others do not. With pick on one can say The police picked on my 192 I am a linguist

son and The police picked on him but not *The police picked my son on nor *The police picked him on. There are plainly two quite different varieties: • Underlying structure: verb plus N (noun phrase or pronoun) plus p (preposition); for example, bring N in, put N off, take N on. Here the preposition can move to the left over a noun phrase (but not over a pronoun), giving bring in N, and so on. • Underlying structure: verb plus p (preposition) plus N (noun phrase or pronoun); for example pick on N, set about N, come by N. Here the preposition cannot move. There are altogether six types of phrasal verb, the others being: • Verb plus p; for example, come to, pass out. • Verb plus N plus p plus N; for example, see N through N, hold N against N. • Verb plus p plus p plus N; for example, take up with N, go in for N. • Verb plus N plus p plus p plus N; for example, play N off against N, take N up on N. In the NppN type, the first preposition can move to the left over a noun phrase (but not over a pronoun), as in the Np type. One can say John played Mary off against Tomor John played off Mary against Tom(but only John played her off against Tom,not *John played off her against Tom). There is a reason why a preposition can be moved to the left over a noun phrase (which may consist just of a noun) but not over a pronoun. Although a pronoun is written as if it were a full word it is in fact a ‘clitic’ (a short accent-less word), attaching to the preceding word.Brought him and played her are each pronounced as one word, brought=im and played=er. Since an object pronoun is not an independent word, a preposition cannot be moved over it, to intervene between verb and pronoun. Working in this way, I was able to unravel the rather complex grammatical properties of phrasal verbs in English. And onward from there. The essence of language is that each word has its own meaning. And every grammatical construction has its own meaning. Your penniless cousin came home from South Africa has a quite different meaning from Your cousin came home from South Africa penniless. The first sentence implies that being penniless is a more-or-less permanent state, whereas the second sentence implies either that he hadn’t been penniless before he went away or that he’d been expected to have made a lot of money on the goldfields. But from many books purportedly devoted to linguistics, you wouldn’t guess that meaning is what the discipline is all about. Basically, there are two ways of going about things — grammar first, or meaning first. In chapter 6, I described how if one lists the members of each of the four genders in Dyirbal (the grammar first approach), they seem utterly fijian, english and some novels 193

heterogeneous and without basis. But, by starting with meanings, almost everything is explained. Words placed in gender 2 include nouns referring to human females, most birds (supposed to be the spirits of deceased women), the sun (believed to be wife of the moon), and dangerous members of other classes of things — stinging fishes (most fish are gender 1) and stinging trees (other trees are gender 3 if they bear fruit and gender 4 otherwise). The same principles apply to English. Let me illustrate with what are called ‘complement clauses’. One can say

either He knows [the truth] or He knows [that Bill killed Jim] either I want [an apple] or I want [to eat an apple] either I like [the opera] or I like [going to the opera]

In each case the object of the verb is in square brackets. It can either be a noun phrase (here, article plus noun), in the left hand column, or a complement clause, in the right hand column. There are three main kinds of complement clause in English — introduced by that, as in that Bill killed Jim, introduced by to, as in to eat an apple, or marked by -ing on the verb, as in going to the opera. Chomsky and his students investigated bits of English (never the whole system of the language). They listed verbs which took each type of complement clause, for example:

Verbs that take a THAT complement clause include: assume, decide, enjoy, hope, know, like, think, vote, wish (and several score more).

There is nothing in common to the verbs in such a list. Hence, it was inferred, no principle can be discerned for which verbs take which kinds of complement clauses. This is the conclusion to be reached by following a ‘grammar first’ approach. But, within a ‘meaning first’ approach, such as I espouse, almost everything can be explained, in a satisfying and insightful manner. Each verb has a meaning, and each type of complement clause has a meaning. Consider remember, which can occur with all three types:

1 The doctor ememberedr [that he had examined Mary Jones] 2 The doctor ememberedr [examining Mary Jones] 3 The doctor ememberedr [to examine Mary Jones] 194 I am a linguist

Sentence 1 simply states that the doctor remembers the fact that he saw this patient; he doesn’t recall any of the details of the consultation. Sentence 2 indicates that he does remember what happened when he saw her (the odd colour of her tongue, the irregular sound of her heartbeat). Sentence 3 could be used if, at the end of a busy afternoon, he finally remembered that he should see Mary Jones and went to fetch her from the waiting room (only to find, perhaps, that she’d got fed up and gone off home). In essence, a THAT clause refers to some activity as a single unit, with no reference to its internal composition, whereas an ING clause relates to the internal composition. If someone says I heard [that Brazil beat France], this implies that they have just heard the result of the soccer match. If they say I heard [Brazil beating France] it implies that they listened to what happened during the game, probably via a radio commentary. A TO complement clause can refer to some unrealised activity, as in Jack tried to balance the ball on his head (but failed). Contrast this with the corresponding ING complement clause — John tried balancing the ball on his head implies that he actually did it for a while. This provides a brief idea of the different meanings associated with the three main kinds of complement clause in English. Now look at the meanings of verbs. Back in the late ‘sixties, I’d adopted the method of dividing the words of a language up into ‘semantic types’, each with a common meaning component (and, as a consequence, some shared grammatical properties). For example, all words referring to COLOUR make up one semantic type. Words referring to the phase of an activity belong to what I call the BEGIN- NING type — begin, start, commence, finish, cease, stop, continue, and a few more. There is the IK N type, including mother, son, aunt, husband, and the like. And so on. Every language has in its grammar a number of major word classes and a group of semantic types is associated with each. The association can vary a little from language to language. For example, the KIN type is in the Noun class for most languages but in the Verb class for some; one says, instead of ‘Mary is the aunt of John’, literally ‘Mary aunts John’. I’d worked successfully with semantic types in my 1970’s essay ‘Where have all the adjectives gone?’ The core types associated with even the smallest Adjective classes are DIMENSION, AGE, COLOUR and VALUE. The PHYSICAL PROPERTY semantic type (‘raw’, ‘hot’, ‘wet’ and so on) goes into the Adjective class in English but in some languages these terms are verbs (literally, ‘it wets’ rather than ‘it is wet’). What was needed, for a proper understanding of complement clauses — and of many other grammatical topics — was a full examination of all the semantic types associated with the word class Verb in English — verbs of MOTION (go, fijian, english and some novels 195

throw and several score more), REST (stay, put), AFFECT (hit, cook), GIVING (supply, bribe), ATTENTION (see, discover), DECIDING (decide on, choose) and about twenty-five other types. I approached this task as I had blues and gospel discography — systematically. Of the two thousand most common words in English, about one thousand can be used as verbs. During a sabbatical spent at Clare Hall, Cambridge, during the first half of 1980, I examined the grammatical properties of each verb. They were first tentatively organised into semantic types. For each verb in every type, I investigated its grammatical properties — which types of complement clause (if any) it can occur with, whether it can be passivised or causativised, and a dozen other things. All verbs in the BEGINNING type can occur with an ING complement clause (as in She has ceased/finished[ painting the wall]) but only some can take a TO complement. Some verbs in this semantic type are oriented towards the object; She has finished [painting the wall] implies that there’s no more wall to be painted. Since there is no ‘agent potential’ involved, these verbs can’t take a TO complement clause; that is, it is not felicitous to say *She has finished[ to paint the wall]. Other verbs from the BEGINNING type are oriented towards the subject; She has ceased [painting the wall] implies that there may be bits of the wall still lacking paint but she’s had enough of the task and quit. The quitting is volitional so that these verbs can take a TO complement, as in She’s ceased [to paint the wall]. Organisation into semantic types was refined as the work progressed. A few verbs of chameleon character now appeared, on detailed study, to be more appropriately placed in a different type from that which I had originally proposed. And, slowly, a picture emerged. I’ll just mention one more example. The IL KING type has three subtypes: (i) Verbs with a wide range of meaning which allow all three complement clause varieties. One can say I like it [that Mary dances] (I like the fact of her doing it, since her mother and grandmother were both dancers), I like [Mary’s dancing] (I appreciate the fact that she does it so well) or I like Mary [to dance] (it gets her out of the house on a Friday night). Others in this subtype include love, hate, prefer. (ii) Verbs which can relate to feelings about the fact of some event or about a durational activity, but less readily to a potentiality of involvement. These take a THAT or an ING complement clause but are unlikely to be found with a TO complement; they include loathe, admire, value, regret. (iii) Verbs which are pretty well restricted by their meanings to reference to durational activity and thus to an ING complement; they include enjoy and favour. 196 I am a linguist

Once all this ground work was complete, it was possible to understand the composition of the set of verbs taking each kind of complement clause. For example:

ING complement clauses are available for (amongst others): —all BEGINNING and LIKING verbs —most verbs from the ATTENTION type (see, show and witness, but not recognise and find) —most from the TRYING type (try but not fail) —some from the SPEAKING type (discuss and announce, but not state or order) THAT complement clauses are available for (amongst others): —subtypes (i) and (ii) of LIKING verbs —all verbs in the DECIDING type —all in ATTENTION (save for look and listen) —nearly all SPEAKING verbs (state, announce and order, but not discuss) —no verbs from the TRYING or BEGINNING types

This is a short and somewhat simplified account, but the general picture should be clear. By starting with semantic types and examining how their grammatical profiles are motivated by their meanings, one sees how the manifold semantic distinctions among many hundred verbs are mapped onto the three types of complement clause construction (and similarly for other grammatical properties). An ING complement clause refers to the internal make up of a durational activity. It is available for all verbs in certain semantic types (because of the shared meaning component of the type) and for some verbs in other types (in line with meaning differentiation within the type). My work on Dyirbal had necessarily been data-oriented since I wasn’t a native speaker of the language (and disdained asking questions in English, ‘How do you say this?’). I assembled a corpus of every example of each verb, from the texts I recorded and from what Chloe Grant, George Watson and others told me. For English, I considered each verb in turn, using my native speaker knowledge, and described the grammatical frames in which it could be used. I did, in addition, look at data from large corpus studies — at first, on file cards (in the Survey of English Usage at University College London) and later large computer corpora. These added a little to what I already had, but they lacked many of the bits of information that had been gathered from my own study of the language. This was, as might be imagined, a long-term project. I’d worked sporadically at it in the late ‘sixties and in the ‘seventies. After the systematic run-through of a thousand verbs at Cambridge in 1980, I continued to build and check induc- fijian, english and some novels 197

tive generalisations. Six weeks as a Visiting Professor at Osmania University in Hyderabad, India (in early 1983) provided an oasis of concentration, away from the pressures of administration. The account of complement clauses was drafted there. I taught all this in a class at the ANU in late 1980 — repeated in 1983, 1986 and 1988 — where students provided wonderful feed-back, correction, and extension to my ideas. And, by the end of the decade, I completed A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles. After a brief explanation of semantic types and an overview of English grammar, there were five chapters describing in turn the thirty or so semantic types associated with the Verb class. Then chapters on individual grammatical topics; ‘complementation’ was followed by ‘transitivity and causatives’ and ‘passives’. The penultimate chapter is on ‘promotion to subject’. Let me explain this. In addition to the basic sentence:

Mary washed the woollens well (with Softly) (in the Hoovermatic) one can also say any of:

The woollens washed well (with Softly) (in the Hoovermatic) Softly washed the woollens well (in the Hoovermatic) The Hoovermatic washed the woollens well (with Softly)

That is, if the success of some enterprise is due to the excellence of something other than the subject, then the noun phrase referring to that something can be moved into subject slot. But this is only possible in the presence of a manner adverb such as well or slowly or easily (for example, These mandarins peel easily) or the negator not (Rosaries don’t sell in Mecca). The book was based on my own variety of educated British English which is, in most respects, not too different from other kinds of English. But it is different in one way, which is why I’d chosen a British rather than an American publisher. In his review, Charles A. Kreidler praised the book overall and loved the first ten chapters. But the final chapter describes a construction type which is rather un-American. Kreidler commented that here ‘North Americans may feel that they have stepped through a looking-glass into a surreal world. In British and Australian English such expressions as have a lie-down, give the child a carry, have a bit of a think are apparently increasing in numbers and in frequency of use.’ Still, he said he was glad to learn about this. 198 I am a linguist

I sent the volume off to Oxford University Press at the very end of 1989 and it came out in hardback in January 1991. A paperback followed the next year and this went into six reprints. The book was thoroughly revised for a new edition in 2005 (now called A semantic approach to English grammar) with three new chapters being added, on ‘Tense and aspect’, ‘Nominalisations and possession’ and ‘Adverbs and negation’.

As said before, I originally expected to be at university for just three years, then accepted a PhD scholarship at Oxford, moved to Edinburgh to find out about linguistics, thence to Australia to undertake fieldwork and thus properly learn the discipline, then to London to write up the grammar of Dyirbal (and because I needed a job to support a burgeoning family). The chair at Canberra presented a challenge — to build up a world-class department, and I set myself to stay there for at least ten years, the time the task should take. But what then? People had said that I write clearly (unlike many academics). Why not build on those short stories of the ‘sixties and try to establish myself as a novelist? First of all, detective stories for a bread-and-butter income. More serious novels — about the state of this and other worlds — could follow in due course. Dick Francis is a favourite. He’d started off with reminiscences of being a stee- plechase jockey, before turning to fiction, an apprenticeship which I might emulate. As mentioned in chapter 3, ‘Barch’ Towers, the Chief English master at Not- tingham High School, had been a source of inspiration. For the ‘O’ level English exam, he’d chosen as set book Memoirs of a fox-hunting man by Siegfried Sas- soon (alongside the obligatory Shakespeare, Henry IV, part 2). So I settled down to write Memoirs of a field worker. The first draft was completed in two months (May and June 1980) at the end of a productive sabbatical spent in Cambridge. I had a story to tell. Of Chloe Grant and George Watson, Dick Moses and Tilly Fuller. Of the wonders of Dyirbal and Yidiñ, the challenge of Mbabaram, the salvage work to document Warrgamay and Nyawaygi. On two field trips (in late 1980 and mid 1981), I revisited old locations and talked to friends about what had happened in the past, so that in revising the manuscript I should be absolutely accurate. It took a little while to find a publisher but then the Univer- sity of Queensland Press put it out, in January 1984, asSearching for Aboriginal languages (with my Memoirs of a field worker demoted to be sub-title). Jim Mc- Cawley, premier linguist at the University of Chicago, wrote a few years later saying that he’d recommended it to all his students which should add to the sales. But by then UQP had let it go out of print. With McCawley’s sponsorship, fijian, english and some novels 199

the University of Chicago Press put out an American edition, which sold steadily for the next decade (and all the reviews were good). It was again reissued, this time by Cambridge University Press, in 2010 Now for a novel. Need a really unusual detective. A woman, perhaps. What does a woman have that a man lacks? The most notorious female spies ex- ercised their wiles to mine information during periods of extreme intimacy. Surely, this could be an equally useful modus operandi for a detective? Frank le Roux (who I named after Garth le Roux, a South African fast bowler then playing for Sussex) is the natural great-granddaughter of Buddy Bolden ‘black cornet player who blew so hard in the early days of jazz in New Orleans that his brain went zing.’ Frank is by training a sociologist; she has blond hair and a voracious curiosity. The first novel was set in Australia, my familiar milieu. Murder of the chairman of an Aboriginal parliament. ‘Fact finding’ trip to an North Queensland, an Aboriginal settlement on Fantome Island (dubbed Ghost Island). Who did it? The dinky-di Professor of Archaeology, Tom Tooke? The charlatanesque Professor of Linguistics, Sidney Smith? This typescript hopped around from publisher to publisher but couldn’t find a home. So, try again. Set the scene in Cambridge — Cavendish Laboratory, inven- tion of a wondrous new power source called pasars. But someone was selling the secret to the Chinese, page by page. The main characters were vaguely based on people I knew. Andrew Delaney, Professor of Mathematics, reflected my colleague Avery Delano Andrews III, and the outrageous Russian émigré physicist Dr Leon Ivanovich had all the jokes and mannerisms of Igor Mel'čuk, a linguist now living in Montreal. While at Cambridge I’d been invited to a glo- rysome College Feast, for which I’d had to hire a dinner jacket (or tuxedo), the only time my socialist soul has been encased in such a garment. This provided the overture, in which College Master (and dithering linguist) Patrick Most is poisoned by a sip from a golden chalice while intoning a toast to the feast’s founder, Ffothergill-Hawthorn-Williams. This story spent some months attracting rejection slips but then it did find favour with Livia Gollancz, who ran her father’s old firm, Victor Gollancz, in London. I spy, you die by Hosanna Brown (my new pseudonym) was published in 1984 to quite good reviews. The following year a large print edition was put out by Chivers Press. And it was reissued in 2004, with a more appropriate cover, by Back-In-Print Books. Before Livia Gollancz agreed to publish, she enquired whether I planned further Frank le Roux novels. It took a while for a new author to become es- 200 I am a linguist

tablished. Only after three or four hardbacks was there any chance of a paperback publisher jumping on the bandwagon. Yes, I planned one set in India, one in California, and of course Australia. Livia replied that India was no good; because of the exchange rate there’d be no ‘local sales’ and those were what could make or break an acceptable financial return for the publisher. The other locations should be okay. So Frank le Roux travelled to California, to unravel a most unusual case. Only it was too unusual for Gollancz, too ‘over the top’. I returned to the first, rejected, story (set in Australia). Completely revised and rewrote it, missing out some bits, adding new episodes. This did satisfy the people in London. But they didn’t care for the title My boomerang won’t come back. The word ‘death’ adds a couple of hundred to the sales, I was told. So it became Death upon a spear, published in 1986. Things seemed to be going well. I wrote Murder on the blue lagoon, set around the western isles of Fiji, and the people at Gollancz thought it better than the first two. There was just one drawback: Death upon a spear hadn’t done well enough in ‘local sales’. Well, Gollancz were represented in Australia by some other publisher who did nothing to promote the book. I worked hard, even allowing radio and newspaper interviewers to reveal who was behind the pseudonym. But, as happens all too frequently, the reasonable English price of £8.95 had been grossly inflated in Australia. A Canberra bookseller refused to display the book, although it was largely set in that town: ‘people just won’t pay close to thirty dollars for a book of 184 pages.’ My novel writing hadn’t been a failure but it certainly hadn’t been a success. At the end of the ‘eighties, I decided to put it to one side, at least for the time being, and concentrate on the two things which I seemed able to do well — discography and linguistics.

Looking back now, the ‘eighties was an unsettled period for me. The department had developed to a high level, attracting undergraduate and graduate students of the finest quality, so that it no longer provided so much of a challenge. (By the end of the decade, it would begin to fall off.) I carried on more-or-less en- joying linguistics, and my three terrific children. But marriage was no longer convivial. For some years the agonising question had been whether to stay or to go. (And how to afford the latter.) A professor’s salary is pretty good but there was virtually nothing left after paying private school fees times three. It soon became clear that if I were ever to achieve success (and the money that goes with it) from novels, that wouldn’t fijian, english and some novels 201

happen quickly. Out of a combination of ennui and a desire to (indeed, need to) make money, I started dabbling in the futures market. This involves speculating about the future price of a commodity. Let me explain. The size of a futures contract for gold is 100 troy ounces. Suppose that the market quotes the price of gold three months hence as $350. If you buy a futures contract at that price and at the end of the three months the price of gold is $360 then you’ve made a profit of $10 per ounce over 100 ounces, which is $1,000 (less commission to the futures broker). If, on the other hand, the price of gold after three months is only $340, then you’ve lost $1,000 (plus commission). If you expect gold to rise in price, you buy a futures contract. If you expect it to fall, you sell a contract. So, if you sell a contract at three-months hence for $350 and the price drops to $340, you’ve made a profit of $1,000 (less commission); if the price rises to $360 then you’ve lost $1,000 (plus commission). For every seller there has to be a buyer — the price naturally finds a level at which there are an equal number of buyers and sellers. If the price of shares (or stocks) in a public company rises, then all share- holders gain; if the price falls then they all lose. The futures market is quite different, being a zero-sum game. For every buyer there is a seller, for every winner a loser, so that, across the market, total losses equal total gains (and everyone has to pay a small commission to their futures broker for each transaction). The beauty of it is that only a small deposit is needed — perhaps $1,000 for a gold contract; for this the trader controls $350 x 100 or $35,000 of gold. Potential losses and potential gains can be considerable. If the price of gold should change by $50 (up to $400 or down to $300 per ounce) then the trader will win or lose $5,000. Such a loss has to be paid. But, as a rule, price changes are gradual. The secret for successful futures trading is to limit losses but let profits run on. If the trend turns against your prediction, then get out without delay. If I buy a gold contract at $350 and the price drops by $5, then I’ll immediately sell and take a $500 loss. What I won’t do is sit and wait, thinking that the trend will be sure to reverse. But if the price rises, then I’ll stay in and let my profits roll on. What I would do is lock in a certain amount of profit. Once the price reached $360, I’d tell the broker to sell if it fell back to $355, thus guaranteeing me a profit of $500 (and ensuring that a profit on paper didn’t turn into a loss). Once the price advanced to $370, I’d advance my ‘stop loss’ selling order to $365, thus locking in $1,500 of profit. And so on. 202 I am a linguist

During occasional periods between 1982 and 1991, I played the futures game, first on the Australian market and then the US one (starting during a sabbatical spent at the University of California at Santa Cruz, in late 1983). I lost a few thousand then won a few, lost and won and lost again. Overall, I just about broke even. It was good fun. Corn (on the Chicago Board of Trade) is a fairly low-risk commodity. One has to learn the cycle of seasonal production, in terms of which prices always rise and fall. Further price fluctuations naturally take account of weather patterns, and so forth. Cotton is another steady commodity. Cocoa I once dipped my fingers into and got the tips decisively burnt — highly volatile. I read widely and deeply and learnt by generous experience. But, by the ‘nineties, life had settled onto a more even keel. The penurious post-divorce period was past, with children’s education all completed. I no longer had any need to make money (not that I did make much, anyway) nor any further yen for speculation. But if the urge to trade did ever creep back, I’m confident that — experience being firmly in the past — I would consistently manufacture an overall profit. As Rockefeller said, no one can pick the bottom or the top of a market. What you do is buy at a lower price than what you sell at — buy on a rising market and sell on a falling one. The price of a commodity will often fluctuate in a horizontal channel; for example, gold may rock up and down between $340 and $360. No profits are likely to be made in such a market. Then it may break out of the horizontal channel, either upwards or downwards, almost always again trading within a channel. For example, a high of $352 followed by a low of $349, then a high of $359, a low of $354, a high of $364. If each high is higher than the previous high and each low higher than the previous low (as in the example just given), we have an upward channel. If each high is below the previous high and each low below the previous low, this indicates a downward channel. Buy into an upward channel, when the price skirts the lower edge of the channel, and sell into a downward channel, from the upper edge. The secret is to maintain one’s cool (as one should in an auction) and not to get emotionally involved with a commodity. And trade sparingly, perhaps just four or five times a year, when a rising or falling channel is clearly apparent for one of a set of chosen commodities. You’re bound to lose sometimes. Indeed, successful traders may lose more often than they win; but the losses are small and the gains considerable, leading to a healthy overall profit. And don’t forget that for every winner there is a loser. Some futures traders are highly skilled operators, and you’ve got to be on your toes to keep up with them. fijian, english and some novels 203

So, novel writing went okay but not too wonderfully. The same for futures trading. In 1984, I finally took a very deep breath and pulled the rip-cord on marriage. (The first time I’d really felt a failure.) Of course, I had to go and do it in the worst possible way, turning to a partner almost twenty years my junior. Koleta (let’s call her that) was embarking on a sociolinguistic PhD and had decided on fieldwork in Fiji. I readily accepted the invitation to come along as well (and took a sabbatical, from December 1984 until July 1985). Fiji has two languages, one in the east and the other in the west of the archi- pelago. Before leaving, we carefully studied a textbook on Bau, the ‘standard dialect’ of the eastern language. Then a month in the Fijian capital, Suva, with an intensive course — three hours each morning — from Jone Caginiliwalala, a feisty language teacher who’d been trained by the US Peace Corps. Jone introduced us to Veronika, who worked in a bank in Suva and whose father, she said, would welcome us as a guest in his village on the eastern island of Taveuni. Koleta insisted that the only way for her to do proper sociolinguistic fieldwork was to live in a Fijian house, as part of a family. That didn’t appeal to my personal ideal of privacy. Once she got settled, I suggested, I’d rent a house somewhere nearby, and she could come and visit. I thought I’d write a main- stream novel (not a detective story), and work on an interesting topic or two in Fijian grammar on the side. Sepo, Veronika’s father (see plate 17), couldn’t have been more welcoming. He adopted Koleta as daughter, then she had a place in the classificatory system which establishes kin relations between everyone in the village, according to something akin to a mathematical formula. There was a small reed hut we could live in, right next to Sepo’s large house (of his thirteen children, seven were still living at home). Sure, that would suit me. ‘This is paradise,’ I remarked to Koleta as we unpacked our suitcases, a gag- gle of little eyes watching every movement, every object. The village of Waita- bu (plate 20) is on the seashore. Sandy beach, waving palm trees, just like a film set. There was no electricity, of course, or running water. Or furniture — sleep on a woven mat over a soft base of coconut fronds. After a couple of weeks, we did cross to the other side of the island to buy a table (it was the third table in the village, of twenty houses). Sepo lent a couple of chairs. It wasn’t always absolute paradise, though. We did experience a number of cyclones, which were more than a little scary. The radio provided advance warning. Some people just prayed. Others reinforced their roofs — with extra thatch for traditional houses, and with strong bamboo stakes tied down over 204 I am a linguist

the sheets of corrugated iron for our shanty. Doors were barred. Field notes and books were wrapped in plastic bags, for their survival. The wind began with a yelp, a howl, and then commenced roaring. A corrugated iron sheet on the roof was lifted up half a metre, exposing the torrential rain. This happened again and again. Without the bamboo reinforcements it would have been ripped off. There was respite as the eye of the cyclone passed over. Then the whole caboo- dle again, in reverse, nerves on edge for a further hour or two. The first cyclone of the season was on a Friday, just a few days after we had arrived. Another — from a different direction — was expected to arrive on Sunday, so the radio said. So on Saturday I ventured to say E sega a cagi-laba ni’ua ‘There isn’t a cyclone today’ (the word for cyclone, cagi-laba, is literally ‘murdering wind’). The reaction to this, my first joking remark in Fijian, showed that we were being accepted into the village. There were in all five cyclones that season, but the total damage was only a couple of roofs. How- ever, a cyclone the following year destroyed about a quarter of the houses in the village. Meals were taken with Sepo’s family, sitting cross-legged on either side of an eating cloth laid out on the floor. A meal would generally have three components. What was called ‘a’ana dina (literally ‘real food’), which was a starch plant such as taro, breadfruit, manioc or yam. A leafy vegetable, a bit like spinach. And protein, which was generally fish. Fish, fresh from the sea, wrapped in taro leaves, cooked in coconut milk — a totally delicious dish. (The ‘ in ‘a’ana indicates a glottal stop sound, like in the cockney pronunciation of butter, as bu’er.) We weren’t allowed to pay anything for the house or for food. That would have been contrary to the Fijian ethos of sharing. What we did do was take the bus about every two weeks to the other side of the island, where there were shops, and return with whatever the household needed. A bale of cloth one time, a set of crockery the next. We’d also fetch all ‘foreign foods’ needed to supplement the produce of garden and sea — rice, flour, sugar, curry powder, soybean oil, salt, tea, baking powder, washing powder (the list is still in my drawer). I’d been working with speakers of Australian languages for more than twenty years. Some people, like Chloe Grant, were fluent in their language but used it much less than they did English. A lot of the time was spent searching for one old person who was prepared to think back to the language they had spoken as a child. No contrast could have been greater to the situation in Waitabu village, in the region of Boumaa, on the island of Taveuni. There were fijian, english and some novels 205

about 120 residents and they spoke nothing but Fijian. Just two people knew some English, which they’d use with strangers — Sepo and an intelligent and friendly youth called Inoke. If we wanted to communicate with Bogi, Sepo’s wonderful wife who prepared all our meals — or with anyone else — it had to be in Fijian. The Boumaa dialect is mutually intelligible with the standard variety, Bau, which we’d studied. About ninety per cent of the vocabulary is the same and there are just a few grammatical differences. We were soon able to communicate in Boumaa, and could understand what people said to us if they didn’t speak too fast. There are two sorts of field linguistics. ‘Interview fieldwork’ was all I could do — all almost anyone could do — in Australia. In Fiji it was ‘immersion fieldwork’. I was part of the language situation; my only communication was in Boumaa Fijian. People would correct errors, tell me what to say, smile and nod when I used a difficult construction correctly. I did of course, work with texts (as all respectable linguists do, in every possible situation). Sepo introduced us to fluent and knowledgeable storytellers, and we recorded raucous legends as well as an epic narrative of how, a hundred years before, there had been a war between the Wesleyan (or Methodist) converts and the Catholic converts. The storytellers were all old and monolingual, so I transcribed with the aid of Sepo and Inoke (it’s good to be able to occasionally revert to English for expli- cation of a tricky point). Then to analyse the texts, working out grammatical structures, making up sentences to confirm generalisations, and to check that these are fully acceptable. But, in addition to the solid base of texts, there was also what the village people said when they came and sat on our floor for a chat, or what we couldn’t help overhearing them say as they walked past the open door. When learning to speak a new language, there is generally some feature which takes a little getting used to. In Jarawara — during the next decade — it was having to refer to myself by the feminine form of verbal suffixes, since all pronouns (including ‘I’) take feminine agreement. In Fijian it was the fact that a verb should come first in its sentence. When you think about it, nothing could be more logical and useful — first state what the activity is (say ‘meet’) and then state who the participants in that activity are (say, Sepo and Koleta). But I found that putting the verb first required a bit of concentration, until after a couple of months it did come naturally. Koleta was naturally adopted into Vunivesi, which was Sepo’s mataqali (or kin group). Now a Vunivesi woman would generally marry a man from the 206 I am a linguist

other mataqali in the village, called Waiso’i. Did that make me automatically a member of Waiso’i, she asked. Oh no! But Elia Waqa, a warm and chunky elder who was head of Waiso’i, sat nearby. He leaned over to me: ‘I adopt you, Roopate, as my son. Now you are Waiso’i.’ And my father recorded stories, declaimed then in his deep and deliberate voice. One about the origin of the kava plant (called here waqona), as it grew from the head of a buried high chief. Elia Waqa explained how to plan a garden, when to plant, when to weed, when to harvest. How I should make a presentation of the first fruit, in specially woven baskets, to father and to elder brother. He spoke so clearly that I could pretty well transcribe it on my own, with a bit of help from a couple of small boys playing on the floor nearby. Every one of the hundreds of Fijians that I met was a Christian; there seemed to be no choice involved. Before setting out, I confided to Koleta that I’d say nothing disruptive for a while. But eventually, once I got to know people and they knew me, I planned to explain that I felt no need of any god. (My principle has always been that I’ll respect other people’s beliefs, and hope that they in turn will respect my lack of belief.) Koleta said that I wouldn’t be able to do this, and she was so right! An atheist would have been regarded as a devil. There would have been no way I could have stayed on in Waitabu. The only choice available is which sect to belong to. About three-quarters of Fijians are Wesleyan, a bit under one-fifth are Roman Catholic, with the remainder being mostly Seventh Day Adventists or Assembly of God. Waitabu was an exclusively Catholic village. We had church twice a day — at six in the morning (but at ten on Sunday) and at six each evening. The wooden slit drums (which in olden days relayed a summons to war) sounded out at about twenty to six, as a signal to get out of bed, and then at five to, telling everyone to proceed to the house where church was being held that day. We didn’t have to go every time. The showpiece service on Sunday morning was obligatory, and we’d pop in two or three other mornings during the week. These occasions could be put to use. One morning I’d listen carefully to the pronunciation of stop consonants, and the next day focus on vowels. There was no dedicated church building, so daily services rotated around the twenty dwellings in the village, including our small hut. Get up early and sweep it clean, pile suitcases and shoes tidily in one corner. The catechist arrived with his large tome, setting out the order of prayers for each day of the year. Afterwards, people would stay and chat. One of the elders might feel like recording another story, or someone could explain about a current concern in fijian, english and some novels 207

the village. There were always innuendos and rumours, shifting factions (and sometimes a fight). Sepo’s elder brother (Elia Gavidi, plate 19) was chief. Since I called Sepo moomoo ‘uncle (or father-in-law)’, the chief was my moomoo levu, literally ‘big uncle’. Moomoo levu would call in each morning, squat cross-legged on the floor and enquire — in Fijian, since he knew no English whatsoever — whether we had any leqa (problems or troubles). There never were any. The chief was a power to be reckoned with; by word or gesture he could have expelled us from his domain. Fieldwork in Fiji was better than it had been in Australia — or would be in Brazil — in one most important respect. It took a considerable time for me to realise what this was; and it is not easy to explain. Basically, it is not to do with me personally or with the people whose language I was studying. Rather, it concerns the overall relationship between the ethnic group I belong to and the group they belong to. In all the situations I’ve encountered, fieldwork is based on personal respect and friendship. Speakers assist me with language learning and analysis because they enjoy doing so and consider it a valuable activity in its own right. I’ve never met anyone who did this sort of thing solely for the sake of money. In Australia, I paid everyone but we never discussed how much; a few notes were handed over as a sort-of present. The speaker would make me a gift of their time and knowledge, and I’d reciprocate with a gift of goods or money (plus any kind of help or advice that was requested). In Fiji, payment in money was anathema but the people welcomed a gift of goods. These should be presented and accepted in a most formal manner. In the Amazon, I paid with credit at the missionary’s little shop, and also brought presents (some things which had been requested, and others besides). In all these locations, material exchange was entirely secondary, the main factor in linguistic work always being interest and comradeship. Just over two hundred years ago, Australia was the sole domain of its Abo- riginal peoples. Many of them were slaughtered like cattle, by the European invaders. That was in the past by the ‘sixties, when my fieldwork commenced. But those who remained — an underprivileged minority in a basically European society — were fully aware of their marginal status. However they and I acted and interacted (even though we established a bond of trust) nothing could hide the fact that I am a member of the dominant race and that they are the people who have been systematically deprived of their land, and of much of their cultural heritage, by my people. It was always there, in the background, like a spectre, in Australia and also in Brazil. 208 I am a linguist

But not in Fiji. The islands had been a British colony, with a white governor- general and white district officers. But, in 1970, Fiji gained its independence. The country is run by its indigenous people, the Fijians. They make all decisions. I was a foreigner, someone to be accepted and tolerated at the whim of the Fijian people. There was simply no spectre.

It was great to be, for a time, free of the trammels of my normal, everyday life. No teaching or administration. No newspapers. From just before six, when the drums sounded for early church, until bedtime at about ten, there was a virgin stretch of time entirely at my disposal. During the first couple of months, I crept away each morning, over the rocks, to a secluded beach and sat on the sand (making sure to avoid a coconut tree, so as not to get bonked on the head by a falling nut) and wrote a novel, The price of love. A couple of publishers said they really liked it, but wouldn’t go quite so far as to offer publication. The rest of the day I sat at the table and worked on the language, while Koleta went around the village on sociolinguistic study (she wrote a fine dissertation and got her PhD in 1989). I’d heard people say X and also Y — was it possible also to say Z, I wondered to myself. And then someone said it as part of a conversation to a friend, right outside my door. Fijian has five vowels —a, e, i, o, u (just like Latin, whose orthography Eng- lish borrowed, although English itself has more than twenty vowels). It is possible to have two vowels together. Sometimes they are pronounced separately, as two syllables; for example nui ‘hope’ is pronounced nu-i. Other sequences of two vowels are pronounced as one unit, a diphthong; thus, niu ‘coconut’ is pronounced nyu. I needed to work out which vowel sequences went one way and which the other. Just by listening to people talking outside my door, it took no time at all to build up the full picture. Recent grammars of Fijian had failed to consider this topic. However, I discovered that David Hazlewood, a rather wonderful missionary who’d written the first grammar of Fijian in 1850 (and died of consumption five years later, at age thirty-six) had come to exactly the same conclusion as me (or, rather, I’d come to the same conclusion as him). By all accounts the Fijians had been pretty easy to missionise, back in the mid-nineteenth century. Traditional religion had a panoply of gods, most of whom were deified ancestors. They had priests, and believed that there was an afterlife, which you entered in the physical condition in which you left this world (so an old man who was just beginning to fail might ask his sons to kill him, before his body deteriorated any further). The missionaries brought their own god, whose superiority was easily demonstrated, since he is infallible. fijian, english and some novels 209

One prays to the gods for a good harvest. In pre-christian times, if the harvest failed the gods would be cursed. Then comes the missionary, suggesting that people should pray to the new god. And the harvest fails. Has the Chris- tian God failed? No, the missionary replies, our God cannot fail. He must have engineered a poor harvest to punish you. Maybe you sinned last year. Well, yes, the Fijians were bound to admit, maybe they did sin a bit last year. (Didn’t everyone?) There it is. The missionary felt his case was proved — a powerful infallible god is surely to be preferred over gods that can err. Cannibals come in different guises. Some just eat people who have died of natural causes. But the worst sort, to which Fijians belonged, kill people specifically to eat them. Indeed, there was a sort of caste of people destined for that fate. They stopped eating people some generations back. Not because they came to realise that it really wasn’t a very nice thing to do. No, they stopped simply because the missionary informed them that the Christian God didn’t approve of that kind of behaviour. This was a topic we’d decided not to bring up on our own. But one morning the chief called as usual, and decided to let us in on things. ‘Do you know’, he remarked, licking lips in anticipation at what was to come, ‘we used to eat people.’ He used a special compound verb ‘ana-tamata, literally ‘people-eat’. ‘Is that so, big uncle,’ I replied, ‘do tell us more.’ ‘Oh yes, we would use special forks, with the four prongs set in a square, just for human flesh. But that was in the past. We’re now a good Catholic village.’ That’s what we’d thought too. But the longer one stays in a place, the more the layers peel off. It was a full three months before Sepo remarked — acting as if we already knew — that traditional religion was still followed, by everyone, in a semi-secret way. He identified the two people in the village who were traditional priests (a Christian would call them ‘witch-doctors’). Why not? If one god doesn’t produce the goods, then turn to the other lot, like an each-way bet. We had a short break in Suva in April, then back to the village for a further ten weeks. By then I’d worked on every aspect of the grammar, and it was all falling into place. There was no reason why I should not produce a comprehensive study of the Boumaa dialect, and that now became the plan. There had been earlier studies of the Bau dialect and I was able to build on these. But much remained to do; I estimate that my grammar is about three-quarters original work. Each day, I’d start at dawn, take a grammatical topic, survey the set of example sentences which had earlier been collected. Sepo might pop in before 210 I am a linguist

breakfast with his normal, welcome query ‘Do you have any questions?’ I’d check up on a few things with him then (see plate 21). During the morning and early afternoon I’d write up that topic, posit generalisations and make up sentences to check them. Sepo would generally call again before supper and I’d have half-an-hour checking and refining. He was entirely tuned in to what I was doing, looking over my shoulder at the notebook page, putting forward new ideas. Then a couple of hours after supper, revising the account of that topic. Another day, another section of the grammar. One topic which particularly fascinated me was ‘classifiers’. When a noun is possessed it should be accompanied by a classifier saying what its referent is to be used for. For example, me- for a thing which is to be drunk, sucked or licked, and ‘e- for a thing which is to be eaten, chewed or smoked. Thus, we get me-mu waqona ‘your kava (waqona)’, a drink, and ‘e-mu dalo ‘your taro (dalo)’, a vegetable; here -mu, suffixed to the classifier, indicates ‘your’. For things not consumed, the classifier o- indicates that an object belongs to a person, the classifier ‘e- that it relates to a person in some other way. Thus, with da’ai ‘gun’:

o-mu da’ai your gun, which belongs to you ‘e-mu da’ai your gun, which will be used to shoot you

Late afternoon was time for relaxation. A dip in the sea, then an hour or so on the beach with a book. Away from the hustle-bustle, I could read books that had always been on the ‘want to, when I have more time’ shelf. First Adam Smith’s Wealth of nations, and then Plato’s Republic. Sitting on a beach in Fiji, detached from the world to which I belong, Plato’s dialogue resounded with sense. The ideal state should be ruled by wise and clever guardians, chosen when young and educated for this task. They would always act according to what they considered to be the best interests of the community. Then he discusses ‘imperfect societies’. Tyranny is worst of all, democracy being judged as pretty bad, just below oligarchy, where the state is run by a small number of wealthy families. It was fascinating to read Plato’s objections to democracy, the sacred cow of the present-day world. Everything he said rings true. If each person has a vote, then the mediocre are likely to choose the mediocre. A mediocre person who can talk in a flashy way gets elected to high office. The greatest effort is then channelled towards retaining that office. Formulate policies which may or may not be for the good of the state but which will lead to the people (most of whom don’t devote too much thought to the matter) casting an appropriate vote. Plato fijian, english and some novels 211

compares democracy to when a teacher fears and panders to his pupils, who as a consequence despise him. In a democracy, each individual acts in their own self-indulgent self-interest. I’d long considered democracy — although plainly better than tyranny or communism — to be a deeply flawed and unsatisfactory system of government. And, in the world at this time, a lot of what passes for democracy is a sham. That modern nation which most trumpets the term is most suspect, both in its internal flummery and in its attitudes to others you— must operate in what we consider to be a democratic manner, and make sure that in this way you elect someone we approve of. Then it was back to life in post-cannibal Fiji, where everyone shares (you have to pretend not to have something if you don’t want to share). I was soon to depart (Koleta would remain for a while longer). Every utterance seemed to include Isa!, Roopate e va’arau la’o ‘Oh dear! Roopate is getting ready to go.’ There was to be a feast in my honour — pig (a rare delicacy) and taro, cooked in an earth oven, together with a sweet pudding (an even less frequent treat). This required everyone’s attention, and not a single person could spare a minute to work with me. So, having the drafts of twenty-odd chapters for the grammar, I set out deciding which order they should go in. Discussion of the syntactic status of incorporated objects (like tamata ‘people’ in ‘ana-tamata ‘eat people’) required reference to predicate modifiers, so the predicate modifier chapter should precede that on incorporation. And so on. Back in Canberra, I completely revised the grammar in manuscript, then revised it again and typed it up, during the second half of 1985. Tom Givón, from the University of Oregon, read it and commented: ‘You went off to Fiji for six months to be with your girl-friend and wrote a complete grammar while you were there!’ ‘Well yes,’ I replied, ‘plenty of hours in the day and this filled them nicely.’ But I couldn’t have done this, in such a time-frame, for Dyirbal or Yidiñ. Languages are not equal in complexity. If I assign Dyirbal an index of ten, for degree of difficulty, then Yidiñ would score about fourteen. And Fijian around seven. This mustn’t be misunderstood. Every language is a wondrous system. Working on Fijian gave me the same sort of supreme intellectual exhilaration as I’d experienced in Australia. But there was just a little less to unravel. The grammar of Fijian is intricate, but with not so many complications as in Yidiñ and Dyirbal. (The fact that there were previous grammars of the Bau dialects helped only a bit. None of them had delved into the really core areas of syntax.) I sent the grammar draft to Sepo. On a short return visit in mid-1986, he went in detail through the eleven chapters which he’d already read, suggesting new 212 I am a linguist

examples and providing new insights. I left a large pre-stamped envelope and in November Sepo mailed the notebook in which he’d provided comments on the remaining fourteen chapters. A number of academic colleagues read the draft and provided feed-back which I took account of in the final revision. A grammar of Boumaa Fijian was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1988, in hardback and paper editions.

The academic game ground on. Money for universities was cut further so there was a perpetual worry over attracting sufficient students to keep the department’s body and soul together. (There was no secret way to achieve this; one simply had to offer simpler courses that simpler students would want to take.) I tried to relinquish the headship of department in 1988 but no one would permit it. Then, in 1990, I absolutely insisted on an exit permit. Disciplines in the Arts Faculty are often looked down upon (in many cases quite justifiably, in my opinion) by people from the Science Faculty. The Profes- sor of Classics suggested that we — or, more specifically, I — should do something about it. There is what’s called a higher doctorate, hard to obtain. Every couple of years, one of our scientists would submit their papers and books and be awarded a Doctor of Science degree. Someone in Arts should do the same, our equivalent being Doctor of Letters. Since I had as good a publication record as anyone, the finger was pointed in my direction. Why not? One had to submit significant academic publications since the award of the PhD degree; this excluded the Dyirbal grammar, a revision of my PhD dissertation. I sent in four books — grammars of Yidiñ and of Boumaa Fijian, The languages of Australia, and Where have all the adjectives gone? and other essays in semantics and syntax — and five long papers — including ‘Ergativity’ and ‘The grammar of English phrasal verbs’. Four of the world’s leading typologists (Bernard Comrie, Tom Givón, Ken Hale and Peter Matthews) were among the examiners and all wrote lengthy and laudatory reports. At the degree ceremony in October 1991, the recipients of BAs and MAs and PhDs had their names called out, walked across the stage, shook hands with the Chancellor, and received the degree certificate. Last of all came my name. I started to walk and then had to stop dead and listen, a little embarrassed, as the following citation was read out by Professor Dennis Pearce (it is a pot-pourri of extracts from the examiners’ reports).

‘Chancellor, I present to you Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon, for admission to the degree of Doctor of Letters. fijian, english and some novels 213

‘Bob Dixon, as he is universally known, received his first degree from the University of Oxford in mathematics in 1960. A period as research fellow in linguistics at Edinburgh followed by another as research officer at the Aus- tralian Institute of Aboriginal Studies here in Canberra led to his becoming a lecturer in Linguistics at University College London, from 1964 to 1970. During that time, he gained his PhD from the University of London for a thesis on the Dyirbal language of North Queensland. In 1970, he came to the Faculty of Arts at ANU as foundation Professor of Linguistics and Head of Department, the latter position being one he held for twenty years. Over this time he built, nurtured and headed one of the best linguistics departments in the world. ‘Professor Dixon is the author of seven books on linguistics, editor or co- editor of five volumes and author of over fifty papers, the most significant of which were considered in connection with the award of this degree. In 1977 he published a grammar of another Aboriginal language, Yidiñ, the data of which — like his earlier work on Dyirbal — was derived from original fieldwork. It has become a classic in the discipline. He has also produced shorter accounts of two further Aboriginal languages, Warrgamay and Nyawaygi. But his magnum opus is the book The languages of Australia, published in 1980, which is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of its kind, remarkable for its control of material from some 200 varied languages covering the whole continent. His own work, and the work of others he has either supervised or co‑ordinated, has defined the state of the art in the investigation of Australian Aboriginal languages. ‘But his achievement is not confined to this field. His 1988 bookA grammar of Boumaa Fijian has been described as the best grammar of an Austronesian language available. And his crowning piece is a series of papers which present a cross-linguistic study of adjectives and phrasal verbs, which has few equals. Not considered in this examination, but also likely to become a classic is his A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles, published earlier this year. By all his work he has established himself as one of the leading authorities in the world in linguistics: an outstanding fieldworker and a general typologist of language and a sound theorist. ‘The University is therefore particularly pleased to recognise his distinguished achievement by the awarding of this rarely conferred degree. ‘Chancellor, I present to you Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon who, after due examination, has been judged worthy to be admitted to the degree of Doctor of Letters.’ 214 I am a linguist

SOURCES

Noam Chomsky’s short discussion of phrasal verbs is on pages 75-77 of Syntac- tic structures (Mouton, 1957). Charles A. Kreidler’s review of my A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles is on pages 195-202 of The Georgetown Journal of Languages and Linguistics, volume 2, 1991. David Hazlewood’s Compendious grammar of the Feejeean language was published by the Wesleyan Mission Press in Vewa, Fiji in 1850. In late 1988 I wrote the first draft, in manuscript, of We used to eat people, an account of fieldwork in Fiji (in similar vein to Searching for Aboriginal languages, memoirs of a field worker). I haven’t yet put aside the time to revise and type it up, for possible publication. 11 Academic standards

A university is, notionally, concerned with quality. Only students of sufficiently high quality, based on their school results, are accepted. Only scholars of proven quality, in terms of the standard of the degrees they have earned and research completed, are appointed. The highest grades are given to students who have produced the best quality work. Research grants and fellowships are awarded to faculty who have achieved the highest quality in the work they have completed thus far. In the natural sciences, Nobel prizes go to those who have made breakthroughs of quite outstanding quality. This is notionally what happens. Or rather, what should happen. For such a system to operate properly today, it is necessary that it operated properly yesterday. Think of a machine with intertwined wheels and cogs and rods and pulleys. Once one component gets out of synchronisation, it will affect the other components and the machine as a whole will cease to operate efficiently. In a university (as in a business), once a mediocre person is appointed to a position which requires a higher level of competence or dedication than that which they possess, then the flaws will spread. Mediocrity spawns itself. A second-rate person may prefer to appoint further second-raters (or third-raters), passing over a first-rater who could show them up. Of course, not everything is always perfect; in any organisation a few mistakes will always occur. But if there are too many flaws, these reinforce each other and, instead of pursuing a mission of quality, a university may become a vehicle for the self-aggrandisement and comfort of its members. The extent to which a university — like any other endeavour — fulfils its goals is dependent on the work ethic of faculty and students, and on their honesty, sense of responsibility and competence. In every university there are some dedicated individuals who embody these principles in high degree. But there is a not inconsiderable number in whom they are lacking. It was mentioned in chapter 7 that one cannot hope to succeed in a university by working just a seven or eight hour day. Marking and lecture preparation and research tasks inevitably spill over into evenings and weekends. From my observation in several countries over four decades, about half of university 216 I am a linguist

faculty do work conscientiously, putting in the necessary effort and energy. Let us call them ‘the workers’. About one fifth of the workers (perhaps one tenth of all faculty) could be termed ‘high-flyers’. They work exceptional hours with exceptional concentration and produce exceptional results. Most of the remaining fifty per cent do the job in some sort of fashion but take care not to over-exert. Their lectures are often under-prepared and delivered without vim. Student assignments may be read and graded rather hurriedly, or else in a dilatory fashion. These people do not achieve much; indeed, they do not aim to achieve much. Let us call them ‘mediocrities’. At the bottom of this pile (perhaps ten per cent of the whole) are the ‘dead wood’, passengers who other faculty often have to do the work of and cover up for (according to the ‘principle of solidarity’, soon to be enunciated). I’m often told (by people in universities), that a university should not be compared to a business. But I do choose to make the comparison. When head of department at the ANU, I needed to contact a colleague, Dr Waner, and rang him at home soon after 9 a.m. on a weekday. ‘Oh, William is still in bed, reading the newspaper,’ his wife told me, ‘he’ll call you back after he’s had his shower.’ William came to work later in the morning, gave a droning lecture, took a longish lunch-break, chatted to a couple of students, and went home at four. My daughter Eelsha was at that time working as a merchant banker in Sydney. She’d get up at 6.30 and be at work by 7.45, in time to study what had happened overnight on overseas markets before a group meeting at 8.15 to plan strategy for the day. Her finishing time was notionally five o’clock but she never left work before six and often stayed a bit later (till all that day’s tasks were completed). Occasionally, she might do some more work in the evening, on the phone to an overseas office when it was day-time for them. What a different work ethic from William Waner! As you walk the corridors of a university, there are quite a number of people who will tell you that they are so busy. This to start, that to finish, so many things to do, no time to fit them all in,so busy! (Oddly, those who say they are busiest tend to be those who achieve the least.) What one has to remember, when assessing such folk, is that they basically work a twenty-hour week. Get to work after the morning rush hour, go home before the evening one (much quicker driving); take off time for lunch and coffee and casual chatting and about a score of hours sums it up. Now you can understand it — anyone would be busy, trying to fit a week’s work into twenty hours. Some academics start off with a strong work ethic and genuine sense of vocational dedication. Work hard, teach with enthusiasm, do useful research academic standards 217

and publish it. Get tenure. Then gradually fade away. Under my suggestion — in chapter 7 — that tenure should be abolished, they’d have to either continue working at full-strength or seek employment elsewhere. The hard core of high- flyers — and many of the workers — do continue to perform well (or super-well) for their whole academic careers. And there are the permanent mediocrities, whose aim is to ensure that they are not threatened by anyone who has ability. Like all the other points made, this can be illustrated. In the early 1960s a university with which I was associated undertook to start a Russian department. They wanted to appoint a professor but no one good enough applied. So they appointed a couple of lecturers, people without PhDs, only one of whom spoke good Russian. Courses of restricted quality were taught, with limited results. (This was in the cold war era, when a well-conducted Russian department should be assured of success.) Early in the 1970s, the university advertised again and this time was able to appoint a top-quality scholar as professor; someone who was almost sixty years of age but full of ideas and energy. He expanded the offerings, taught Polish as well as Russian (renamed it the Department of Slavic languages) and added quality. Did the two lecturers (still without PhDs) respond positively? No. What they did was ignore the professor. Well, they said ‘hello’ and ‘yes, alright’ and ‘no, we can’t do that’, but little else. They just waited the five years till he retired, then scuttled Polish and all the new courses in Russian, changed the name of the department back, and let it once more relapse into mediocrity. Fewer and fewer students came, the lecturers (still without PhDs) retired, with Russian teaching being terminated in that university (and in that city). Thirty years of little effort and wasted opportunity, with a halcyon period of five years of quality teaching and research (by one man) in the middle.

One of the most critical tasks is appointing the right person to a position. In addition to qualifications and experience, one must assess personality, how well a person is likely to fit as a part of this team. It used to be the convention to provide maximal information in an application — date and place of birth, nationality, marital status, age of dependent children, and then lists of qualifications, jobs held, and publications, each in a logical chronological order. Nowadays, various whims — which go under such diverse names as ‘industrial relations’ and ‘political correctness’ — lead people to adopt a minimalist approach. But an appointing committee needs to know how old an applicant is — whether 25 or 75. One needs to judge a person as a whole, taking account of all of their previous experience (in whatever field). Family considerations can 218 I am a linguist

be critical. But it is not nowadays permissible to enquire what a spouse feels about shifting cities or countries, whether they would want to get a job and if so the chances of succeeding (they might be pretty unhappy if they couldn’t get one). The committee has to try to get the applicant to talk about these things without actually asking. One considerable hurdle is references. The blandest fool can get a couple of prominent people to write a few sweet words. They may want to help (according to the principle of solidarity) or they may be a current employer, eager to get this person out of their hair and into a job elsewhere. Some years ago, a leading Australian university needed a new Chief Librarian and appointed a man from a small university in the north. He soon turned out to be hopeless, was shifted sideways into a ‘planning’ role (with the Deputy Librarian running the show) and was then retired at a very early age, and at considerable cost. I know people at the small university in the north and they were immensely pleased to be rid of him. The references were good, of course. But a quick informal phone call to any one of a hundred people at the small university in the north would have revealed the true picture. My policy has always been to carefully study the official references, and then to think of who I know who should be familiar with the candidate and their work (but has not been named as a referee) and get in touch with them for an informal assessment. Their opinions have often been of tremendous help. It used to be okay to do such things (as it was to ask about age and spouse) but not now. One must — in Australia at least — refrain from asking anyone about an applicant without first seeking the applicant’s permission. The burgeoning political restrictions mean that — if rules are followed to the letter — it is much harder than before to come to a fully informed choice about an appointment. I just operated as I always had — with generally good results — and pretended I hadn’t. The thing is that if a bad appointment is made, it’s all but impossible to sack the incumbent once their true spots are revealed. Okay, if they do turn up roaring drunk twice a week, and don’t give half the scheduled lectures, it may be possible. But so long as the person actually delivers lectures, however badly, and marks assignments and exams, however sloppily, they are there for life. The academic unions hover. Unions would agree that quality is the yardstick for making an appointment, but it stops there. There does not have to be quality in performance after appointment. Poor performance is not grounds for termina- tion of contract. Now I’m basically a socialist and consider that unions have done a fine job in protecting vulnerable workers from exploitation by capital- academic standards 219

ist overlords. But most of the endeavours of academic unions have a ‘lowest common denominator’ effect. This principle appears to be: let mediocrity rule. (Because, let’s be fair, what else can you achieve in a twenty-hour week?) And then the government may decline to provide money for a salary increase, so a strike is called. The students suffer. The syllabus cannot be fully covered. The already negative view which the government — and the populace — have formed about the work ethic in universities is reinforced. And, as a result of this year’s strike, there is even less chance of the wherewithal being provided for a pay increase next year. The spiral involutes on itself. An outsider would be astonished at how many high-level decisions in a university are motivated by a desire to avoid the threat of litigation. Should we allow people to themselves apply for promotion to a high grade, or should we require that they must be nominated by the dean? Just in the former case, they could sue the university in the event that they don’t get promoted, so choose the second alternative. In another scenario, Dr R applies for an advertised professorship within his university. The committee considers him totally unap- pointable but does include him in the list of three people to be interviewed. Why? Well, if he is interviewed and doesn’t get the job (which is of course what happens), there’s nothing he can do. But if he is not interviewed, the committee has to state which of the selection criteria he fails to satisfy, and Dr R could challenge this in court. He is considered to lack leadership abilities and to have made no substantial theoretical contribution to the discipline. These, however, are subjective opinions. Imagine trying to prove them before a judge, especially if Dr R (who has private means) hires a top quality lawyer. One wants to avoid the bother and cost and bad publicity arising from litigation. But what a way to have to run a university! It’s a natural and laudable trait of humans to cherish and protect their friends and peers. There should, though, be a limit. If the person at the next desk to you in a small business is plainly not doing their job, you can’t just ignore this forever or the business will go bust and you’ll all be out of work. There is no such endpoint of oblivion hanging over a university. As a consequence, people protect and support each other without restriction. University people band together and present a solid face against the world. This is the ‘principle of solidarity’. Solidarity habitually shelters dishonesty. Professor A told me how he’d been on the committee to appoint a professor to a well-reputed university. Dr B was interviewed. After a couple of good things when he was young, Dr B had published little of significance in a decade and a half. But Professor A 220 I am a linguist

and the other members of the appointing committee were told that Dr B had a lengthy paper forthcoming in a leading journal. Dr B got the job. A year went by. Professor A remarked to me that the forthcoming paper hadn’t appeared. It never did appear in that journal. Dr B had submitted it to the journal but it got rejected. He’d lied about the acceptance. Professor A is no whistle-blower; nothing happened. Dr/Professor B certainly acted dishonestly. But worse things could happen. And do, I’m told, in the natural sciences. A drug company may provide a university with a large sum to fund a certain line of research which is of interest to them. But, when the results of the investigation aren’t what the drug company expected or wanted — when they might harm the company’s profile and profits — then an injunction is given not to publish. More money may be forthcoming, for further research. This isn’t solidarity within the university sector; it is simply acting dishonestly for the sake of survival. Four or five years ago, Professor J received his regular university salary of about $90,000 per year, and doubled this with consultancy fees. He didn’t perform his university job properly, doing almost no research. And, he boasted, since he had income from several sources, he could register as a company, with a top tax rate of only 33 per cent, whereas a colleague who received income from just one source, his professor’s salary, (and who did his job properly) had a marginal tax rate of 47 per cent. An irresponsible attitude can be manifested simply by lack of dedication to the job. When I present a series of lectures to university students, the idea is to impart the fundamentals of the discipline in integrated fashion. The course is like a woven fabric, with threads connecting each part, referring forward and back, justifying this, exemplifying that. I need every one of the 35 or so hours to do justice to the subject matter. Something which may be unclear to a student in lecture 10 could be given life by what is said in lecture 20. Of course, I monitor understanding, try to perceive flaws and difficulties and remedy them. Occasion- ally, I might get a colleague to give a guest lecture on a topic of their specialism. I would attend this and by later comments relate it to the remainder of the course. Some lecturers do not share this philosophy. They may have a bit of money from a grant and use it to pay graduate students (at a low rate) to teach large chunks of the course. The lecturer takes the first two weeks, then X will do three weeks on phonology, Y three weeks on morphology, and Z three weeks on syntax, with the lecturer finishing off for the last two weeks. Each tackles a different sub-topic, in isolation from what has gone before and what will follow. No one gets to go to anyone else’s lectures (certainly not the lecturer, who academic standards 221

may be away some of the time at a conference). Each approaches topics from a slightly different angle and with different preconceptions. Poor students! It’s like being handed a series of differently-coloured handkerchiefs, rather than a finely-woven tapestry.

One way of reducing standards is by trying to raise them through change of name. A decade or more ago, all the Polytechnics in England and all the Col- leges of Advanced Education in Australia were re-designated as ‘universities’. This inflation of name did not lead to a sudden and magical raising of standards; it simply lowered the quality of ‘what is a university’. There has been much in the papers in recent years concerning ‘grade inflation’ in leading American universities (it happens elsewhere, too). Students shun the classes of Dr K, since it’s known that he’ll give you a B for a piece of work for which Dr L would assign an A grade. Dr K is young; he really does need to attract student numbers, and receive good student evaluations, to assist his case for tenure. What does he do? One Dr K I know resisted the temptation to give anything other than a B for a piece of work which was manifestly only worth a B (by standards that had been in place for generations), gave up hope of tenure at his university in the USA and took a job in Canada where such pressures are less strong. It is said that a professor at one of the very best institutions puts two grades at the bottom of an assignment, the one it deserves and the higher one he is recording, under political pressure. Students want better grades to help get into graduate school. But giving an A for a piece of work which — by traditional standards — deserves a B, does not make that piece of work or that student any better. It simply devalues what an A grade signifies. (And makes it harder for graduate schools to decide who to admit.) Students need good grades to advance themselves. Academics need good student evaluations, and also — that magic word — publications. As mentioned in chapter 7, the high-flyers and many of the workers publish results that they consider valuable, in well-respected journals with a wide circulation, so that their papers will be read and referred to. But for the remainder — publish anything, anywhere. Publish almost the same thing, several times, in slight disguise. A book is best, and it needn’t be more than sixty pages to count as a book. There’s currently a one-man publishing outfit in Germany which specialises in sixty-page books. This publisher doesn’t ask to see the manuscript in advance. Download from the web instructions for preparing camera-ready copy, send in the typed pages and — lo and behold — your book will be out in a matter of 222 I am a linguist

weeks (quite often, with author’s name and/or book title misspelt on the cover). Very high price (the publisher makes a killing), very low print run, totally lacking in prestige. But it is a publication, a book publication — hurrah! Even in what are generally reckoned to be good-quality publications, the standard of accuracy is frequently distressing. Person E quotes something from my grammar of Dyirbal, but with errors. Person F provides a comment about Dyirbal but quotes E (rather than consulting the original), thus perpetuating the error. One should always go back to primary sources, check and check again. I was recently reading a book by a linguist from Scandinavia, published in England. One reference to my work had the right page number but the wrong book. Another had a date and a page which doesn’t relate to anything I have published, and what I’m supposed to have said is not anything I ever did say (it uses terminology I have always shunned). Was this typical of the whole book? I checked a sample of ten other references to the literature, in the primary source grammars I have on my shelves. Four had serious errors — such as using a label which is the exact contrary of that in the source — and four had minor errors — such as missing an accent or the mark of length on a vowel. Two out of ten — surely not a pass mark under any system of assessment? But this book gets referred to. Besides accuracy, discernment is a key factor in good scholarship. Many (too many) academic books and articles are published. Some are insightful, reliable and useful; others are shallow, inaccurate and without merit. Students have to be weaned away from the idea ‘if it’s been printed, and is in a book or journal, then it must be alright.’ With experience, it is possible — after just a short examination — to distinguish a multi-faceted gem from a tawdry hand-me-down. Such discernment is an integral part of academic competence. As is the ability to take time over researching a topic, carefully studying and comprehending the principles and the terminology. Let me provide one example of how the failure to do this has led to error and confusion, which has become enshrined as part of a p-theory. It concerns ‘ergative’. In chapter 6 it was explained how in some languages — including Dyirbal — transitive subject (A) is marked by a special ending (ergative case), while both transitive object (O) and intransitive subject (S) have a different ending or no ending at all (absolutive case). Thus one says, literally, ‘John (A: ergative) saw Mary (O: absolutive)’, ‘John (S: absolutive) laughed’ and ‘Mary (S: absolutive) laughed’. The words can occur in any order in each sentence, what is A and O and S being shown by ergative and absolutive cases. academic standards 223

In the early 1990s, two Chomskian PhD students, Burzio and Pesetsky, used the term ‘ergative’ in connection with English sentences like John opened the window and The window opened, where the O of the first sentence (the window) is identical to the S of the second. Pairs like this appear in almost every language and it is a quite different phenomenon from ergative case marking, which is found in only about one quarter of the languages in the world. But that was a relatively minor flaw compared with what followed. Burzio and Pe- setsky used the label ‘ergative’ for the window, when this should be absolutive, with John as ergative. They hadn’t studied the literature on ergativity carefully enough, and employed the term ‘ergative’ for its opposite. This mislabelling — which was simply due to a lack of comprehension — was then adopted as an integral item in the terminology of several Chomskian p-theories of that era.

Someone with a teaching-and-research position in a university gives perhaps five or six lectures per week, over 24 to 28 weeks. That’s about 150 hours of lectures in a year (and each hour is just 50 minutes). Not a horrendous load. My philosophy has always been that the number one priority is to give the 150 lectures. Other things should be fitted in around this major responsibility — research and things like attending conferences. During the twenty-six years that I held a teaching-and-research position, I never missed a lecture. Just occasionally I would go to a conference, but only when it fitted squarely within a teaching break. Not everyone follows this ideal. One hears: ‘there is a conference I really must attend, in the middle of the teaching period, so Ihave to take two weeks off.’ But aren’t conferences important, you may ask. The answer is an emphatic ‘no’; the great majority are a skive, a shirk. There are exceptions, most notable exceptions. When a group of high-flyers are invited to take part in a conference (or workshop), on a definite theoretical topic, with each being accorded sufficient time to present their results, and there being ample opportunity for meaningful discussion — this can be of great benefit. In chapter 15, I describe how Alexandra Aikhenvald and I organise regular International Workshops along these lines. The published volumes which result are regarded as seminal contributions to the discipline. But only a small proportion of academic gather- ings are of this type. For most conferences, a call for papers goes out. You send in an abstract, which is accepted. The time assigned may be twenty minutes or fifteen minutes or just twelve minutes; there may be ten minutes allowed for questions or five or perhaps only three. You have a paper carefully timed to last for exactly 224 I am a linguist

twenty minutes. After twelve minutes — you started late, because the lunch break ran over — the chairperson shoves a card before your nose, obscuring the page you are reading from: ‘Five minutes more’. This causes you to lose your place, disrupts the flow of thought and of talk. You clear throat, try to reconnect. Almost at once, it seems, another card is intruded: ‘Two minutes more’. Skip a couple of paragraphs, slide into the peroration. A further card: ‘Time’s up. Stop’. You turn to the chairperson: ‘I have one final paragraph.’ ‘No, sit down!’ Then a question from the audience, on a quite tangential matter. You take the opportunity of reading the last paragraph, giving the generalisation the whole paper has been leading up to. ‘Thank you.’ Scattered applause. ‘Next presenter, please.’ Thatreally is what it’s like. A couple of decades ago, I decided to opt out of giving twenty-minute (or shorter) papers. Occasionally, I’m invited to deliver a plenary paper of perhaps forty-five minutes. The same system of cards is supposed to operate but I simply request the chairperson to desist from this practice. I can — and do — monitor my talk so that it lasts just forty-five minutes. But I wouldn’t be able to if discombobulated by temporal reminders. You’ve been with me on the podium, while trying to give a serious and well-prepared talk. Now, let’s sit in the audience. The next presenter is post- glamorous, mid-forties. ‘I used to be a film-maker, and then enrolled as a graduate student in linguistics. Went to a traditional village in Mexico. Since most of my time was spent in the kitchen, working with women, I decided to make a film about the discourse of cooking, for my PhD.’ Film comes up. An ample lady, making tortillas. Slowly enunciates one sentence, in the indigenous Mexican language, English subtitle on screen, ‘I am grinding the flour’; sentence repeated. Then ‘I am kneading the dough’ (said twice). ‘I am rolling the tortillas’ (twice). ‘I am cooking the tortillas’ (twice). ‘I’m finished with the tortillas’ (said only once). ‘I will go to bed’ (said three times). But first she feeds her little dog and her little cat (without speaking). The film only lasts for five minutes, so the presenter runs it again, to use up time. Intellectual quality — who said anything about intellectual quality? Was it worth the presenter and the audience flying long distances and staying in reasonably expensive hotels — at the expense of their universities, and eventually of taxpayers — to partake in this event? The next presentation is on a serious topic, ‘Stress in Plutese’. Six page handout, stapled, but unfortunately the numbering goes 1, 5, 3, 4, 2, 4. Presenter shuf- fles papers for a while. ‘Sorry about that, things got out of hand late at night. Anyway, I want to start on page 5. First of all, please change all u’s to o’s in table 7, that was a computer glitch. Now in the plane from Montreal yesterday, academic standards 225

I realised that w can be eliminated and treated as a pre-vocalic u, which is now o. So cross out w.’ More shuffling, searching for something; finds it. ‘Now in rule (7c), on page 3, where it says “preceding”, that should be “following” and please change “now” to “not” in the line below. All clear so far? Good. Now turn to page 4, the second page 4 that is, the stress rule. Penultimate syllable from the right, ignoring h and glottal stop.’ The third card is thrust at speaker, the invocation to ‘Stop!’ ‘Oh well, you can read the details on the plane home’. Questions please. An old man at the back, white beard, battered felt hat. ‘What means it, in bold, in middle of rule, “Error! Reference source not found?”’ ‘Oh, sorry, the computer did that, just ignore it. Such a rush, I didn’t have time to proof-read before making xeroxes.’ The old man continues: ‘And one thing more.’ ‘Sorry, only one question each,’ the chairperson rules. The old man now rises, and he is tall. ‘That was question? No. The rule you say, the stress in Plutese is penultimate. Is stated by my uncle, the great Lutovsky, in paper published in 1929 in German. Is established result, nothing new.’ The speaker has a ready response. ‘Sorry, I don’t read German. But that’s good, if Lutovsky agrees with me. We’re interested in truth here, not in news.’ Then there is a good paper, interesting data, insightful conclusions, well presented. Eight people stick their hands up to ask questions, only time for two. ‘Sorry, but we must stick to the schedule.’ On to the next. Mostly mumbled, but what one can hear seems ethereal at best, perhaps self-contradictory. Sits down, apparently in the middle of a sentence, after fifteen minutes. ‘Any questions, any questions?’ None. ‘Thank you very much indeed, we’ll reconvene at two o’clock.’ The session finishes fifteen minutes early, time which could have been devoted to questions on the paper before last, the good presentation. And do we need an hour-and-a-half for a snack lunch? Surely, if people have flown between one and ten thousand kilometres for this conference, the organisers could allow a modicum of discretion, permit productive discussion after an isolated gem of a paper, at the expense of a few minutes of a lunch or coffee break. Believe me, these are not exaggerations. Not all conferences are of this ilk, but far too many are. Some papers do constitute serious contributions to scholarship, but are often not being given for the first time. A sociologist from Mos- cow attended an international conference in Brisbane. ‘Were there any good papers?’ I asked her. ‘Only one, out of sixty, but I’d heard that in Barcelona last year.’ A colleague was attending an international linguistics congress in Prague and said to someone whose work she admired that she planned to attend his paper. ‘Don’t,’ he advised, ‘you heard it last November in Kyoto.’ 226 I am a linguist

Why are some academics so keen on going to conferences? Lots of reasons. It’s good to see the world — Barcelona, Brisbane, Kyoto, Prague — at no expense to oneself. It looks good on the curriculum vitae to have given papers at international conferences with important-sounding names. (It may be basically the same paper given over and over, but the title will be judiciously modified each time.) Some people like to go to conferences during term since it gets them out of a certain amount of teaching back home. And one persistent rationale is casual sexual encounters. Some are renewed at conference after conference but I’m told this is unusual, novelty being more fun. A quick fling, no obligations. (Well ... it may be that if X is anonymous referee for a paper by Y for a prestigious journal, then fond recollections of two nights snuggled up with Y in that hotel overlooking the lake in Geneva just may play some role in the warmth of the evaluation.) People don’t really go to hear the papers. The few things that are any good will eventually be published and can then be read at leisure. There is one important gain, and that is meeting fellow scholars, establishing contacts, exchanging reprints, exploring job opportunities for one’s students. Most people who go to conferences a lot — I operate by hearsay — quote this as the major benefit. Okay, but (especially nowadays when there is easy communication by electronic means) is it really worth such expenditure of time and money (and so often)? You may ask: is it hard to get a paper accepted for an international conference? Sometimes it may be, but generally not. A couple of my colleagues ran the 15th International Conference on I’d-better-not-say-what a year or two back. They received just over one hundred abstracts and accepted every single one. When I enquired about this lack of selectivity, the first response was: ‘Well, this abstract is pretty poor, but still it’ll be of some interest to some people’. But will it be of enough interest to enough people? Then the root of the matter came forth: ‘We need every registration fee we can get to pay for hire of the conference hall, photocopying, morning and afternoon teas, and all the rest. If we make a loss, it’ll have to come out of our own pockets!’ So, some bottom-of-the-pile teacher at the University of Middle Dakota tells his dean that he’s had a paper accepted for the 15th International Confer- ence on I’d-better-not-say-what. Terrific, well done. A proud university pays airfare, hotel and food costs, registration fee. The recipient presents essentially the same paper that he gave at the 14th International Conference on I’d-better- not-say-what in Seattle three years before (organised by quite different people), under a new title. It’s not good enough to get published and anyway if that happened it might be difficult to keep on giving it. academic standards 227

I rejoice in seeing the substantial sum the government takes off me each year in tax being spent on providing good schooling, health care, roads, envi- ronmental protection. What I object to is seeing a certain class of academics go off at regular intervals to junkets under the name of conferences, at taxpayers’ expense. The better class of university faculty may indulge in this sort of diversion, but they do so seldom, always in teaching breaks, and in a discriminating fashion. I used to go about once every three years but have now given it up for good. (As noted before, thematic workshops with invited participants are a different matter.) Just occasionally, my partner Alexandra Aikhenvald goes off for a day to some better-than-the-worst local conference. It’s difficult to describe the feeling I get — light and airy, free, almost giddy, as if an extra day has been added on to my life. I do a bit of work, relax a bit, do a bit more work, so very glad that I’m here and not there.

Like a sort of extension of democracy, in the political sphere, the academic world works in terms of what is called ‘peer group review’. Like democracy, it is not at all a good system, but it’s hard to think of a superior one. There are, however, better and worse ways of administering peer group review, which will be discussed. Basically, peer group review is used in three circumstances. (a) Submitting a paper to an academic journal. This is sent out to two referees who may be members of the editorial board for the journal or scholars outside this group. Sometimes, the name of the author of the paper is suppressed, although a reviewer will often be able to guess it (after all, who else has done original work on Jupitese?). The editor of the journal studies the referee reports (and may read the paper themself), then decides whether or not to accept it. All or part of the referee reports are generally sent to the author, almost always anonymously. (Although one leading journal, Anthropological Linguistics, follows the enlightened practice of asking referees whether they would like their names to be passed on.) (b) Submitting a book to a reputable publisher. Either a detailed proposal (plus, perhaps, one or two sample chapters) or else the whole manuscript is sent out to two referees. They are asked to assess not only academic worth, but also what market the book is aimed at, what competing texts there are, and what the sales are likely to be (a publisher has to at least break even financially). A decision as to whether or not to publish is made on the basis of these reports, and the publisher’s own judgement, with all or part of the reports being forwarded to the author, almost always anonymously. 228 I am a linguist

Sometimes a journal editor or book publisher requests an author to suggest possible referees, people competent in their field who are not collaborators. One of these may be selected, plus one other person. I have a personal allergy to unnecessary secrecy (a.k.a. confidentiality or privacy). If one writes a negative report, it may be most politic to keep it anonymous. But most reports I write are basically positive, and I request the journal or publisher to keep my name on when sending the report off to the author. Whatever sort of comments one gets — whether just plaudits, or helpful suggestions for revision — it is, it seems to me, appropriate and sensible that one should know who they are from, and assess them in that light. One laudatory report on a book proposal of mine said that its writer would adopt the book as a text ‘at my university’. I asked the publisher if the referee would mind my being appraised of their identity, and it turned out that ‘my university’ was Cambridge, which puts a quite different complexion on things than if it had been the University of Middle Dakota. (c) Applying for a grant (to pay for fieldwork, research assistants, equip- ment, etc.) or a research fellowship from a grant-giving body such as the Aus- tralian Research Council. Here things tend to be less satisfactory. An applicant has to list a number of ‘key words’. Each of a bank of possible referees has provided ‘key words’ to describe their fields of interest, and these are matched, by computer. Five or six people may be asked to referee a given project; all may reply, or perhaps just two. There’s a lot of luck in this. If all six come through, four may be positive and two negative. If only two write back, both could be positive. Or it could be just the two negative ones (maybe they made the effort simply because they want to do down this applicant and this application, for their own reasons). The qualities which make a good reviewer are: (i) be informed about the topic, that is, work within the appropriate sub-discipline; (ii) be competent to assess it, that is, be clever enough to understand it; (iii) be fair and honest; and (iv) be patient, devoting sufficient time to read it thoroughly, follow up references, and think through what the author hopes to achieve. It is difficult, almost impossible, to satisfy all these criteria at once. A poor quality scholar should not be asked to assess a top-notch application from a high-flyer. The chances are that they won’t fully understand it, or its importance and social consequences. And they may well be envious of the success of the high-flyer — which is largely due to hard work and intense concentration — with respect to their own lowly position (at least in part, no doubt, due to a slack work ethic). Surely a basic principle should be that an applicant is academic standards 229

only judged by someone as good or better than them. High-flyers should only be judged by other high-flyers, workers by high-flyers or other workers, and mediocrities (who do apply for grants) by workers or high-flyers. (It is certainly the case that some people — notably, the mediocrities — would consider what I have just said to be totally unacceptable, and ‘elitist’. The politically correct principle of ‘equity’ states that every person with a faculty position in a university is equal, and each is perfectly capable of refereeing any proposal by anyone else.) Getting back to my scheme of things, writing reports takes time. An application may run to twenty pages, ten of them a detailed — single-spaced, sparse-margined — description of the project’s methodology and aims. To fully assimilate these takes at least a couple of hours. One should then go and read some previous publications by the applicant, and follow up references to work by other people on similar topics. To do this properly would take a couple of days. But high-flyers and workers have their own projects to attend to. The system operating currently (but, one hopes, not for too long) in Australia is for a small panel of referees to each assess between eight and twenty applications. Read fast — almost certainly skimming some bits of the application — and spend thirty minutes or at most an hour on each. High-flyers and workers undertake reviewing out of a sense of responsibility, and it can be a source of some annoyance to them. In the present system, the mediocrities get asked too (I mean, they supply the right key words), and they just love it. Spend days or weeks over the task, boast to colleagues of how many applications they’ve been sent. Not that they would do it properly — reading previous work by the applicant, following up references. They just mull over things, draft bits of the report and then rephrase them several times. Give X a mark of 80 per cent for ‘significance and innovation’ and 75 per cent for ‘approach and methodology’. Next day reverse these percentages. Next week, back as before. It makes the mediocrity feel awfully important, and it’s a great excuse not to get on with any research of their own. But how can someone who has had an academic position for thirty years and never published a grammar of a language (or written a book of any sort) judge an application from a bright young scholar who requests a three-year fellowship to write a grammar of a language? The principle of solidarity is the public face of academia. But it has an un- derside, which we can call the ‘corollary of spite’. Some people, who will be smooth and polite in the open domain, become jagged and vicious under the cloak of anonymity. One of my junior colleagues once received the most damn- 230 I am a linguist

ing report, as if written by a person with a distorted mind. Who could it be? Then a friend — who the referee had shown their report to — told me that the report was written by D. ‘It couldn’t be,’ I responded, ‘I know D, he wouldn’t write anything so downright nasty. Although, of course, my junior colleague’s results do call into question one of D’s pet theories.’ My friend just nodded. The effort of always being nice — on the surface — according to the principle of solidarity, can be relieved by the corollary of spite. There’s a Russian proverb, ne poiman, ne vor ‘if you don’t get caught, you’re not a thief’. Under the guise of anonymity one can say anything — make judgements which reflect haste or incompetence (not reading or not understanding the application fully) or just jealousy or personal animosity. From my observations, there is occasionally an element of retribution. B didn’t get a grant one year because of a negative reference which he thought was from M. (In fact, M hadn’t written the reference. It is always extraordinarily difficult to pick these things.) Next year, M applies for a grant, B is asked for a reference and puts in a vituperative report with a mark of 40 per cent, as pay-back. But M’s three other referees say 93 per cent, 98 per cent and 100 per cent and he gets the money. (The committee notes that the 40 per cent from B is out of kilter with the rest, and plainly biased.) But what if only two referees had responded, one of them B? The thing is, referees don’t themselves get refereed. The current system in Australia is that the applicant is sent the anonymous reports (between two and six in number) and is allowed one page to reply to them all. But a really ill-informed reference, where every sentence is misconceived, would require ten or twenty pages for a full rebuttal. I’ve painted a picture of the worst scenario. Many references are informed, competent and honest, so that a fair result is obtained. But in a not insignificant number of instances, mis-justice occurs. The National Science Foundation in the USA is, I think, one of the better bodies of award, but it is far from perfect. Someone associated with the NSF told me that while Dr T held membership of their linguistics panel (something which is of limited duration), Dr H was never going to be awarded a grant, since Dr T consistenty blackballed Dr H (and Dr T does have a strong personality). Australia being a small country, the Australian Research Council doesn’t have a separate linguistics committee (as does the NSF). The Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences committee covers psychology, economics, geography and linguistics. Recently, I asked a member of this committee (a psychologist) why it is that excellent hard-core linguistics projects — such as document- academic standards 231

ing a previously undescribed language — tended not to get funded, whereas various mickey-mouse things on the fringe of the discipline — such as looking at the language of pop songs — do receive support. He pointed out that the members of the committee (which at that time didn’t include a single linguist) could probably understand and appreciate the fringe projects, but were put off by the technicality of the hard-core endeavours. ‘Try and aim the application at a general, non-specialist reader,’ he advised. A fine way of administering a scientific discipline! Peer group reviewing will never be fully satisfactory, but it could be improved. For instance: (1) Ensure that a reviewer is competent and expert — not just someone who says they are competent and expert — in the field of the application. (2) Choose as reviewers only people who have a proven record of publishing quality research. A reviewer should at the least have themself achieved what the applicant plans to achieve in the course of a three-year fellowship. Or, if there is a book proposal to a publisher, don’t ask the opinion of someone who has never written a book themself. (This does happen.) Don’t automatically pick as reviewers people in top academic positions; most of these are achievers but a fair few are not. (3) Try to ensure that the reviewer is fair and honest, without a jealousy quo- tient or a long-standing feud to propagate. Honesty may be hardest to monitor. A senior academic is given for review a paper by a junior scholar. On his advice, it is rejected. But then the following year, the reviewer writes a rather similar paper themself. Same idea, but different wording of course. One can’t prove plagiarism, that’s the pity. But when it happens more than once ... Attitudes are interesting. In 1990 the ARC advertised, for the first time, twenty Senior Research Fellowships which would enable their recipients to devote five years to full-time research, without teaching or administrative duties. I applied, and was awarded one on the basis of past achievements. A colleague — who is a worker, but towards the bottom of the worker spectrum, with limited productivity — grumbled at this. ‘You can write books at the same time as teaching and being head of department,’ he said. ‘They should have given me five years free of teaching, then I could write a book.’ But he wouldn’t have, that’s the point.

It is an established convention that a faculty position in a university should combine teaching and research. Why? Just like the convention of drinking red wine with red meat, they naturally go together. As mentioned in chapter 6, 232 I am a linguist

one only really masters a discipline by teaching it. The best teachers are most often the best researchers; and it is most rewarding for really bright students to receive lectures from top researchers. Almost every university runs on the teaching-and-research principle. One of the very few exceptions is what was the Australian National University, later to become the Institute of Advanced Studies in an enlarged ANU. Since I spent twenty-nine-and-a-half years at the ANU — not in the IAS, but in the other half — and had close observation of how a research-only institution has worked out, the story deserves a brief telling. Canberra had been chosen, in 1909, as site for the capital city of the new Commonwealth of Australia (created in 1901), and the parliament moved there in 1927. There was felt to be need for part-time tertiary courses for public servants transferred to the new capital and Canberra University College was established in 1930, under the aegis of the University of Melbourne. This was a pitiful affair in its early years; by 1939 there were only 163 students, all attending lectures in the evenings. However, about 1950 things began to take off. The first professors were appointed, and they included A.D. Hope in English and Manning Clark in History, Australia’s most eminent poet and (controversially) the leading historian. Since the 1850s, Australia had quite good undergraduate universities but students travelled overseas for graduate study. And then they generally stayed overseas. There were a considerable number of top Australian natural and social scientists at universities in Europe and America. In 1946, the federal government resolved to establish a ‘full research’ university, called the Australian National University, in Canberra. There were two aims — to attract top Australian researchers back to work in their native land (plus leading scholars from elsewhere), and to provide graduate instruction. At that time, no Australian university had awarded the PhD degree. However, this was not far in the future; the first PhD from the University of Melbourne was in 1948, followed by the University of Western Australia in 1950, the Univer- sity of Sydney in 1951, and the University of Adelaide and the University of Queensland in 1952. All pre-dated the first PhD from the new ANU, which wasn’t until 1954. The ANU began with four Research Schools — of Physical Sciences, Medical Research, Pacific Studies, and Social Sciences. Later, other Research Schools were added — Chemistry, Biological Sciences, Earth Sciences, Information Sci- ences and Engineering, Astronomy and Astrophysics. The government had always intended an eventual merger with the Canberra University College. Both academic standards 233

institutions demurred but the government insisted and from 1961 the Research Schools became the ‘Institute of Advanced Studies’ within the new, double- barrelled ANU. Canberra University College became the ‘School of General Studies’, an unfortunate name, eventually being relabelled ‘The Faculties’, an awkward name. ‘The Faculties’, which consisted of the Faculties of Science, Law, Economics, Arts and Asian Studies, developed fast. By the time I arrived in 1970, it was a high-quality teaching-and-research institution, a normal university within the multi-purpose ANU. There were many fine scholars in The Faculties (plus, of course, the regular ration of mediocrities and a sprinkling of deadwoods) and many really good PhD students, quite separate from those in the IAS. There was antipathy and antagonism between the two halves. Some people in the Research Schools lamented that having undergraduates in the same university would spoil everything. Foolishly, two separate libraries had been erected — one for each sector — just before the amalgamation. In the early 1970s, undergraduates were not allowed to use the IAS library building without a form signed by their head of department. Apparently, some of the IAS people thought that, if they caught sight of an undergraduate, it might prejudice their ability to pursue research. (I immediately signed a hundred forms, and gave one to each student in my department.) The libraries were later integrated and rules relaxed, but attitudes persisted. Those who did ‘full research’ considered themselves a higher breed than people who did teaching (actually, teaching plus research). Some of the natural science schools were receptive and sensible, establishing productive links with a corresponding department in The Faculties. But the social science Research Schools generally remained aloof. Now, more than fifty years on, it is possible to assess how well the idea of a ‘full research’ institution worked out. For the natural science Research Schools I have only an outsider’s view. One can perceive an a priori case for certain scientists being relieved of the duties of teaching, at least for a time, simply because some experiments require constant attention. However, scientists at Cambridge or Paris or Harvard undertake similar experiments and are able to give lectures. One widely accepted yardstick of excellence in the natural sciences concerns Nobel prizes. Between 1950 and 2000, about 25 natural scientists at Harvard were awarded the Nobel prize, nine at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, five at Imperial College London. These are all teaching and research universities. But there were just three Nobel Laureates at the ANU’s Institute of Advanced Studies, which is a ‘full research’ institution. 234 I am a linguist

Sir John Eccles, whose Nobel was in 1963, left for America three years later to avoid mandatory retirement at 65, just two years off. In 1996, the Nobel prize for medicine was awarded to Peter Doherty, an Australian, and Rolf Zinkernagel, from Switzerland, for work they did on the immune system at the IAS medical school back in 1973-4. In 1975, Doherty had applied for a permanent job at the ANU, but was told there was none! He moved to the USA but in 1982 did return to the same Research School as professor. Appalled by the way the principle of solidarity worked, Doherty campaigned for radical changes to the system. There were mediocrities in tenured positions, denying opportunities to bright young high-flyers, and scarce funds were being squandered on outmoded research. Frus- trated, Doherty left in 1988 — this time of his own volition — and returned to the USA. After the Nobel award he did return to an Australian university, but to the University of Melbourne, not the ANU. People at the ANU admit that it was an error to send Doherty away in 1975, and maintain that things have changed so that such a thing would not happen today. Well, what would you expect them to say? The Research Schools of Social Sciences and Pacific Studies (now, Pacific and Asian Studies) I can judge at first-hand. Without the need for lengthy experiments, it’s hard to see the need to protect social scientists from lecturing, and from contact with bright undergraduates. There was a history department in Social Sciences, a history department in Pacific Studies, and a history department in the Faculty of Arts. Scholars within the faculty department have to teach and grade assignments and examine. They do research too — early in the morning, late at night, in teaching breaks. And my observation was that people in the teaching-and-research department did at least as much research, of at least as high a quality, as their colleagues in the Research School departments, who have all dreamy day with no other demands on their time. The same applies to every other discipline. (Linguistics is an extreme case and is discussed in more detail a little later.) The Research Schools were founded to attract the best local and overseas scholars to work in Australia. But there are now more than a dozen excellent universities, each with its fair share of really good people. It was also intended to provide high-quality graduate training; the other dozen universities do this just as well. So, if the original reasons for having a ‘research only’ institution are no longer valid, what gives? In 1995 the IAS was reviewed by a series of distinguished panels of scientists from within and without Australia. (But not including anyone from The Facul- ties, the well-established arrogance continuing.) I put in a simple submission, suggesting that the only reason for continuing the research-only experiment academic standards 235

would be if its members produced work of higher quality than their confrères in teaching-and-research universities, or if they produced work of the same quality but in greater quantity. These questions needed to be addressed. It was by no means clear to me that they could be answered satisfactorily. A few months later, I was chatting with a professor from the University of Western Australia who had been part of the review process. ‘You put in a pretty strong submission,’ he commented. ‘Did you do anything about it?’ was my response. ‘Well, no.’ The principle of solidarity had a field day. Eminent as- sessors were brought in from some of the best universities of the world. They grumbled, informally, about many of the things they saw. But close down the IAS? Relocate individual Research Schools to be parts of some of the leading universities in other cities? Better not rock the boat. ‘There are some good people there, doing some good work.’ Sure, but what the government — and taxpayers — should demand to know is: are there enough good people, doing enough exceptionally good work? The ideal behind the Institute of Advanced Studies was laudable. I was told that the plan was that there should be a fair number of postdoctoral fellowships, for bright people who had just gained their PhDs to indulge in three years of concentrated research effort. They should then disperse to teaching- and-research positions at other universities. And there would be a small core of senior, tenured people. After ten or fifteen or twenty years teaching, with a good research output all the while, a top scholar would be appointed to a permanent position in a research school, looking after the postdocs and the PhD students, and giving full vein to their own research. I’m told that this is basically what happens in the Research School of Chemistry, but certainly not in the two social science schools. Some people really do loll in a research only position all their academic lives, save perhaps for a couple of years. With high-flyers, there is less worry, they’ll always put in a sixty or seventy hour week; but they do need to have a dozen years or so of teaching. Many of the research school people are not high-flyers (or even medium-flyers). Seminars will be held at eleven (everyone should have arrived by then), or at two, with afternoon tea at three thirty. In my teaching-and-research department, the weekly seminar was at four, extending until five thirty or sometimes later. Our colleagues in the linguistics department at the Research School of Pacific Studies protested that this was too late. ‘I mean, one gets ready to go home at about four.’ They’d seldom attend and, if they did, would like as not slink away at five, even if the seminar was really good and the presenter hadn’t quite reached their conclusion. 236 I am a linguist

I mentioned the twenty-hour week regime followed by many mediocrities in teaching-and-research departments. They do have to come ina bit to prepare and deliver lectures, mark essays and talk to students. The research schools at the ANU have their share of less than top quality people. There is no fixed pattern of work, just research. So for them the number of hours each week truly spent working could be ten, or less. One scholar who spent seven years in the Research School of Pacific Studies later went on to a teaching-and-research job which he found more fulfilling and also more demanding. He wrote to me ‘just occasionally, I think of sitting dreamily at a desk in the Research School, looking out of the window, waiting for the afternoon to finish.’ In summary, I see little convincing evidence that a ‘full research’ university is desirable. By all means allow a small number of senior (and productive) people to concentrate on research within an overall teaching-and-research institution, ensuring that their role and their output are closely monitored. But, overall, teaching and research go together, each enhancing the other.

The Research School of Pacific Studies had a ‘research only’ linguistics department, which provided outstanding conditions of work, and of pay and facilities. In terms of academic quality, it was one of the poorest collections of linguists anywhere in the world. At the head was Professor Stephen Wurm (1922-2001), who was a linguist in the other sense of the term, a polyglot. He had knowledge of several dozen languages, although he was fully competent in none of them. He’d done some work on Australian languages (but published almost nothing of it) and a lot on the languages of New Guinea, but mostly word lists — never a grammar, no contribution to linguistic theory. He put forward some ideas about the genetic relationship of languages in New Guinea which were unsound, contravening the established principles of historical linguistics. I’d talked briefly to Wurm on the way to fieldwork in 1963, and he’d provided invaluable advice on how to relate to Aborigines, how to deal with the local policeman, and the like. That was his forte — communication, and politics. My friend Ken Hale seldom said a bad word about anyone but when I was in the USA, in 1968/9, he let me know that Wurm was unsound both personally and academically. As another American linguist put it: ‘Wurm is a charlatan. And he knows it.’ When I was offered the Chair in Linguistics in the Faculty of Arts (of the School of General Studies), in December 1969, it was useful to make a list of the pros and cons of moving to the ANU. The fact that Wurm was professor of linguistics in RSPS was rather definitely placed in the con column. That is, academic standards 237

I went to Canberra despite the fact that Wurm was there. And it turned out rather worse than expected. The man was a manipulator, and a corrupt one. The late Roger Keesing, Professor of Anthropology, was one of a number of people in RSPS who complained about having to live with Wurm. (Like Doherty, Keesing later got fed up with the Research School, and moved to a teaching-and-research job in Canada.) He furnished me with a classic example of Wurm’s dishonesty, for use in such a book as this. A student who had done an honours degree in Indonesian, with a major (three year sequence) in linguistics — in my department — applied for a PhD scholarship in Wurm’s department. One of my colleagues wrote the following reference (quoted in full):

I have gotten to know S through a course in linguistic field methods which I offered in second semester, 1976. She was a diligent and alert student. Her work was good, but not outstanding. I think this was basically due to the fact that she had done very little linguistic coursework before this. My own evaluation is that she shows good promise of fine scholarship in linguistics, but will need some coursework during her tenure of a PhD scholarship or very close supervision with a detailed reading list in general linguistics and close monitoring by her supervisor in order to get the needed background in rigorous linguistic techniques.

Following RSPS procedures, Wurm completed a ‘Departmental Scholarship Recommendation’ sheet, with extracts from the referee reports. He quoted only the following from the report just given (the ‘...’ are Wurm’s):

... She was a diligent and alert student. Her work was good ... She shows good promise of fine scholarship in linguistics ...

Where the form enquired ‘Special courses needed?’, Wurm had written ‘no’. S was offered a PhD scholarship at RSPS, but declined it. Wurm was a wonderful raconteur; you’d hear the same story several times and in each instance it had a different ending. It was the same with accounts of his own life, which one heard frequently. It seemed that the origin of grandparents varied with the occasion; adding them up over time, at least ten na- tionalities were featured. The constants were his mother, who was Hungarian, and the cat. Wurm’s father loomed large in all stories, but with considerable 238 I am a linguist

variation. ‘My father was always travelling on business,’ Wurm once told me. ‘When I was just a boy he took me to Peking for six months and I learned Chinese. Then to Moscow for six months and I learned Russian.’ On other occasions there were entirely different reminiscences. In the biographical memoir of Wurm in his 1987 Festschrift (by his junior colleague, Don Laycock), we read that ‘his father died when he was very young.’ One never really knew. It was only at his funeral that Wurm’s widow revealed that in fact his father had died before he was born. It was interesting (and also rather sad) to observe the way in which Wurm’s mind worked. A student at the University of Queensland had been sent to work on Guugu Yimidhirr (the language Captain Cook had taken down the word ‘kangaroo’ from, in 1770), without any proper training in linguistics. He recognised 16 phonemes, or distinctive speech sounds, whereas in fact there are 23, and so on. Unsurprisingly, the dissertation was failed by all three examiners. The candidate revised and resubmitted. Three different examiners (one of whom was me) all failed it again. Wurm revealed that he’d been asked to be an examiner but declined. The rationale was: ‘What could I do? I got him the scholarship in the first place so I couldn’t fail it, and if I passed it people like you would grumble at me.’ The amazing thing is that he didn’t consider the expedient of actually reading the dissertation, and judging it on its merits. People who spent a day with Wurm, or heard one lecture, were often en- thralled by his stories; a longer encounter and the veneer could wear thin. But he was strikingly successful on the political front. Although never advancing beyond head of department within the ANU, Wurm became President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1986, President of the International Council on Philosophical and Humanistic Studies in 1988, and so on. Wurm’s chicanery could be put to good effect. It is difficult to get grammars, dictionaries and such-like published. And so for this purpose Wurm created his own in-house publishing concern, Pacific Linguistics, putting out a dozen or more volumes each year. There was no quality control, so some poor things came through, but there were also many works of high value from a variety of linguists who had worked on languages from the macro-Pacific region. The world of linguistics owes a considerable debt to Wurm for this. The money side of Pacific Linguistics involved sleight-of-hand. A professor of prehistory who was on a committee to review aspects of the Research School said that they were unable to get a true picture of what Pacific Linguistics cost the university each year, but it seemed to be at least $250,000. The copy-editors were paid from one pocket, the typesetters from another, printing and binding academic standards 239

came out of a special fund, while sales and despatch were handled in a totally different manner. Sort of money-laundering within the institution. At about this time, the official university publishing house, ANU Press, was closed down because it required an annual subsidy of about $250,000, which was deemed to be too much. Pacific Linguistics probably cost a little more, but no one besides Wurm knew the full story. Wurm’s department had little to recommend it academically, except that the faculty put in quite a bit of time on the publishing venture, Pacific Linguistics, which was certainly the most useful thing they did. All his faculty bar one had been Wurm’s PhD students. They’d spent their whole academic life with Wurm, never doing any substantial teaching and never properly mastering the discipline. None of the high-quality grammars put out through Pacific Linguistics were by Wurm or his faculty members (although they did use PL as the conduit for a large proportion of their publications). Some of the good grammars were by the department’s students, who were in large part highly mature missionary linguists, well taught by the missionary organisation, who simply needed a venue in which to write their dissertation. (Just a little supervision was provided; in fact, not much was needed.) The way in which Wurm operated was in total disregard of the principles underlying the IAS. There were supposed to be a largish number of three- year postdoctoral fellows, and a small number of senior scholars with tenure, people who had made their reputation within the ambit of a teaching-and- research position. It was never intended that the ANU should provide a lifelong research-only billet. But this is what Wurm achieved. H (one of the few non-missionary graduate students) would complete a PhD with Wurm and then be given a limited-time research fellowship. Now the ANU does have a rule that anyone who has done a PhD and had a research fellowship there cannot immediately move on to a tenured position. They must interpose a job at some other university. But it need only be for a year! So, at the end of the three-year fellowship, Dr H rented out his house in Canberra (no need to sell it since he knew he was coming back) and got a job teaching a European language in a minor university. Wurm got to work, converted the research fellowship (non-tenured) into a fellowship (tenured). Advertised the post, specifying certain attributes which — of all the linguists in the world — only Dr H possessed (I heard it said, several times, that the only things he didn’t specify were the applicant’s height and weight). Dr H was appointed to the tenured position and was able to spend the rest of his academic life in that department. I saw this happen several times. None of Wurm’s faculty had a 240 I am a linguist

full knowledge of the discipline. None of them published a grammar of even medium length and quality. None of them made any significant theoretical contribution. Meanwhile, most of the members of my department were making a significant research contribution and also carrying a full teaching load. Not only that, but Wurm’s mob got better conditions, got paid more. We allowed each graduate student thirty pages of free photocopying each month; Wurm’s students were enjoined not to do more than fifty pages per day! In the 1970s and 1980s, Australian universities had common salary scales. I got paid exactly the same as Michael Halliday at Sydney and Michael Clyne at Monash. The only exception was the IAS. Wurm received a higher salary than any of us. Every seventh year we got a sabbatical, to spend time at a university overseas in order to keep up with recent developments. An IAS professor such as Wurm was granted one year off infour . And the salaries of other faculty were commensurately higher; Dr H, as fellow in the IAS, received a higher salary than a lecturer (twice as good, working twice as hard) in a teaching and research department. The hardest thing in my whole academic career was to be in the same university (albeit in a quite different part) as Wurm and his gang, comparing what members of my department did with what his people did, and how they were treated. If one dwelt on this, it made all true and honest endeavour seem worthless, made life seem a farce. All one could do was attempt to ignore it and simply block out his existence. In fact, that wasn’t too hard. As already mentioned, members of Wurm’s department found our seminar times inconvenient and seldom attended (Wurm himself never did). Did we attend their seminars, you may enquire? Well, they didn’t have any, for most of the period between 1970 and 1990. Let another voice take over. Donald C. Laycock (1936-1988) was one of Wurm’s Dr H’s. In a memorial volume for him (published by Pacific Linguis- tics), Robert Blust — a very fine linguist who spent just two years in Wurm’s department and is now at the University of Hawaii — contributed a ‘personal memoir’ about Laycock, which included the following passage:

Not uncommonly when I dropped by his office I found him reading science fiction or an especially ludicrous passage on non-western languages written by some rank amateur. He seemed to enjoy scoffing at intellectual trivia and it took up far too much of the time he could have spent in more productive pastimes. When he did work seriously, he produced credible work in a very short time, reflecting his considerable intellect. But only very rarely during academic standards 241

the two years that I knew him did he seem to work seriously. He spoke often enough of his work on the Buin dictionary, but I saw him work very little on it during my stay in Canberra.

In the 1970s, many people in the northern hemisphere thought of Australia as a poor place, with low standards. I devoted much effort to trying to dispel this impression; it could only be done by having a number of good scholars produce sound work. In 1972, Wurm published (in The Netherlands) a short book, Lan- guages of Australia and Tasmania, which was of parlous quality. People would, I felt, simply glance through it and say ‘Oh, Australian linguistics, what did I tell you!’ Several of us thought that something had to be done to tell the world that Australian linguistics ought not be judged by such a work. But Wurm had immense political power. People in middle-ranked positions were hesitant to speak up. So the task fell to me. I simply wrote a factual review for the journal Language, pointing out errors, omissions and inconsistencies in ‘Wurm’s hastily compiled, uncritical and repetitive survey.’ I did this in the nature of a public service, and many people read it as such. Two eminent scholars of Pacific languages who had long been irked by Wurm’s lack of scholarship coupled with considerable power — Bruce Biggs of the University of Auckland and George Milner of the University of London — thanked me most warmly. Wurm then pulled every political string (and he had many). Language does not publish replies to reviews so Wurm had two other journals — whose editors he could control — publish essentially the same response (thus confirming my judgement of him as repetitive). The responses were actually ghosted by a colleague (not in his own department) who felt pity. I thought Wurm wouldn’t be able to do anything to me, since I was already a professor. But I was wrong. The Australian Academy of the Humanities — a prestigious but not terribly useful body — didn’t include any linguists when it was founded in 1969. Then some of the people in English and modern languages who had a slight linguistic bent formed an ad hoc committee and in 1977 elected the first linguist. It was, as might be guessed, Stephen Wurm. There was to be a further linguist nominated each year. Wurm’s major aim, once he was in, was to keep me out. Don Laycock got elected in 1980. I’m told that, when the little linguistics committee which Wurm controlled declined to put my name forward, the Academy Council became perturbed and threatened to make a nomination off the top. So Wurm was forced to yield, and I was elected in 1982. I scarcely cared and seriously considered declining the invitation. I didn’t, because some of my colleagues in other disciplines had put in quite a bit of effort, 242 I am a linguist

and it would have been discourteous towards them. I then set about securing election for the various fine linguists there were around Australia in the ‘80s; and succeeded. Wurm had published a very poor book; you’d have to search hard to find anyone who would disagree with this. I gave it a tough but honest review (breaching the principle of solidarity). But then it was said: ‘Don’t ask Dixon for an opinion on anything by Wurm, he’s prejudiced against him.’ I wasn’t at all; if Wurm had produced good work, I’d have been the first to applaud. But that’s how the academic world works. The editor of Language later told me that if he’d known of the political pressure he was to come under from Wurm’s friends, he’d have hesitated to publish the review, just to make life easier. When my monograph The languages of Australia was published by Cambridge University Press in 1980, the editor sent it to Wurm to review - quid pro quo. But Wurm didn’t make a practice of writing reviews, and he certainly wouldn’t want to engage with me in this manner. What to do? Pass it on to Laycock. Defend the master. Laycock didn’t attempt a full and reasoned assessment of my work, he just tried to find little imaginary holes in it. I’ll mention one of these. On page 67, I’d stated that the initiated men of the Lardil tribe, on Morning- ton Island, had a special speech style called Damin with only two pronouns, ‘ego’ and ‘other’, and then said ‘no other language in the world is known to lack a contrast between first, second and third person singular pronouns’. Now Laycock had a nine-page paper (in a journal published in the Irian Jaya province of Indonesia), suggesting that the Papuan language Morwap has just two pronouns. However, he stated ‘I should say that my data on the language is not of high reliability, in that I was working through Malay, a language I do not control well; nevertheless, persistent testing failed to elicit more than two pronouns.’ I was fully aware of Laycock’s paper but didn’t accord it credence because of what he said about the way in which the information was gathered. (I could have added a note mentioning — and casting doubt on — his assertion, but didn’t want to be so unfriendly.) And so on, for a couple of dozen other inconsequential remarks which Laycock made in a damning manner. Things like this are more than a little depressing. On occasion, one comes to wonder whether all those twelve-hour days and periods of intense concentration have been worthwhile. Reading Laycock’s ‘putting-down’ review of The languages of Australia, I wondered whether I should have written the book. Whether to attempt any more. Perhaps it would be advisable to exit from the academic arena. academic standards 243

But then something sparkled, which proves that the world really does have colour and reward. In their examiners’ reports for my Doctor of Letters degree in 1991, Ken Hale from MIT and Peter Matthews from Cambridge — two scholars who I hold in the highest esteem and awe — opined that The languages of Australia is ‘nothing less than a masterpiece’ and ‘it is a masterpiece of its kind. Absolutely clear, astonishingly complete, factually fascinating.’

SOURCES The Chomskian PhD dissertations responsible for what Geoff Pullum calls (in the journal Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, volume 6, page 565, 1985) ‘a truly crackbrained piece of terminological revisionism’ concerning ‘ergative’ were ‘Intransitive predicates and Italian auxiliaries’ by Luigi Burzio (1981) and ‘Paths and categories’ by David Pesetsky (1982). ‘Über die Betonung der Pluto-Sprache in Vergleichung mit jener der per- sischen und jupitischen Sprache’ by Antonio Lutovsky was published in volume 2, pages 25-41 of Zeitschrift für extravagante Sprachwissenshaft, 1929. Laycock’s statement concerning Wurm’s father is on page 3 of A world of languages, papers presented to Professor S. A. Wurm on his 65th birthday, edited by Donald C. Laycock and Werner Winter, published by Pacific Linguistics, Canberra, 1987. Blust’s ‘personal memoir’ is on pages 19-20 of The language game, papers in memory of Donald C. Laycock, edited by Tom Dutton, Malcolm Ross and Darrell Tryon, published by Pacific Linguistics, Canberra, 1992. Stephen Wurm’s Languages of Australia and Tasmania was published by Mouton, The Hague, in 1972. My review is inLanguage , volume 52, pages 260-6, 1976. Laycock’s review of my The languages of Australia is in Language, volume 58, pages 701-4, 1982. Laycock’s paper ‘Me and you versus the rest, abbreviated pronoun systems in Irianese/Papuan languages’ was published in Irian, volume 6, part 3, pages 33-41, 1977.

12 The delegate from Tasmania

As mentioned in Chapter 2, the white race was originally confined to Europe and the immediately adjacent portions of Africa and Asia. Then it spread, like a cancer, across every continent, carrying along a conviction of its own superiority which was communicated to many of the conquered peoples. Scorn was directed at local customs, languages and religions. The worship of a unique deity (be it the Christian God or the Muslim Allah) was held to be the acme of development. Other beliefs — such as a panoply of gods each with its own specialisation — were regarded as ‘primitive’. Then, in the wake of the Second World War, the white yoke was thrown off. Wherever the indigenous people still comprised the majority of the population, they either seized power or were hurriedly granted it by their erstwhile rulers (only France and the USA have resolutely held on to some of their colonial territories). Subsequent developments have been of mixed quality. National boundaries in Africa, for example, were basically the result of bargaining between European nations. These were retained on independence, although the ethnic groupings they enclose do not make for a viable nation. In Africa — as in New Guinea and some of the Pacific Island nations — traditional modes of government have been supplanted by what is intended to be a local version of the European model. In many cases, this simply doesn’t work, leading to untrammelled corruption, murder, disease and famine. There are, however, a few exceptions, ex-colonial countries which have achieved a stable system of government. In North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, the white race had established a dominance of numbers, aided by the decline of the indigenous peoples due to introduced diseases and a fair dash of massacre. The nations in these regions are of European type, with the remnants of their indigenous peoples constituting something of an embarrassment. In chapter 10, I recounted how Aborigines in Australia and Indians in Brazil are fully aware that they have become a just-tolerated underclass on what was once their own territory, and this hovers like a spectre over any contact with a member of the dominant 246 I am a linguist

race (irrespective of personal comradeship). Fijians, in contrast, are in charge of their own nation and their own destiny. There, I was simply an outsider, to be accepted or rejected as the people chose. In North America and New Zealand, the invaders made treaties with the people they were displacing, although the white co-signatories generally re- neged on these a few years later. Nothing of this kind was considered necessary or appropriate for Australia. When the first white settlers — convicts and marines — arrived at Sydney Cove in 1788, Governor Phillip simply raised the British flag and declared sovereignty over the whole eastern half of the continent. In 1835, John Batman established the first settlement at Melbourne and signed a treaty of sorts with the local Aborigines. But Governor Bourke put out a Proclamation stating that ‘every such treaty, bargain and contract with the Aboriginal Natives ... for the possession, title or claim to any Lands ... is void and of no effect against the rights of the Crown.’ Indeed, Lord Glenelg, the Sec- retary of State back in London commented that such a treaty ‘would subvert the foundation on which all Proprietary rights in New South Wales at present rest.’ The purpose of colonisation can be to ease population pressure back home but, most especially, it is for the colonisers to gain a profit. The white invaders advanced steadily across Australia until they had taken over all economically viable portions. Land suitable for sheep (for their wool), for cattle (both beef and dairy varieties), for agricultural crops. And for mining. The gold rushes brought a flood of white get-rich-quickers followed by as many Chinese. Abo- riginal tribes that stood in the way were quickly disposed of. More recently, there has been mining for iron, lead, zinc, aluminium and uranium. In every instance, Aboriginal land access and life-style has suffered. The seven hundred or so Aboriginal tribes spoke many languages and showed a diversity of cultural attitudes, although there is a basic matrix of commonality. In these respects, Australia is not dissimilar to Europe. Aboriginal material goods were few but highly efficient. The boomerang, as a hunting or fighting weapon, was meticulously engineered until just the right aerodynamic profile was achieved. The woomera is a long straight stick with a spike at the end which fits into a notch at the end of a spear, effectively providing an extra joint to the spear-thrower’s arm and enabling him to throw it with great power and accuracy at a distant target. Australian Aborigines do not ‘own’ land, in the European sense; rather, they have a spiritual attachment to it. Each family group has an association with a particular place, which they have a responsibility to take care of and maintain. The anthropologist and linguist Alan Rumsey suggests that, in Australia, a the delegate from tasmania 247

language is linked to a tract of land, and a person is associated with a place, and hence to the language of that place. Thus ‘Jawoyn people are Jawoyn not because they speak Jawoyn, but because they are linked to places to which the Jawoyn language is also linked.’ And thus they speak Jawoyn. There was no institutionalised hierarchy, no chiefs (although the white people sometimes appointed ‘chiefs’, for their own purposes). Respect was accorded to knowledge and skill, which generally related to maturity. Australian Aboriginal people had a well-articulated set of religious beliefs. In the beginning of the world — often called ‘dreamtime’ — legendary ancestors formed the land, made hills and rivers. They provided foodstuffs, which must be utilised with wisdom. I was told that if there were five fruit on a tree, one might take three to eat, leaving the remainder to seed and regenerate. The indigenous tribes lived in harmony with their environment, allowing it to provide for their needs in a natural way. In chapter 8, I recounted Tilly Fuller’s calendar of movement around her Yidiñ country. In the summer season, Tilly’s group would ascend to the cool tablelands to feast on black pine nuts, which were then in season. In winter they descended to the warmer coastal country for the rickety nut season down there. The autochthonous peoples of Australia boast an intricate classificatory kinship system. By a series of algorithms, everyone is related in some way to everyone else, and this determines social obligations. One category of relation will act as sponsor and guardian for a boy at initiation; another will have responsibility for funerary rites. Allied to this is a system of social groups. Members of a tribe are divided between two moieties in some areas, between four sections in other parts, and between eight subsections in a further region. Suppose you are a man belonging to section A for a society with four sections and patrilineal descent. You must marry a woman from section B; your children will be in section C and they must take a spouse from section D. The sons of your sons will be in section A, while the sons of your daughters will be in section B (determined by the membership of their father, in section D). A white intruder typically took an Aboriginal girl as concubine. This would be accepted and the new husband accommodated within the system. If the girl was from section B, the white man was assigned to section A. But then, as often happened, the man tired of that girl and took another. Only, she happened to be from section A. To cohabit with someone from the same section as oneself was looked upon as a heinous crime, and in consequence the white man was often killed. Like as not, he would have been totally unaware of this system of social organisation into which he had plunged, and whose constraints had been infracted. 248 I am a linguist

Reactions to newcomers varied a bit from place to place but, on the whole, Aborigines did not attack white explorers or settlers unless they were themselves attacked. Indeed, there are many accounts of how the local people indicated where water was to be found, shared food supplies, and volunteered to act as guides. Much of the Australian cattle industry was founded on black stockmen, who were paid only in clothes, food and rude shelter. Aborigines were gatherers of vegetable food and hunters of game, such as kangaroos and emus. When sheep and cattle were brought onto their traditional lands, these were surely a new variety of game. However, they were sternly reprimanded (generally by use of guns, a few dozen people being shot to drive home the lesson) and told to keep to kangaroo. But the kangaroo had gone, displaced by the invader’s flocks and herds. One does have to eat. Criminals should be punished, and if killing a settler’s cow is a crime, then the Aboriginal offender should be identified, sought, caught, and brought before a magistrate. What actually happened, after a cow or two were found slaughtered, was that a party of local whites would look for any group of Aborigines in the vicinity and shoot them all, as a sort of blanket punishment. Suppose a murder were committed in Fleet Street and the police responded by going into Trafalgar Square, lining up a random selection of twenty men, women and children against the wall of the National Gallery, and shooting them, to teach the residents of Central London a lesson. That’s what it was like. In the late nineteenth century, it was believed that the Aboriginal race was dying out. Indeed, in the well-settled areas — New South Wales and Victoria, and around the capital cities of other states — Aboriginal couples simply ceased to have children. The number of full-bloods (the standard term at the time) was spiralling towards zero. But Aboriginal women had children by white men. These mixed-bloods were treated with disdain by the white community, typically living in shacks on the edge of a town. Thus did a new ethnic group come into being, ‘urban Aborigines’. Cut off from traditional Aboriginal culture (which had, in any case, virtually ceased to exist in these regions) and not accepted into white society, they had a tough time. Many worked diligently. A few tended to get drunk (but probably no higher a proportion than for the white community) and they gave a bad name to the whole community. In northern parts there were still plenty of full-bloods and, for a while, virtually no mixed-bloods. Chloe Grant had a white father but I was told that she and her sister were the only ‘half-castes’ permitted to live in the Tully region during the early decades of the twentieth century. Others were born but the white father would see that they were killed, to avoid embarrassment and the delegate from tasmania 249

responsibility. In this region, white men were at first thought to be the returning spirits of ancestors, to be treated with deference and respect. Once this error of interpretation was realised, Aboriginal men did fight to the utmost to protect their lands, their women, and their society. (The story, sometimes put about, that they did not fight is a calumny.) But — as I have been ruefully told more than once — you can’t fight guns with spears and boomerangs. Those who did not succumb to introduced diseases, or who were not murdered, found themselves sent away from their own heartfelt lands, herded into missions or government settlements. In the early ‘seventies, I spent time at the Yarra- bah settlement. Aborigines from many different tribes had been mixed in with the local Yidiñ and Gunggay people. There were around a thousand people in the community, but only one man who had any substantial knowledge of a language, Dick Moses with Yidiñ, described in chapter 8. Like the language, traditional culture and beliefs and life-style had been knocked out of existence by the missionary and the mission. Nothing appeared to have come in as a replacement. In mission days the people had to attend church on a Sunday or they would receive no rations during the week. By the time I arrived, with Yarrabah now under government control, there were scarcely twenty people who bothered to attend services. In places which had little economic interest for the white man, tribes were scarcely disturbed. In the Centre and in Arnhem Land (in the central north) indigenous languages are still strongly spoken and a good deal of traditional culture survives. But then came uranium and bauxite mining, and the avail- ability of alcohol (plus kava, brought in by missionaries from Fiji, sometimes consumed in excess). And the children sniff petrol. Things in these remote areas do appear to be gradually deteriorating. Most whites had no suspicion that Aboriginal people prided themselves on their own system of living — different from that of Europeans but not to be judged as inferior — with a tightly-tuned set of social rules and responsibilities. Traditional beliefs and assemblies and languages were laughed at, as if the playthings of children. ‘The Aborigines have no real language,’ I was told in 1963, ‘maybe a few hundred words, mostly just grunts and groans, and nothing like grammar.’ If others think nothing of you or your accomplishments, then you begin to believe this yourself. I recalled in chapter 5 how Chloe Grant showed signs of this brainwashing, criticising her language because the words were in a different order from English. I pointed out the many wonderful bits of grammar, and words with rich meanings — ways in which Dyirbal surpasses English. Then, in 250 I am a linguist

the middle and late ‘sixties, things did start to change. Aboriginal people began to take pride in their ethnic identity, cultures and languages. And an articulate minority of whites evinced shame for what had been done in the past, asked to be educated about the present, and promised a better attitude in future. For traditional Aborigines, their relationship to land is a life-force, so different from European ideas of ‘possession’ as not to be understood or acknowledged. The official white line had been that since Aborigines didn’t do anything considered useful with their land — such as cultivate it, or mine it, or run domestic animals on it — they had no right to the land. Then, with the new awareness, came a number of explicit legal challenges to this. In December 1968, the Yolngu people of north-east Arnhem Land brought an injunction to stop bauxite mining (which had commenced there a few months before) and to request the Commonwealth of Australia for title to their traditional lands. In considering this case, Mr Justice Blackburn was sympathetic, but he had to go by the law of Australia, which went back to the law of England at the time of first settlement in Sydney (almost three thousand kilometres away) in 1788. The authority referred to was Blackstone, from 1765, who drew ‘a distinction between settled colonies, where the land, being desert and uncultivated, is claimed by right of occupancy, and conquered or ceded colonies. The words “desert and uncultivated” are Blackstone’s own; they have always been taken to include territory in which live uncivilized inhabitants in a primitive state of society. The difference between the laws of the two kinds of colony is that in those of the former kind all the English laws which are applicable in the colony are immediately in force there upon its foundation ...’ The Australian Aborigines were held to be uncivilised, without laws. So, in 1788, the whole of eastern Aus- tralia (including Yolngu land) was annexed by the British Crown, never mind that whites did not have any substantial contact with Yolngu people for another hundred and forty years or so. Because of this, the judge felt bound to refuse the Yolngu people’s claim; he added ‘all the prayers for relief must be refused.’ I read this decision in the morning paper one day in March 1971, with surprise, shock and disbelief. (I was then young and idealistic; greater maturity now leads me to expect governments and other authorities to pursue awful and unjustifiable courses.) That noon, I began my lecture to the freshman linguistics class by alluding to the Yolngu decision and then reading a brief extract from the Commission given to Governor Phillip for the establishment of a British colony in 1788: ‘You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. And if any of our subjects the delegate from tasmania 251

shall wantonly destroy them or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offence.’ The following year a Labor government (under Gough Whitlam) was elected — for the first time in twenty-three years — and instituted a process by which Aboriginal people could claim limited title to some of their traditional land. The next Liberal government, in 1975, continued with this fine work. The process wasn’t quick, but it did eventually bring good results for some of the full-blood people in the north who have retained their own culture and language. It provided lots of work for anthropologists, who were retained at a substantial daily fee to produce evidence that a certain tribe or clan did have traditional ties to the land they were claiming. The method was selective. Perhaps all legal work has to be, since it is done to achieve a particular end, rather than to provide a comprehensive picture (as should be the case in an academic study). Let me illustrate. In the late 1980s, I was examining Aboriginal origin legends, to see how they might correlate with language relationships; for example, a certain tribe might have a legend that their ancestors came from the north, and in fact their language is most similar to tongues in the north. Someone suggested that a good database would be the voluminous anthropological studies for various land rights cases. I delved into them, with initial enthusiasm but eventual disappointment. There was not a single mention of an origin myth, although I know these exist. It stands to reason — if you’re trying to get land rights for a tribal group, you want to suggest that they’ve always been there, not that they say they came from somewhere else (however far in the past this might have been). Land rights were easiest in the Northern Territory, at that time admin- istered by the federal government. As mentioned in Chapter 8, things were less straightforward in Queensland, due to the attitude of the right-wing state government. But I badgered federal Labor ministers and in the end the commonwealth government bought a property in Murray Upper for the exclusive use of the Girramay and Jirrbal people. They also put up houses, and provided assistance with economic development of the land. The property was named after jambun, the wood grub, but unfortunately misspelt as Jumbun. I was glad to be able to play a role in bringing this about. In part, I’d got the job as professor through my grammar of the Girramay, Jirrbal and Mamu dialects of Dyirbal. Now I could use the influence of that position to provide assistance to speakers of Dyirbal, and their children. 252 I am a linguist

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s — in between working on Fijian, and on English, and starting on Jarawara — I continued steady study of the languages of North Queensland. The grammar and vocabulary of Nyawaygi were completed and published. And I did almost everything I could with the few remaining speakers of Yidiñ. Complementing the 1977 grammar, there was published in 1991 a volume Words of our country, including all my texts (with translations), place names and their meanings, and as full a thesaurus/dictionary as could then be compiled. And work continued on the various dialects of Dyirbal. Jack Muriata and Bessie Jerry helped with Girramay, Mick Murray and Ida Henry with Jirrbal, and George Watson with Mamu and everything else. I recorded more texts, and worked laboriously on a comprehensive cross-dialectal dictionary (still to be published). In cooperation with biologist Tony Irvine, we were able to identify about six hundred plants of the rain forest — their common name, botanical name, names in one or more Dyirbal dialects, and what they were used for. For the most northerly dialect, Ngajan (spoken around the Russell River), there was a single good speaker left. One of Molly Raymond’s grandsons told me he’d worked out she must have been born about 1890. Aged ninety-plus, diminutive Molly would literally gambol through the forest, explaining about the flora quicker than Tony and I could write it all down. There was at that time a custom in Australia and England that when anyone got to be one hundred years of age, they’d receive a letter from the Prime Minister and one from the Queen. On my 1989 field trip, I asked Molly (plate 22) whether she’d like this and received in reply a giggle and a nod. Six months before I’d written a serious and reasoned letter to the Prime Ministerco mplaining about the proposed amalgamation of top-quality universities with second-rate colleges (more about this in the next chapter); and received no reply. Now I wrote that, although we didn’t know exactly when Molly was born, that shouldn’t let her miss out on letters from on high and suggested that 1 Janu- ary 1990 would be an appropriate date. This brought an immediate response. Yes, the P.M. would do this with great pleasure and he would send my letter on ‘to the Palace,’ who ‘made their own decision on things of this nature.’ All told, Molly received four letters of congratulation on achieving her centenary — from the Prime Minister of Australia, the Queen of England (and also, inci- dentally, of Australia), from the Premier of Queensland, and from the Governor of Queensland. And I also arranged for write-ups in two local papers. Molly not only knew the Ngajan everyday language style but also the mother-in-law or Jalnguy style. I’d drive George Watson up from Innisfail and we’d the delegate from tasmania 253

sit in Molly’s house in Malanda, mulling over words and meanings. One day Molly said: ‘I wonder what language they’ll speak in heaven.’ ‘Must be Latin,’ George suggested, since he’d been exposed to quite a bit of Catholicism. ‘Might be. Or might be Jugoslav,’ said Molly, thinking of some of the local immigrant population. ‘Could be Jalnguy,’ I joined in with. ‘Yes,’ Molly mused, ‘could be.’ ‘Well, let’s do some Jalnguy then,’ I suggested, ‘then we’ll be ready.’ But in truth Molly never had to be urged to talk about her language. She always enjoyed it, and we had a great time together. Up until about the age of 98, she was still a fine teacher, but then deafness made things more difficult. (Molly died in 1992, aged about 102.) George Watson was the finest teacher and friend any linguist could wish for. Over a period of twenty years, he imparted to me tribal wisdom and language which had been learnt from his grandfather, who was called Nyaywi. Then George bestowed his grandfather’s name on me. George told of how in dreamtime days there had been an ancestor called Nyaywi who had given all the people their languages. George and I travelled around, working on his own Mamu language, on Ngajan with Molly Raymond up at Malanda, and on Girramay and Jirrbal with Bessie Jerry and Ida Henry down at Murray Upper. Together, we were collecting information on ‘all these language’ before they came to be dead and forgotten. Then one day he provided an explanation. I was Nyaywi, come back again (George said), to gather up all the languages now that they were finished. (George passed away in 1991 at the Old Folks Home on Palm Island, aged around 92.) Opportunities now arose which would have been unheard of twenty years before. In 1989, I accepted an invitation from Ernie Grant, Chloe’s son, to help prepare materials for a half-year course on Girramay/Jirrbal for grade 8 pupils at the Tully State High School. This imparted an awareness of the culture and something of the nature of the language. There were modules on gender, creation legends, material culture, animals and reptiles, bush tucker, hunting and fishing, bush medicine, kinship, songs, cultural values, and ‘showing respect’, a bit about the Jalnguy speech style. Most of the students were white, and it opened their eyes (and ears) to the richness of pre-invasion life in the rain forest. For the Aboriginal students, these classes reinforced their heritage and helped promote a positive self-image. The Tully High School curriculum was later adapted for use in half-a-dozen other schools of the region. The Queensland Museum was to open a brand-new building in Brisbane. I suggested that one display should be on traditional Aboriginal life — and why not Jirrbal and Girramay? A team from the museum went north, took castings 254 I am a linguist

of a tree from which the bark had been taken for a canoe, and suchlike. As you walked into the exhibition, a laser beam activated a tape of Chloe and some of her friends talking (a conversation I’d recorded outside Mrs Cowan’s store in November 1963) against a river scene, catching fish in a butterfly-shaped net. Twenty of the Murray Upper people drove down in a bus for the opening ceremony, in 1986. I was there to help orientate them. They’d never before been in a hotel elevator, never ordered a meal from a menu in a restaurant; but it didn’t take long to catch on. One scene in particular sticks in my memory. There was a policeman, at an intersection, directing traffic. ‘Stop the bus! We want to take a picture.’ This may have been the most memorable item in a trip filled with new experiences. Policemen were people to be feared; if a policeman came around an Aboriginal camp you’d keep hidden, otherwise it could be nights in the lock-up for no reason other than whim. Here was a policeman actually doing something useful! Take a photo of him! I worked at trying to achieve understanding of the classificatory kinship system, a laborious task. First, gather family trees for everyone. Then, ask in turn each of about six elderly people which kin term they’d use for every person on my charts. Back in Canberra, spend weeks analysing this data, attempting to perceive the underlying rules of the system. Next year, ask a bit more, try to sort out what appear to be exceptions. People explain that they can manipulate the system a little, to suit their taste. For example, Bessie Jerry says that she should ‘by law’ (as she puts it) call Nancy Biran nyurra (a type of cousin), since Nancy’s father was nyubi (father-in-law) to Bessie, but in fact Bessie calls Nancy galbin (classificatory daughter), calculating the relationship through Nancy’s mother. I also thoroughly examined the compendious materials I’d collected over twenty-five years on the mother-in-law vocabulary across Dyirbal dialects, and compared these with the smaller amount of material provided by Tilly Fuller and Pompey Langdon on the Yidiñ respect style, also called Jalnguy. Some of these special avoidance terms had been borrowed between languages, while others appeared to have been manufactured by slightly changing the form of words from the everyday style. For example, everyday style verbs banagay ‘return’ and darrbil ‘shake a blanket’ become walagay and narrmil in the Dyirbal mother-in-law style, with b becoming w or m, d becoming n, and n becoming l. Aboriginal people in Australia have a highly developed aesthetic life, with art and music and dancing. I’d recorded the songs at the last two corroborees (put on for my benefit) in late 1963 and well over a hundred further songs, at the delegate from tasmania 255

recital performances. There were five song styles in Dyirbal, each with its own metrical pattern (like a sonnet and a triolet), type of subject matter, instrumental accompaniment, and associated dance. In the 1980s, I really settled down to try to transcribe, translate, and explicate all of these performances. It was useful to send cassette tapes in advance to Bessie Jerry and Ida Henry, and they’d listen carefully. Some were hard to understand but, by putting all our heads together, the job got done. Together with musicologist Grace Koch, I published a volume (and a CD/cassette) in 1996. In the ‘eighties, there were still a few people singing songs, including Ida’s husband, Spider Henry (see plate 23). Spider was a full-blood Jirrbal, but he’d been partly brought up by the white Henry family at their Bellenden homestead. The Murray River curls around through the Bellenden property and Aboriginal people had always been allowed to camp and fish there. Then, in February 1990, this access was denied. Some of Spider’s children went to look up the will of Elizabeth Henry, who had died in 1961. To their utter astonishment, they found that she had left to Spider Henry ‘my lands both freehold and leasehold with all improvements thereon and which comprise my farming property known as “John O’Groats” together with all plant furniture and farming implements used in connection therewith and fifty head of mixed cattle six horses and also two riding saddles and to comprise two complete riding outfits (such cattle horses saddles and bridles to be selected by my Trustee James Henry from my general herd and plant wherever it may be).’ The land had been seized from Spider’s people by the first white settlers in that area in the 1860s. A hundred years later, Elizabeth Henry left a portion of it to Spider. But when she died, no one had told him. The executor, her white relative James Henry, had simply ignored that portion of the will. (James Henry was interviewed about this matter by Spider’s representative on 16 June 1990. Two weeks later he took his own life.) So Spider should then, in 1990, have received his inheritance. It wasn’t that easy. The first difficulty was to identify which block of land within Bel- lenden was known as ‘John O’Groats’. The land register which should have included this information had gone missing, I was told by the Queensland State Archives. Some of the old white people in the Tully area knew where ‘John O’Groats’ was, but they weren’t telling that to the Aborigines. And they certainly wouldn’t tell me. (I was told that people said: ‘We never had any trouble with the Aborigines here until that Bob Dixon came, recording their language and poking his nose in.’ I wasn’t of course responsible for the winds of change, but I take this grumble as a considerable compliment.) 256 I am a linguist

Newspapers — both Australian and English — back in 1990 had featured photos of Spider and his family under headlines such as ‘Spider’s millions’. They didn’t know the white folks up in North Queensland. It dragged on and on. Spider died in August 1993. Eventually one cheque for $50,000 was given to the Jumbun community and another to Spider’s family. Once again, the Abo- rigines had been gypped. That small sum for a piece of land which was worth at least $250,000, plus the cattle and horses and saddles and suchlike! (Not to mention the interest which should be due, for thirty-odd years of wrongful deprivation of possession.)

One used to be able to talk and write more-or-less straightforwardly, describing things as they are. (I continue to do so in this book, which will no doubt irk many people.) For instance, it used to be perfectly acceptable to describe people’s racial origins. Someone with one full-blood Aboriginal grandparent and three white grandparents was quarter-blood (or quadroon), but if one grandparent was just a half-blood, then they’d be an eighth-blood (or octoroon). Such labels are now forbidden. Anyone with any proportion of Aboriginal blood is an Aborigine, period. (On a logical principle, anyone with any proportion of white blood must surely be a white person. But this is not what people say.) Someone from a southern town with one-eighth or one-sixteenth Aborigi- nal blood (and possibly a slightly lighter skin colour than an immigrant from Greece) is an Aborigine, just like a full-blood Yolngu from Arnhem Land. It’s a bit like grouping under the same label a Berber herdsman from Morocco and a Jewish pawnbroker from New York (since they both have some knowledge of languages belonging to the Afro-asiatic family). As could be guessed, it’s the part-bloods down south who insist on this terminology, and terrorise the media (as racists) if they don’t follow instructions. The full-bloods up north either laugh or cry. ‘Those urbanites,’ they say, ‘they’re not really Aborigines. They’ve got no traditional culture, don’t speak no language.’ Traditional Aboriginal behaviour and decision-making were quite different from those typical of Europeans. One should never push oneself forward. When black and white children are in the same class (as, for instance, in the Murray Upper school), it’s the white kids who put up their hands to answer a question and get all the attention. To behave in such a way goes against the cultural mores of Aboriginal society. When their land rights case was being heard in Darwin, the Yolngu were mystified by the procedure. There was one lawyer arguing white’s black and another arguing black’s white and the judge had to the delegate from tasmania 257

decide between them. Why don’t the three of them — the judge and the two lawyers — sit down together and talk it through until they reach a consensus, something which all of them agree on? That’s what a group of Aborigines would do. It might take a few hours or a few weeks to reach a consensus but, at the end, everyone would agree. I once asked an administrator at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies why virtually all the Aboriginal members of committees were part-bloods. ‘We’ve tried to get tribal people from the north,’ she replied, ‘but they don’t say anything. They don’t contribute.’ And there’s the nub of it. The part-bloods (and don’t forget that one-eighth Aboriginal means seven-eighths white) follow the political behaviour of Europeans. They shout out, propose, insist, vote, and bully to achieve a certain end. A mild-mannered consensus-seeking full-blood wouldn’t stand a chance. A couple of years ago, a university in Melbourne held a meeting attended by some Yolngu elders from Arnhem Land and by some Victorian Aborigines, who could be distinguished from the Vice-Chancellor only by the sort of clothes they wore. It wasn’t a very happy affair. The local mob got pretty upset with the Yolngu — who they called ‘traddies’, a slightly derogatory abbreviation of ‘traditional Aborigines’ — and said they didn’t understand what it was to be an Aborigine in the modern world, how to play the system. Land rights have forged ahead in the north, for full-blood people who retain their language and culture and through this an association with their traditional land. Then, of course, the part-bloods in the south want to get in on the act. ‘After all, we’re Aborigines too, aren’t we?’ However, judges have found the loss of language and culture too great, and the association with the land too tenuous. Aborigines recognise certain places as having particular religious significance. Those groups with cultural continuity have petitioned for their ‘sacred sites’ to be recognised as such, and protected from development. Most such requests are genuine, and they are generally successful. But there are always some people who try to pull a fast one. A certain part-blood lady down south says that her mother confided in her that a particular place was sacred. No one else was told about it — well, a secret is a secret. Several anthropologists sniffed around and smelt a rat. (Basically, they keep quiet about the matter but do whisper to people like me that it looks like a load of codswallop.) Then one proactive anthropologist took up the cudgels — a court challenge to stop development, and the government doesn’t know which way to turn. The downside is that one or two facetious claims of this sort bring into question the dozens of genuine claims being made in northern regions. 258 I am a linguist

To survive in this world, one has to fly with the wind, at least to some extent. Forty years ago, someone with a thimbleful of Aboriginal blood would do well to keep it hidden. To reveal any Aboriginal ancestry was to prejudice your chance of success in business, or of being picked for a representative team in certain sports, and the like. The pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction. Anyone who can claim to be an Aborigine (and, in fact, some who can’t) do so. There are special training schemes, scholarships, affirmative-action job prospects, housing provisions, grants for this and for that. Tasmania provided one of the worst known examples of genocide. Most of the population was murdered, the few survivors being displaced from their land. The last full-blood died well over a hundred years ago. There were no autochthonous Tasmanians left, one was told. But some Tasmanian women did have babies by white men, and a few families knew that there was an Abo- riginal ancestor a number of generations back. This was best kept quiet. Until the last couple of decades, when opportunity and money became available for indigenous people. Now there are many Tasmanian Aborigines. Too many, in fact. At a recent vote for a Tasmanian representative on an Aboriginal council, only about half of those who tried to vote could provide the required attesta- tion of having some Aboriginal ancestry. And while a number of southern Aborigines of the mainland may be quadroons or octoroons, with a slightly dark skin, I know of no Tasmanian Aborigine who looks any different from their non-Aboriginal neighbour (one-sixteenth, one thirty-second, one sixty- fourth blood). Recently, a linguistics lecturer (who was actually born in England) drove an Aboriginal friend to an Aboriginal council meeting, to which he was a delegate. The linguist went in for a few moments, before the meeting started, to talk to other Aboriginal friends. ‘Ah,’ someone said, trying to place him, ‘you must be the delegate from Tasmania.’ In the 1970s there arose a lively interest in Aborigines and their culture. Aboriginal studies courses in universities attracted increasing numbers of students (the numbers fell away in later years). A number of leading intellectuals formed a committee to press for the signing of a (retrospective?) treaty with Aboriginal people. (It never happened, and the committee was later wound up.) Land rights was an important issue. Not just the government granting limited title. What was needed was a judgement that the indigenous people had prior title to the land, which could not have been abrogated by the British King in 1788. A case was brought, in 1982, by Eddie Mabo of the Murray Islands in the Torres Strait. It took ten years before the High Court — in what is regarded as the delegate from tasmania 259

a landmark decision — ruled that Mabo’s people were entitled to possession of ‘lands of the Murray Islands.’ As one expert commented, this brought ‘Austral- ian law into line with the rest of the common law world.’ But by the ‘nineties, attitudes towards Aborigines were shifting. From thinking that indigenous peoples should get a better deal, the feeling developed that they were getting too good a deal. A few plainly dubious claims and petitions seemed to shed doubt on the many serious ones. And although the government directed substantial sums of money in the general direction of Aborigines, not too much of it got through to where it was most needed. I was up in North Queensland one year when elections were being held for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. ‘Aren’t you voting?’ I asked one of my friends. ‘No,’ they laughed, ‘it’s all a bit of a farce. Most of the money the government gives ATSIC goes to white bureaucrats, and the folk who get elected just look after their own relatives. Us ordinary Aboriginal people get nothing.’ (ATSIC has since been abolished, on the grounds that it was corrupt and of little use.) The situation of Aboriginal people in Australia is not good. They have several times the birth-rate of the population as a whole but also a very low life- expectancy. Their general state of health is way below that of non-Aborigines, and housing is poor. A far higher proportion of Aborigines are in jail than of any other ethnic group in Australia (perhaps, in the world). Yet the general feeling of interest and sympathy which was manifested in the ‘seventies has now in large part given way to impatience and distrust. The mist of political correctness doesn’t of course permit people to say this, which makes it all the harder to determine what could and should be done.

About four hundred words have been taken into Australian English from Abo- riginal languages. Some have floated through into other varieties of English — kangaroo, boomerang, dingo, wombat, koala, kookaburra, cooee, and a number of others. A few score of these had been included in large dictionaries but in each case the origin was given just as ‘Australian Aboriginal’, when in fact there are over 250 distinct Australian languages (as different from each other as are French and German) and the loans come from many different languages. For example, kangaroo is from Guugu Yimidhirr, spoken around what is now Cooktown in far north Queensland; kookaburra is from Wiradhurri in central New South Wales; boomerang, dingo, wombat, koala (which is a misspelling of koola) and cooee are from Dharuk, the Sydney language. Calling all of these ‘Aboriginal’ is like using the label ‘European’ for all loans into English from a score of languages, including Greek, Lappish, Swedish, Basque and Hungarian. 260 I am a linguist

In 1984, Random House, planning the second edition of their unabridged dictionary, asked my help with about one hundred loans taken from Australian languages. The dictionary, published in 1987, thus became the first to include precise etymologies of loans from the Aboriginal languages of Australia. The following year, W. S. (Bill) Ramson brought out (through Oxford University Press) The Australian National Dictionary, which has full information on all four hundred loans from local languages. I then continued work, with Ramson and anthropology student Mandy Thomas, on a comprehensive study of these words — the languages they came from, their original meanings, the meanings they then took on when a part of the English lexicon (kangaroo court, Kangaroo Valley) plus a chapter on loans from English introduced into Australian languages. Australian Aboriginal words in English, their origin and meaning was published by Oxford University Press in 1990, with a paperback edition following eighteen months later. A new edition, thoroughly revised and expanded, was published in 2006. Most of the loans come from languages of the tribes first contacted by Eu- ropeans — about sixty from Dharuk, the Sydney language; sixty or so from Nyungar, the Perth area language; a couple of dozen from each of Wiradhurri and Kamilaroi, from inland New South Wales; about a dozen and a half from Yagara, at Brisbane. All of these languages have long ceased to be spoken. Of the originally approximately 250 Australian languages, more than a 150 are no longer used (they could be called ‘dead’ or ‘extinct’, save that these terms are today not considered politically correct). There are perhaps 60 languages which are still used — or perhaps just remembered — by a small group of old people. No more than about fifteen languages — in the most remote parts — are still being learnt by children. Recently, the Australian government has made available a fair amount of money for ‘language maintenance’. This should first of all be used for the small number of living languages — video the old people telling stories and talking as they work; record, transcribe and translate traditional tales; compile a comprehensive dictionary; write an academic grammar on which school primers can be based. If left alone, the course of natural development will doubtless see these languages fall into disuse in years to come. A certain amount of money might be profitably spent on languages no longer being learnt by children but still used a little by older people, in order to encourage children to start speaking these languages with their parents and grandparents. This, though, is unlikely to have much chance of success, since the parents and children have in many cases made a deliberate decision to use the delegate from tasmania 261

English in preference to the traditional language, as a means of assisting the children to achieve a greater measure of economic success in the world they inhabit. But then ‘language maintenance’ becomes ‘revitalisation and revival’. Try to revive a terminally-ill patient — very small chance of success. Try to revive a long-dead corpse — need a miracle-worker. But one hears: ‘Our languages are not dead, they are just sleeping; and we will awaken them.’ (Yeah, and Elvis Presley is still alive and singing away in some place or other.) In many cases, the sole materials on the ‘sleeping’ language, taken down a hundred years ago, are a few hundred poorly transcribed words, three or four pages of grammatical notes, and a half page of Bible translation. Certainly, one could make up a language based on these, plus a few bits of other languages — a sort of benevolent Frankenstein. This would, however, not be revival; it would be creation. The government gives the language money to Aborigines for them to decide how it should be spent. Urban Aborigines in the south don’t see why they should be left out. In a 1993 broadcast, Jeanie Bell stated: ‘But basically the position we take is that those of us who have been dispossessed by colonisation have as much right as any other groups to be funded for language maintenance and language revival.’ The dispossession was, indeed, quite appalling; but once a cake has been eaten (no matter who by, and in what nefarious manner), it exists no more.

As one travels around the continent, there is considerable variation in people’s knowledge of traditional languages, and their attitudes towards them. These can be characterised by how the language name is spelt, and how it is pronounced.

(a) Language name spelt appropriately and pronounced correctly (in the traditional way). This applies to a fair number of northern and central languages which are in daily use. Generally, a linguist (in most cases white, occasionally Aboriginal) has studied the language and devised an orthography which has a consistent representation for every significant sound (or phoneme), a spelling system which the people use and accept. This indicates a healthy language, which its speakers use proudly (while most or all of them also have basic competence in English).

(b) Language name pronounced in the traditional manner (at least by older speakers) but spelt in an inconsistent way. This is found in places where the young people — who are literate in English — do not know the language, and eld- 262 I am a linguist

erly speakers have not achieved literacy. The name of a language in north- east New South Wales was, until a generation ago, appropriately spelt as Bandjalang. But younger members of this ethnic group, who do not speak the language themselves, now insist on the spelling Bundjalung. In fact, the three vowels in this name all have exactly the same quality, and should all be written with the same letter. As another example, the name of the Girramay-Jirrbal property at Mur- ray Upper is spelt Jumbun (after the name for ‘wood grub’), although in fact the vowels have quite different values; it should be Jambun. These and other misrepresentations result from trying to apply to Australian languages the conventions of English spelling, which are both confused and chaotic. The consequence of this kind of poor spelling is that in time the younger generation comes to adopt a ‘spelling pronunciation’, actually saying Jumbun (with the two vowels the same) instead of the traditional pronunciation, Jambun.

(c) Language name spelt appropriately, but wrongly pronounced. Where this is found it suggests that the language name has not been handed down through the generations but had been lost, and has been learnt again from the writings of white investigators. One would infer that people who use such an erroneous ‘spelling pronunciation’ (and many English words might be pronounced in one of several different ways) do not have any knowledge of the traditional language. For instance, I recently met an Aboriginal man who told me that he was ‘Nyá-wey-ji’. He was pronouncing my spelling of the language name Nyawaygi; Willie Seaton and the other old people (all now passed away) who had taught me this language said that it should be Nya‑wáy-gi, with the accent on the middle vowel, and the g accorded a strong pronunciation (as in gift). The man I spoke to put the accent on the first syllable (as it is in the majority of English words), reduced the vowel in the middle syllable, and gave a soft pronunciation to theg (this is most often the case for a g before an i in English, as in ginger). This man was proud of his heritage but all he knew about the language was from a cursory glance at what I had written. (If he had carefully read the grammar, he would have learnt how to pronounce the language name correctly.) The part-blood people who identify with the land on which large cities now stand have not secured any land rights (just think how much the Central Business District of Sydney might be worth!). But in recent years a certain custom has arisen. When any conference is being held, or exhibition opened, or the like, a local Aborigine will officially welcome people, and the delegate from tasmania 263

give permission for the event to be held on their land. At one such gathering I attended recently, the Aboriginal person pronounced a sentence in their language, mentioning that it was the only sentence they knew (presumably learnt from a book, since the language ceased to be used several generations ago). A few years back, Ernie Grant (who speaks Jirrbal) and I went to the opening of an exhibition in Canberra, and were welcomed by a member of the local tribe, called Ngunawal. Only they pronounced it ‘Nunawal’. ‘Why?’ asked Ernie. Because ng, a common sound at the beginning of a word in every Australian language, only occurs at the end of a syllable in English (as in bang) and these Aboriginal people, who are monolingual in English, couldn’t pronounce ng at the beginning of a word. Ernie was per- plexed: ‘But don’t they want to learn? Don’t they want to pronounce the name of their own language properly?’

(d) Language or tribal name is incorrect. Most of the information published by white anthropologists on Aboriginal names is sound, but some is erroneous. When a modern-day Aborigine uses such an incorrect name, it shows beyond a shadow of doubt that they have learnt it from a written source (rather than by personal communication through the generations). The language spoken in south-west Victoria, from the Glenelg River to Cape Otway (including Warrnambool), had a number of dialects, each with its own name. These were documented by James Dawson in his excellent 1881 book Australian Aborigines, The languages and customs of several tribes of Aborigines in the western district of Victoria, Australia. Dawson mentioned that, at that time, there were only three old people who spoke the Kuurn Kopan Noot dialect, and just four who spoke Peek Whuurong. The language must have ceased to be spoken within a decade or two. This language had a suffixgundidj - meaning ‘person from a place’ (this is spelt in a number of ways in the early sources). Dawson explained that the name for Mount Rouse was Kolor, and a member of the Mount Rouse group was called Kolor‑gundidj. Or the noun mara ‘man’ could be added: Kolor-gundidj mara ‘man of the Mount Rouse group’. Then, in the 1890s, the Rev. J. H. Stähle (manager of the Lake Condah mission station) wrote to anthropologist A. W. Howitt saying that the tribal and language name was Gunditj-mara. He had taken -gunditj, which is a suffix to a place name, and made it into a prefix to the word for ‘man’. Howitt published this erroneous name in his influential (and otherwise sound) bookThe native tribes of South- 264 I am a linguist

east Australia (Macmillan, London, 1904). Then Norman B. Tindale repeated the error in his authoritative map and volume Aboriginal Tribes of Australia (1942, revised edition from University of California Press and Australian National University Press, 1974). And the error has been compounded in many other publications (by people who didn’t take trouble to look back at the earliest sources). Today some of the Aboriginal people from the War- rnambool region call themselves Gunditjmara. But this is not a name which their ancestors would have used or recognised.

SOURCES AND PUBLICATIONS There is an informative account of treaties which the United States signed with Indian tribes, and how these were not respected by the government, in A history of the Indians of the United States by Angie Debo, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1970. Governor Bourke’s proclamation concerning Batman’s ‘treaty’, and Lord Glenelg’s comment on this, are on pages 92-3 of Select documents in Australian History, 1788-1850, selected and edited by C. M. H. Clark, published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1950. There are many good accounts of how Aborigines reacted to white incursions, and how they have been treated. I would particularly recommend one of the earliest, The Australian Aboriginal as a human being, by M. M. Bennett, published by Alston Rivers, London, 1930. Alan Rumsey’s ‘Language and territoriality in Aboriginal Australia’ is on pages 191-206 of Language and culture in Aboriginal Australia, edited by Michael Walsh and Colin Yallop, published by Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1993. Quotations concerning the Yolngu land rights case are from pages 201 and 293 of Milirrpum v. Nabalco Pty. Ltd. and The Commonwealth of Australia (Gove Land Rights Case), Federal Law Reports, Volume 17. The extract from the Com- mission to Governor Phillip is quoted from page 29 of Phillip of Australia, by M. Barnard Eldershaw, published by Harrap, London, 1938. My ‘Origin legends and linguistic relationships’ was published as pages 127-39 of Oceania, volume 67, 1996. ‘The Dyirbal kinship system’ was published as pages 245-68 of the journal Oceania, volume 59, in 1989; and ‘The origin of “mother-in-law vocabulary” in two Australian languages’ as pages 1-56 of An- thropological Linguistics, volume 32, 1990. Dyirbal song poetry: The oral literature of an Australian rainforest people, by R. M. W. Dixon and Grace Koch, was pub- the delegate from tasmania 265

lished by the University of Queensland Press in 1996, with an associated CD/ cassette from Larrikin Records. For the Mabo case, see the article by R. H. Bartlett on pages 1961-2 of volume 5 of The Australian Encyclopaedia, sixth edition, published by Australian Geographic, Terrey Hills, 1996. The Jeanie Bell quotation is taken from page 58 of Voices from the land, by Mandawuy Yunupingu, Dot West, Ian Anderson, Jeanie Bell, Getano Lui (Jnr), Helen Corbett and Noel Pearson, published by ABC books, Sydney, 1994. There is a sad coda to my account of how language name Nyawaygi was pronounced. The story given under (c) described talking to a Nyawaygi man at the Girringun Aboriginal Centre in Cardwell about 2002. At that time a board on the wall at Girringun gave correct spellings of Nyawaygi and other local language and dialect names. I called at Girringun again in September 2009 and found that there is now a board on which about half the names are, by any criteria, misspelt. ‘Nyawaygi’ has become ‘Nywaigi’. I hadn’t the heart to enquire how it might now be pronounced. (Or ask whether any rumblings had been heard from the graveyards where old speakers of Nyawaygi are buried.)

13 Into the Amazonian jungle

A major impetus for emigrating to Australia, back in 1970, had been for further work on indigenous languages. I wrote grammars of five, and supervised students who documented a couple of dozen more. It was also because it is such a great place to live — lots of space, friendly weather, an open society. As mentioned in chapter three, I had from an early age been unsympathetic towards inherited titles, whether king, duke, lord or sir, and the impedimenta that go with them. Titles were now mostly awarded on a lifetime basis, but they were still part of the system of aristocracy that I abhorred. Then two linguists for whom I have the highest regard — John Lyons and Randolph Quirk — were made knights (Quirk went on to become a lord). It was hard to come to terms with such happenings. But they occurred in Eng- land, a world away. A world away. People used to ask whether I didn’t feel isolated in Australia. The answer was: ‘Absolutely, and it’s great.’ In the 1970s and 1980s, scarcely anyone from North America or Europe popped down to Australia for a few weeks vacation. If they had, some of the linguists among them would be likely to have dropped in on Bob Dixon for a bit of a chat. I built up a great department, and invited some of the best linguists from around the world to spend a few months with us (we were able to get a top-class scholar to visit about every second year). That was quite enough, and we were able to get on with our work. Life can offer countless distractions — a conference here, a luncheon there, newspaper interviews, television appearances, chatting away over the electronic waves. Each may take a scarcely significant amount of time, but the effect is cumulative. In order to achieve anything worthwhile in research (in addition to giving lectures, marking, supervising, and running a department) one simply does have to be ruthless with time management. My most intensive period of work commenced in the late 1980s. Living alone (the romance with Koleta having fizzled away) I’d manage an hour or so of work before breakfast, then a full morning (preferably without interruption), the afternoon teaching and advising, and a couple of hours in the evening, 268 I am a linguist

generally reading draft chapters of PhD dissertations and MA theses. Indeed, between mid-1990 and mid-1991 there were published two books for which I was wholly responsible — A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles and Words of our country, including texts and dictionary of Yidiñ — one for which I was co-author — Australian Aboriginal words in English, their origin and meaning — and three books that I had a hand in editing — the Handbook of Australian languages, Volume 4; Language and history, a Festschrift volume for Australian language expert Luise Hercus; and (with Martin Duwell, poetry critic from the University of Queensland)The Honey Ant Men’s love song and other Aboriginal song poems, in which the texts of songs in four languages from across the continent (one of them Dyirbal) were provided with facing- page translation into English, plus explanatory notes.

As alluded to earlier, the situation of universities in Australia began to deterio- rate during the 1980s. One had to attract larger student numbers to retain the same number of faculty, and this could only be achieved through offering softer courses. Then, commencing in 1988, came an act of idiocy which irretrievably degraded the whole system. There were around twenty universities, each engaged in teaching and research, all of reasonable and some of excellent quality. And there were several score small tertiary institutions — ‘colleges of advanced education’, teacher training facilities, and the like — which provided vocational courses and had little or no obligations to or aspirations towards research. Then a person named John Dawkins — Minister of Education in the Hawke Labor government — decided that some of these colleges should be incorporated into existing universities, with others being instructed to combine in twos and threes to form further universities. Thus, at a stroke, the criterion of excellence for being a university was dis- solved. The existing universities were weakened by having attached to them funny little country colleges. And the new units (which were and still are informally called ‘the Dawkins universities’) — some with campuses separated by several hundred kilometres — simply gasped for breath. Their faculty hadn’t been trained to undertake research but this was now required. Succeeding ministers of education have tried to create something sensible out of this hotch- potch, with only limited success. Part of Dawkins plan was to amalgamate the ANU with the Canberra Col- lege of Advanced Education, a fair institution of its type (which was not the university type) with highly-regarded courses in such things as sports jour- into the amazonian jungle 269

nalism. The Vice-Chancellor acquiesced (he returned from a meeting with the minister boasting that Dawkins had called him by his first name!) but most of the faculty and students put up stern resistance. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Ian Ross (in all other respects a fine administrator) wrote a long letter to me — as a major opponent of the Dawkins plan — saying why amalgamation was in the university’s best interest. This was circulated around and then published in two parts in The Canberra Times, ‘An open letter to Bob Dixon’. I managed to get a reply in the paper opposite the last instalment. The sub-editor picked out, as my heading ‘We may lose, but we’ll go down fighting for what we believe in’. In fact we did win. In 1989 the University Council voted 20 to 16 to reject the proposal (the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and two Deputy Vice-Chancellors voting for it). This was, I believe, the only amalgamation proposed by Dawkins which was thwarted. Quite apart from all this I came to feel a little unsettled. Applied for a job in the north of Australia for which (seeing it now in perspective) I’d have been entirely unsuited, and didn’t make the short-list. Then, in late 1990, Dawkins made a further attempt at our forced marriage. It got rejected again, but was still hovering when I went off in February 1991 for a sabbatical in the USA, Brazil and the UK. A couple of friends at Oxford sent the advert for a chair of linguistics there, urging me to apply. They were looking for ‘a general linguist with strong theoretical interests who has an interest in the description of actual languages.’ It seemed that I wouldn’t be an entirely unsuitable candidate,

There’s quite a history. Henry Sweet (1845-1912) was the foremost scholar in English linguistics and phonetics of his age. And he was absolutely plain-spoken (someone after my own heart). It’s a revelation to read his Presidential Addresses to the Philological Society in 1877 and 1878. Sweet provided tough but honest appraisals which others would not have dared utter (not then, and even less now). He noted ‘the want of thoroughness and scientific method’ of J. Bosworth, recently deceased Professor of Old English at Oxford and the following year his successor, Rev J. Earle, was castigated for his ‘feeble and uncertain grasp of the elements of scientific philology.’ Sweet’s opinions were based on fact: ‘one of our most popular professors’ (not named) had stated in lectures that the word time has a Latin etymology (in fact it is a Germanic form). He remarked of this professor that ‘he certainly deserves our gratitude for keeping up popular interest in the study of English, and this, under circumstances where another more fastidious in his etymologies might perhaps fail. Let us hope that his hearers may long continue to listen to his “fairy tales of science”.’ 270 I am a linguist

And Sweet remarked, correctly, how linguistic scholarship in England fell well short of that in Germany. This did of course make him unpopular, and Sweet failed to gain any of the prestigious chairs for which he was — on intellectual grounds — undoubtedly the leading candidate. Eventually, Oxford created for him a Readership in Phonetics. In 1902 Sweet wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of the day, stating that ‘my own subject, Phonetics, is one which is useless by itself, while at the same time it is the foundation of all study of language, whether theoretical or practical.’ He urged that a chair should be established in the overarching discipline, linguistics. It took more than seventy years until, in 1976, a chair was finally advertised. It was first offered to R. H. Robins from London, who said ‘no’. Like a proud prince, Oxford doesn’t like to have its offers spurned. The next favoured candidate — a professor from Reading — was asked whether he would accept the position if offered. He suggested certain points for negotiation; for example, since he was by training a classicist, could the chair be located in Classics rather than in the Modern Languages Faculty as advertised? Oxford does not negotiate. An application from Bernard Comrie, one of the really outstanding linguists of his generation, was regarded with disfavour. In the end, the job was foisted onto a member of the appointing committee, Roy Harris, then Profes- sor of Romance Philology, on the principle that it would be easier to get a new Professor of Romance Philology than a Professor of Linguistics. Cambridge University Press has an advisory board for its series of linguistics monographs and textbooks, consisting of half-a-dozen senior scholars. At the next meeting of this body, the chairman called for all to stand in one minute’s silence for the chair of linguistics at Oxford. This was a prescient act. Roy Harris played a role in a number of unsuitable appointments at Oxford, and spent a lot of his time telling colleagues in other areas that linguistics isn’t really a discipline and should not be persevered with. Despite — or perhaps because of — this, when Harris took early retirement a decision was taken to fill the chair. For the past few decades English linguistics has had a rather feeble profile on the world scene. Some of the best practitioners prefer to work in other countries — typologist Bernard Comrie, sociolinguist Peter Trudgill, grammarian of English Rodney Huddleston, and Michael Halliday. (It must be noted though, that three outstanding scholars did stay on home turf — Peter Matthews, John Lyons and Randolph Quirk.) And a number of jobs in the linguistics departments of Britain have gone to foreigners who would have preferred to work in into the amazonian jungle 271

their own countries but couldn’t land positions there. There were at this time a few goodish groups of general linguists, but these did not include Oxford. However, Oxford is a great university. It would be a fine challenge to work at developing Oxford linguistics, to try to make it as world-renowned as, say, Oxford chemistry. I applied and at the end of August 1991 was ‘elected to the chair’. It was tempting. I did anticipate accepting, once clarification was forthcoming on a number of points. So in October, I visited Oxford for two weeks to assess the situation. The attitude with which one approaches a situation is critical. I decided that if I was to return to England, it should be with a new outlook. Like most English boys, I’d identified with the noble Saxon king, Harold, at the battle of Hastings in 1066, against the cruel invader William of Normandy. But Harold had lost! From now I was going to cast my lot with the Conqueror; after all, it was the Normans who had set England on its path towards future glory. And I resolved to attempt a respect for sir-ships and lord-ships (after all, the system of aristocracy has a largely Norman basis). My four years as a student at Oxford had been carefree, essentially non- serious, like champagne before the meal of life. I had now to view it as a place to work, which was not an easy task. In centuries past, gentlemen had gone to Oxford and Cambridge, and anyone who attended one of these universities became a gentleman. The aura remains. I would be fellow of a college, provided with three cordon bleu meals each day at no cost. I could choose to live in college, with someone to make the bed. And an office would be provided in college, as well as one in the faculty building. But why two? How to decide in which place to work, when and why? In American and Australian universities a full degree course takes four years, each of at least 25 (often more than 30) weeks. Each semester (or half- year) course will involve three hours per week, in all around 35 hours of instruction. Most honours degrees at Oxford take three years. There are three terms, each of eight weeks, although lectures may only be given in seven, and the Trinity (or summer) term typically has only four weeks of classes because of examinations to follow. A course may involve seven or perhaps fourteen hours of lectures. Could one teach a discipline properly within this format? Possibly, if the students studied on their own and read a great deal more than overseas peers. I found no evidence that this was so. During those two weeks I attended sixteen lectures and spoke at length to 25 people, mostly in cognate disciplines who wished to introduce a linguistics 272 I am a linguist

strand into their degrees. To satisfy everyone’s expectations, I’d need a core of high-quality colleagues. There were in fact two lecturers in linguistics (but each located in a different faculty). One was a pleasant person, but of low scholarly calibre. The other? Well, in a lecture I attended he most seriously provided the following definition, which students wrote down in their notebooks: ‘A theory is a structured, empirically falsifiable, bunch of prejudices.’ My major requirement was two new lecturers (really, the need was for four good lecturers). I was told first to teach the courses — a degree in linguistics, plus linguistics papers in a variety of other degrees, including anthropology, philosophy, psychology, English and modern languages — and then make a bid for further posts which would, in a ‘highly competitive’ situation, receive ‘the most serious consideration’ (provided that money did become available for new posts across the university, which was an uncertain proposition). But the lecturers were needed in order to teach the courses to justify their appointment. Surely a basic minimum of faculty members must be provided in any discipline, for it to be able to start doing the job? Sorry. I’d happily forego free meals and a room in college (buy a house — which I’d have done anyway — and make my own meals and bed) in exchange for new lecturers and adequate secretarial assistance (which was also not forthcoming). But, with what was on offer, I would not have been able to teach in the way I wanted to and in the way expected of me. And it wasn’t possible to envisage being able to pursue a research agenda with the ease that was possible in Canberra. Just recently, I’d been studying the properties of adjective classes across several hundred languages. Each evening for a couple of weeks I’d been in the ANU library till it closed at ten o’clock, then taking a bundle of books to work on at home. At Oxford, linguistics books were in several locations across the city. There was a good selection in the Bodleian library, but this was closed access, and books could not be borrowed. One had to order a book, wait an hour or two for it to arrive, and vacate the building by five p.m. A professor of English confided that, in order to browse the shelves of her discipline, she’d drive across to Cambridge for the day (where there is a magnificent open-access library, all the books on one subject in the same place, and all borrowable). One of the most satisfying aspects of life in Canberra had been the fine students who — having learnt the discipline during a BA or MA course — would write the grammar of a previously undescribed language for their PhD dissertation. I enthused over a similar situation at Oxford, but met rebuff. Not possible, a PhD could be no more than three years, the first on coursework (since many into the amazonian jungle 273

students had had little previous training in linguistics), which left two years for the dissertation. No time for anything like fieldwork. I did have some ideas for new research, in addition to continuing work on Australian languages, and getting into the Amazon. One should take advantage of the milieu around. A friend, visiting her dying mother in hospital in Pem- broke, South Wales, had noted archaisms in the speech of old country women there. Things likeHe forced me for to wash up and I want for you to get the bread, using for in a position where this would be unacceptable in the standard dialect. My plan was to assemble a team to study syntactic variation in English dialects (most of the previous work having been on phonology, lexicon and morphology). It would best be done soon, before another generation of old speakers passed away. But, as the reader can see, the overall proposition didn’t add up. (In addition, I’d have been paid less in a place where the cost of living was considerably higher; but that mattered little.) There were also a few minor considerations, none of them critical but all of some account. Just about every Thomas, Richard and Harold visiting the UK takes in Stratford and Oxford. A number of the linguists among them would be people I know (and others who knew of me): ‘Let’s pop in to see Bob Dixon while we’re there, maybe he’ll show us around his college.’ To maintain productive scholarship, better to remain in work-philic isolation down under. (Although in recent years the tourist trail has extended here, with new strategies being needed for self-protection.) And there was one other thing which really grated — the patronising, colo- nialist attitude of many British people (especially prevalent in parts of Oxford) towards Australia. ‘Oh, you have been there such a long time!’ (Implied: what fortitude!) ‘You’ll be so glad to get back to a job here.’ I had just been successful in application for one of the first batch of Senior Research Fellowships from the Australian Research Council — a full salary to devote myself entirely to research for five years, no teaching or administrative obligations. And the day I returned from the visit to Oxford there was a further letter from the ARC granting me $160,000 each year for three years to pay for research assistants, the cost of fieldwork, and the like. This made it even easier to regretfully decline the offer from my alma mater, which appeared to offer little beyond prestige. They went on to appoint someone from Chomsky’s department at MIT, who didn’t at all fit the advertised profile. He was in fact more philosopher than linguist and after a number of years left for a philosophy department in the States. Linguistics at Oxford still hasn’t hit the headlines. 274 I am a linguist

Meanwhile, I had embarked on a love affair with the mightiest river in the world, the people (so-called Indians) who inhabit its jungles, and the intricacies of the languages they speak. What had long been a romantic idyll started to crystallise in 1986 when I read (and reviewed for the Canberra Times) John Ure’s Trespassers on the Amazon, an account of early English-speaking explorers. The next year I came across Volume One of the Handbook of Amazonian Languages. I’ve always read grammars, all and any that it was possible to lay hands on. Generally, there are lots of familiar features and just a few novelties. But these short sketches of Amazonian tongues blew my mind. So much was hinted at, but not fully explained. Written, I inferred, by missionaries who’d had a bit of linguistics training; enough to expose all manner of fascinating features but not sufficient skill or insight to provide a proper scholarly dissection of them. The account of Pirahã rated the most quizzical comment in my notebook: ‘Amazing language. I’d love to see a text in it. Only half-described here.’ I’d been working on ergativity and other grammatical topics, putting forward typological generalisations based on good grammars for languages from most continents. But apparent counterexamples would keep coming up, from some allusive source on a South American language. There is in fact more linguistic diversity in languages of the Amazon basin than in those from any other part of the world. Yet so little was known. After reading Volume One of the Handbook, I decided that I just had to go there and work on some language. And also that I should try to read all the theses and locally-produced papers and books, and talk to the missionaries and people in universities and museums who had done work on these wondrous languages (more in the next chapter on these two groups). Brazil — the biggest country, with the most languages — seemed a likely locale. The only person I knew was Des Derbyshire, who had written a fine grammar of the Hixkaryana language from northern Amazonia and was now working at the Summer Institute of Linguistics missionary headquarters in Dallas. I’d need a research visa to work in Brazil, Des advised. The éminence grise was Professor Aryon Rodrigues at Brasília and I should be sure to write to him, but be warned that he never replies. I did, and he didn’t. (This was a foretaste of things to come.) Des also advised writing to Dr Yonne Leite at Rio de Janeiro and she did provide a helpful response. Then Yonne said that she would be going to the States for a year but her colleague Charlotte Emmerich would continue the correspondence. In fact, Yonne didn’t go and neither of them wrote. into the amazonian jungle 275

I’d plainly need a preliminary trip to assess the fieldwork possibilities. Chuck Grimes, who had been a PhD student at the ANU, wrote to his missionary colleagues in Brazil about how I had been a friend to a number of scholarly missionaries. Jim Wheatley, Director of Tribal Affairs at SIL Brasília, provided advice that was clear and explicit (qualities notably in short supply in that part of the world). From February until April 1991 I spent time at museums and universities in Brasília, Belém (at the mouth of the Amazon), Rio and Campinas (an hour inland from São Paulo). And at SIL centres in Brasília, in Belém, and in Porto Velho, right up in the heart of Amazonia. Alan Vogel was at the airport to meet me and, on the drive to the SIL Center at Porto Velho, issued an invitation to come to Casa Nova, his field location, and write a grammar of Jarawara. So it all began. We made a quick trip, via the missionary plane, both to Casa Nova and to the village of the Banawá tribe, who spoke another dialect of the same language (the third dialect is Jamamadí, and the whole language can conveniently be called Madi). From Casa Nova it is a two-and-a-bit hour walk to the Jarawara village of Agua Branca. Just a jungle track, with intruding branches hacked away. But the country there has one singular feature — it is entirely flat; an incline up a two-metre rise would be significant, and commented upon. From Agua Branca Alan took me (walk, canoe, more walk, more canoe) to visit a Branco — that is, non-Indian — friend on the main Purús River, in order to gain a feel for the entire area. The number of Indians now living in Amazonia is thought to be about one- tenth of the number there before European incursions began. At the height of the rubber boom (around 1900), tappers spread into every nook and cranny. Then, when the British began to cultivate plantations of rubber in Malaya, demand for the forest product from Brazil declined and Brancos retreated to the main rivers. Indians tend to live around minor streams, on ‘terra firma’ (land which never gets flooded). There is a symbiotic relation between the races. Indi- ans obtain from Brancos clothing (having adopted this habit from them), sugar, salt, batteries, fish hooks and the like — all at highish prices — in exchange for such things as manioc flour, dried meat, tobacco and rubber. Indian villages are situated within a few hours journey of a Branco trader on the main river. For them ‘going to the river’ is like ‘going to town’ in other cultures. In 1991 I could read Portuguese, slowly, but wasn’t able to speak or understand it. Alan Vogel acted as intermediary while I elicited some materials, and he shared with me a text and a draft dictionary. On that trip I was able to make good phonetic observations concerning Jarawara and Banawá. Once one learns to speak a language — as I did the following year — the ear just distinguishes 276 I am a linguist

significant speech sounds (phonemes, or letters in an ideal alphabet) and it requires some concentration to pick out the exact details of pronunciation. So it was decided that I’d return for a longish stay the following year and really get into analysis of Jarawara. Four groups of people had offered sponsorship for a research visa and I opted for Lucy Seki at Campinas, who seemed both the most professional linguist and to have the most interesting group of students. Quite a bit of preparation would be needed. Back in Canberra I found a teacher of Portuguese and settled down to study. Learning a language is always interesting, but just adding another European tongue (I could read French and had been taught Latin) can be a pretty flat affair. The grammatical patterns were similar to those I already knew, lexical meanings echoed familiarity and so did idioms and the like. Just the Standard Average European pattern, expressed in a mildly different way. One meets people who boast that they know, say, seven languages. But if these are Ger- man, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, it really amounts to about one and three-quarter languages, in terms of structural and lexical diversity. Whereas if you encounter someone who says they speak German, Turkish, Swahili, Hindi and Chinese — then that really is five languages, each of quite different mien. When I learnt Dyirbal or Fijian or Jarawara it was like entering a new world; studying Portuguese was akin to moving into a new corner of a familiar room. What took a lot of time was learning all those damned irregular verbs. Only to discover, on return to Casa Nova, that the Indians didn’t use them in their brand of Portuguese. ‘See’ should be ver and ‘hear’ ouvir, each with a highly irregular paradigm. The Jarawara prefer to employ regular verbs espiar and escutar (which generally have more specialised meanings, ‘spy on, watch’ and ‘listen to’ respectively). The visa application process was lengthy. I wrote a research plan, as my weekly exercise in Portuguese composition and, when Lucy said it should be done in a quite different way, that did as the exercise for a later week. After all the forms were in, they were apparently sent to the local representative of FUNAI, the Indians’ protection agency, in Lábrea. He discussed it with some Jarawara men when they happened to visit that town, who said yes, they’d be happy for me to come and study the language. I was first to have a month in Campinas with Lucy Seki, learning a bit more Portuguese, teaching at a short workshop she organised (which attracted linguists from other cities) and reading everything there was on indigenous languages. Lucy had sent a driver to meet me at the airport in São Paulo but some- into the amazonian jungle 277

how he failed to make contact. So I took a bus to Campinas, then phoned Lucy’s home. ‘She’s at the university.’ Her husband, who knew no English, dictated the work number: ‘Três (“three”), nove (“nine”), oito (“eight”), cinco (“five”),nove (“nine” again), meia.’ Now meia means ‘half’. I requested the number again; the same. ‘Meia?’ I asked, in a surprised tone. ‘Meia,’ he affirmed. ‘Half’, as part of a phone number? Desperately, I examined the dial on the telephone to see if it included ‘½’ (after all, this was Brazil). No. So I just took a taxi to the university, wandered around a bit and eventually encountered Lucy (almost by chance). It was really quite simple. Since três (‘three’) and seis (‘six’) sound rather similar, in order to avoid confusion people in Brazil use meia, which is short for meia dúzia ‘half a dozen’, in place of seis. (Later, back in Canberra, my teacher apologised for not having mentioned this.)

And so onto the heady intellectual delight of fieldwork on a new and unex- plored language. The primary task is to gather the data — record, transcribe, understand and analyse texts. On the first day back in Casa Nova, village chief Okomobi recorded a tiny two-minute tale. Then similar contributions from Okomobi’s brother Botenawaa (plate 7) and from Wakari, a visitor from Agua Branca. Siko, on old shaman, provided a somewhat rambling and not totally co- herent story about his ancestors. I was attempting to transcribe and understand this, with the assistance of a village youth, when Okomobi came in. He listened with pursed lips, plainly dissatisfied with it as suitable material for my study. It was just like Chloe Grant, at Murray Upper back in October 1963, when I played her some bumbly chatter by Birdy Curtis’ old ladies, and it spurred her into providing better texts herself (see Chapter 5). ‘We’ll finish that Siko story,’ Okomobi instructed, ‘then put a new tape on.’ He proceeded to record a long, intricate and totally fascinating narrative. The previous decade, Padre Gunther Kroemer — from a Catholic missionary organisation in Lábrea — had flown over what was thought to be uninhabited jungle and spied a village, which turned out to belong to the Suruwahá (or Zu- ruahá), a previously uncontacted tribe who wore no clothes and had no guns or other European goods (save for knives, stolen from Branco settlers). The year before, Padre Gunther had made a further visit to the Suruwahá, taking along Okomobi; and this was the tale now told. Okomobi is as good a storyteller as any I’ve known. The chain of events is clearly delineated; his language is evocative and almost high-flown, without undue repetition. The Padre’s boat first set off downstream on the Purús, to 278 I am a linguist

a town Okomobi had not previously visited ‘which was said to be Canutana.’ Then turn left and sail up the Tapuá, into a smaller stream, the Cuniuá, and finally the Pretão, from where they could walk to the Suruwahá village. These people spoke another language of the Arawá family, related to Jarawara, so a few cognates were recognisable. They pulled at Okomobi’s clothes. ‘Why do you wear these? You’re an Indian, like us, not a Branco.’ Everyone crowded into the Suruwahá’s large conical hut (one house for the whole village of about eighty people). As Okomobi put it: Yobe toro fawa to-ne-hiri ama-ka, literally ‘the inside of the house disappeared’, meaning that the hut was completely full. From that point I didn’t look back. Okomobi provided further rich narratives as did his father, the old shaman João, and also Siko (once he’d got the idea) and others. For the first few weeks of that field trip I concentrated on getting and processing texts. Alan Vogel had an outline dictionary but I made a file with a page (or two or three) for every verb, and copied onto them every sentence in which the verb occurred. Another file with a page for each grammatical category. There are several score possible suffixes to a verb in Jarawara. Alan had noted a good few of them but — when I asked — said he didn’t know in which order they might occur. So I examined sequences of suffixes in the accumulated body of texts. For example: -ma ‘back’, -tasa ‘again’ and -mina ‘in the morning’. The following occurred:

verb plus -ma plus -mina verb plus -ma plus -tasa verb plus -mina plus -tasa

This suggested three orders of suffixes:

VERB 1st ORDER 2nd ORDER 3rd ORDER -ma -mina -tasa

Checking with speakers confirmed that the suffixes must occur in this order (and one can have all three of them). Any other order is not acceptable; for example, not *-mina plus -ma, and not *-tasa plus -mina. Then there is -bisa ‘also’. This may follow -ma and ‑mina but does not co-occur with -tasa. Further investigation showed that -bisa is in the third order, with -tasa (only one suffix may be selected from each order). In this way, the complete picture of suffix occurrence was gradually built up, although it took a couple more years to be fully complete. (Another example was provided in chapter 1.) into the amazonian jungle 279

Since Alan was — unusually— in the village without his wife and child, he suggested that we visit the six other villages of the Jarawara tribe. Suited me. We were able to record some interesting narratives and note the quite minimal differences in dialect. For example, ‘kapok tree’ is wasina and ‘alligator’ is inohowe at Casa Nova, but these are fasina and onohowe in villages to the east. At quarter past three in the afternoon on Monday 10 August we left Casa Nova (a village with 5 houses and 44 people), passing through Yemete (2 houses, 8 people) and at about five thirty arrived at Agua Branca (4 houses, about 35 people). The path was narrow and often winding, patches of mud to slip on and roots to trip one up. Lots of little streams with a fallen log for bridge. Whereas the Jarawara tripped lightly across, I edged my way along, foot by foot, using a long pole — or, if possible, two, one in each hand — for balance. We slung hammocks at Agua Branca and slept alright but for a cacophonous clatter of howler monkeys holding a local parliament at about midnight. Setting off at eight next morning, in a couple of hours we came to an abandoned village site called Santana. On the death of an old shaman, a year or two before, the community had relocated. There were still three houses, more or less intact, and an overflowing lemon tree. Good to have a little rest. My backpack contained a large-size hammock (to accommodate my height/length), mosquito net, towel, anti-insect creams, change of clothing, tape-recorder, and notebook. As hour succeeded hour it seemed to get heavier, but — sensing this — our guide offered to carry it. At one o’clock we reached São Francisco (5 houses, about 35 people), the furthest village, not too far from the town of Lábrea. After a walk of about twenty kilometres Alan and I were exhausted, but our guide apologised for not staying, since he wanted to get back to Agua Branca before dark. Here there was no airstrip, no missionary presence. Asaka, the chief, extended hospitality. One could sit on the wooden floor, lean back against woven reed wall, and hear about the people’s plans to shift to a new locale, a day’s walk away. Preliminary work included planting a garden there, for food to be available once the move was made. As eyes became accustomed to the dark, a myriad tiny cockroaches could be discerned scurrying up and down the walls. Perhaps better not to lean back any more. São Francisco is on the bank of the Cainaa river. The next day, Alan said, he’d like to go down to the mouth, where it empties into the Purús, a direct tributary of the Amazon. This turned out to be a trip of just over ten hours, as we paddled at about two kilometres an hour. The smallish canoe had two Indians paddling and Alan, plus me, sitting on a plank, knees almost touching 280 I am a linguist

chin, bailing out the water that came in due to my extra weight. My cramp became more and more uncomfortable. At eleven o’clock (after about three hours in the boat), I suggested that they should leave me on an open bit of bank, to rest my back and get picked up on the return journey. The canoeists offered a gun but I wouldn’t know how to use it. So they left a paddle for protection, in case a jaguar came visiting. And I had my pocket notebook and pencil. I sat on the bank and thought about the nature of ‘word’ in Jarawara. Gram- matical criteria and phonological criteria didn’t exactly match, so one might need to recognise two kinds of ‘word’. How would they relate together? I nib- bled a few nuts and raisins for lunch. No animals came along. I wondered about taking a little walk away from the riverbank but the vines appeared impenetrable. I did have a really good think. But then the sun got lower — three o’clock, three thirty. Finally, at close to four o’clock, the canoe reappeared. ‘It was a bit further than we’d thought.’ Another three hours in cramped stance and return by moonlight. If you ask a Jarawara how long it takes to walk from one village to another, this is displayed by extended arm indicating the position of the sun at each location. ‘You start off like this’ (arm at about thirty degrees above horizontal) ‘and get there then’ (angle now about forty-five degrees). Infer: around one hour. Next day, it was about ninety minutes walk to Mangueira (3 houses, 12 people). A couple of hours there and then another sixty minute walk to Nazaré (2 houses and about 12 people). A couple of hundred yards before that village there was the standing stump of a hollow tree. It gave out a resonant sound when our guide banged with a stick, warning people in the village that strangers were approaching. Kasawara, an old man at Nazaré, recorded a fine story. A man named Jo- tobiro found two women picking fruit which properly belonged to him. They agreed that proper compensation should be for him to be allowed to copulate with them. One woman said to the other: Tiwa tai to-na-ha-ho!, ‘Let him take you first!’ (This provided an invaluable example of a third person imperative.) But sowiri kita-re, ‘his penis was not strong’; he couldn’t get an erection — and she pushed him off. Just before dark we walked for another hour to the final village, Saubinha, which had one occupied house with six people — a man, two ugly sisters, and children. There was another building, with house frame and roof, in which we hung hammocks, only receiving a mild sprinkling from the nocturnal storm. Just by the bathing place there was — to our surprise — a large flat stone. It into the amazonian jungle 281

must have been brought in from far away. In that part of the Amazon there are submerged rocks in the river but no stones at all. Over perhaps millions of years, silt has been washed down these rivers from their source in the Andes and that’s all there is. (Indian boys have to use paxiuba nuts in their catapults.) Next day was a hard slog, almost 30 kilometres back to Agua Branca, but we took it in stages. For the first couple of hours the track was overgrown and scarcely discernable, to the site of an old village called São Lorenzo. This had been abandoned about ten years before and jungle had reclaimed the village site. There was just a broken wooden platform in the stream, as reminder of a port which had once been there. Then half-an-hour by canoe and another hour on foot, to the more recently vacated village of Santana with the lemon tree, whose fruit I sucked against an approaching bad cold. There were also banana plants, with fruits on high. Despite strenuous efforts it did not prove possible to dislodge any. Then a final two and a half hours to Agua Branca. I simply lay down, dripping with sweat, and drank and drank and drank. Next morning a cinchy dozen kilometres back home. On the six-day trip we’d been to all seven villages, and counted about 150 members of the Jarawara tribe. Walked around 90 kilometres through the jungle and another 20 for Alan (10 for me) by canoe. The peoples I’ve worked with vary in their code of honesty, with the Jarawara being top of the class. On the second day in São Francisco someone mentioned that a handkerchief had been found on the track from Agua Branca and asked whose it was. Mine. Well, he explained, it was at Agua Branca being washed and I’d get it on the way back. Three days later, just as we were leaving Agua Branca for home, a lady rushed up with my clean handkerchief, neatly folded (and I’d forgotten all about it). Aboriginal people in Australia had the same high standard of behaviour; I seldom locked things and nothing ever disappeared. Whereas in Fiji ... Drop a penknife while walking from one house to another, realise you’d lost it five minutes later, and you really had lost it (I experienced several incidents of this kind).

Back to the work. Most nouns in Jarawara have an inherent gender although this is not shown in the form of the noun itself — jomee ‘dog’ is masculine and kiso ‘white-fronted capuchin monkey’ is feminine. Body parts are shown by what can be called ‘possessed nouns’ and each of these has distinct feminine and masculine forms, agreeing in gender with the noun it modifies. For example: 282 I am a linguist

added after added after kiso (feminine noun) jomee (masculine noun) ‘eye’ noki noko ‘foot’ tame teme ‘blood’ ame emene ‘head’ tati tati

The gender differences are underlined. These involve the final vowel for ‘eye’ but the first vowel for ‘foot’ and the first vowel plus finalne - for ‘blood’. And for ‘head’ feminine and masculine forms are the same. This was all most puz- zling; but there must be some explanation. One afternoon, back at Casa Nova, I compared cognate forms in the vocabularies of related languages Dení and Paumarí. As dusk fell — signalled by a grasshopper which makes a noise like the winding up of an old-fashioned grandfather clock — it all fell into place. The common ancestor language, proto- Arawá, had a single form for each possessed noun, to which was added -ni for feminine and -ne for masculine. Then there were the following historical changes:

feminine masculine ‘eye’ noko-ni > noki noko-ne > noko ‘foot’ tama-ni > tame tama-ne > teme ‘blood’ ama-ni > ame ama-ne > eme-ne ‘head’ tati-ni > tati tati-ne > tati

The feminine suffix -ni has been lost in Jarawara (but is retained in the other languages). At the end of a feminine form, there were the following changes: –o-ni > –i, –a-ni > –e and –i-ni > –i. For the masculine forms, suffix-ne has been dropped from some forms but retained in others (such as ‘blood’). When -ne had been added to a root ending in a, that a and all preceding a’s in the word change to e (this sort of change is called ‘assimilation’). Thus, ama-ne > emene, and tama-ne > teme-ne > teme (with the -ne dropping). There were a dozen or more possessed nouns of each kind, showing that the changes were quite regular. (All this, and much more, was published as a scholarly paper in 1995.) Alan, feeling bereft without wife, left after a while. By then I was thoroughly ensconced and continued to record more texts. Okomobi told of a dream in which there was an amazing flying machine — you pulled on a cord and it ascended. I also began work on types of clausal constructions, and on the sub- into the amazonian jungle 283

tle composition of words. Many tense and other suffixes to a verb have two forms, one with an initial syllable commencing with h and the other without. For example:

• immediate past non-eyewitness suffix in feminine gender can be -hani or -ni • the corresponding masculine form can be -hino or -no • far past non-eyewitness feminine can be -hemete or -mete • the corresponding masculine form can be -himata or -mata And there are a dozen more like this.

Back in Canberra, lots of unfinished tasks were awaiting me. In late 1992, I’d spend an hour and a half before breakfast checking the scan of the third edition of the Blues and Gospel Records discography as the basis for a revised fourth edition (see Chapter 4). The scan often readni as m or ri as n or 5 as 6. I found that this could only be done early in the day, when eyes and brain were sharpest. I’d manage about ten pages each day, and there were 870 in all. (The fourth edition was published in 1997.) Between breakfast and lunch I worked on a monograph on ergativity, extending and expanding a long paper which had appeared in 1979. (This book came out in 1994.) Afternoons were devoted to transcribing, translating, analysing and formatting Dyirbal songs (for a book which appeared in 1996). And evenings were reserved for systematic study of Jarawara (this grammar came out in 2004). In order to find out what was happening with the two forms of tense suffixes, I simply went through every text and listed the verbs each variant occurred in. (This was done by hand, much easier and more satisfying than messing with a typewriter or computer. I was learning the language a bit more with each verb that was copied out.) A pattern emerged. One would say (where IPnf indicates immediate past non-eyewitness feminine)

fati tafa-hani but ti-tafa-ni his.wife eat-IPnf 2sg-eat-IPnf ‘His wife just ate’ ‘You just ate’

(As mentioned in chapter 1, feminine is the default — or unmarked — gender. All pronouns must have feminine agreement on verbal suffixes, as 2nd person singular pronominal prefixti- does here.) Study of several hundred example verbs revealed the rule. After a word with two syllables, the tense form with the initial h-initial syllable would be used, as 284 I am a linguist

-hani after disyllabic tafa- in fati tafa-hani. After a word with an odd number of syllables the shorter variant would be used, as -ni after ti-tafa in ti-tafa-ni. Basically, the underlying form is -hani, but the -ha- can be dropped when in an even-numbered syllable of a word; underlying ti-tafa-hani drops the -ha — which is the fourth syllable — and becomes ti-tafa-ni. This is the nucleus of the solution. In fact, the -ha- only drops when following a; there are different rules operating after other vowels. By simply writing out the data, over a few dozen evenings, and inspecting it for patterns, I was able to inductively infer the principle which is at work. Later study, on further field trips, enabled me to confirm and refine these results. I’d been sharing Alan’s reasonably commodious house in 1992. His family was in the village the following year and the Indians had built a cosy little hut for me — just a rectangle on stilts, with finely woven thatch. In Canberra I’d typed out a draft of the main points of phonology and morphology; now to refine these. Some verbs in Jarawara accept prefixes and suffixes directly (these are ‘inflecting verbs’); for example -tafa- ‘eat’ takes prefix ti- and suffix -ni in the example just given, ti-tafa-ni. Other verbs do not take prefixes or suffixes themselves but are followed by an auxiliary (‑na- or -ha-) to which affixes are attached. For example, with verb amo -na- ‘sleep’, we’d get:

amo ti-na-hani sleep 2sg-AUXILIARY-IPnf ‘You just slept’

That much is straightforward. The tricky thing is that there are several kinds of suffix to a verb or auxiliary. What I called ‘normal suffixes’ behave as one would expect, being directly added to what precedes and allowing further suffixes to be added directly after them. Tense suffixes such as-(ha)ni , ‘immediate past non-eyewitness feminine’, plus -ma ‘back’, -mina ‘in the morning’ and -tasa ‘again’ are of this type. One can say tafa-mina-tasa-hani ‘just ate again in the morning’. But there are also what I nicknamed ‘funny suffixes’. Some of these cannot be added directly to an inflecting verb, but must be preceded by a special auxiliary, -na-, to which they are attached. They includewahare - ‘do many times, in many places. One cannot say *tafa-wahare-ni, but rather into the amazonian jungle 285

tafa na-wahare-hani eat AUXILIARY-MULTIPLE-IPnf ‘She just ate in many houses’ Others can be directly added to what precedes but no other suffix may be added directly after them. Instead they must be followed by a special auxiliary na- - to which further suffixes are attached. This set includeskanikima - ‘scattered, spread out in lots of different places’. One cannot saytafa-kanikima-hani , but rather

mee tafa-kanikima na-ni 3plural eat-SCATTERED AUXILIARY-IPnf ‘They (arrived and spread out) and each ate in a different house’

It’s best to concentrate on just a certain amount at one time. During the three month field trip in 1993, I worked systematically on every aspect of word structure except for funny suffixes. A full investigation of these was deferred until the 1994 trip, when I did pretty much work out the system, and then refined that description in 1995. Since there were responsibilities back in Canberra, it wasn’t possible to get away for more than a few months at a time. But then there was the rest of the year to work (part-time) on field materials and start drafting the grammar. I wrote the first eight chapters between the ‘93 and ‘94 trips, the next eight between ‘94 and ‘95, and the final ten in the year following the ‘95 trip. All were revised several times, during and after two final visits to Casa Nova, in 1999 and 2003. My fieldwork in Australia had concerned languages of medium difficulty, but spoken by a few old people; I was thus not able to observe a living language community. In Fiji, the language was spoken by everyone, but it didn’t have a terribly complex structure. Jarawara offered everything (besides flies and heat and disease): a language of excruciating complexity, used by every member of the community. In Chapter 10, I mentioned that if Dyirbal were assigned an index of ten, for degree of difficulty (from the point of view of linguistic analysis), then Yidiñ would merit a value of about fourteen and Fijian no more than seven. On that scale, Jarawara would be around twenty-three. Every single person in the village was interested in what I was doing. Oko- mobi was always the main teacher (when he was there) but half-a-dozen other men cottoned on to what I was aiming for and — when not busy with other things — were always ready to help transcribe, to explain the meanings of words, or to pass judgement on the acceptability of sentences I had crafted to check some grammatical hypothesis. A special bond arose with Mioto, a youth who was in his late teens when the study commenced. He had a keen analytic 286 I am a linguist

mind, able to hone in on a linguistic problem and see through to a perspicuous solution. Mioto’s younger brother Soki would often come along to help, and a year or two later Soki took on the role of teacher in his own right. Did I only work with men in Casa Nova? Basically, yes, although once Mi- oto acquired a wife, Bainafira, they would teach me together and she was just as good. In essence, the women were fully occupied — looking after children, fetching foodstuffs from the garden, cooking, washing, and the like. Also, it would have breached decorum for me to work with a woman alone. But a group of women and children would come to visit most evenings. I’d listen to their chatter, try to interact a bit and sometimes drop in a question about some grammatical point I was working on. Health was a major concern. Alan Vogel brought in a supply of medicines from the FUNAI office in Porto Velho and when there alone I’d do my best to dish out potions for children’s diarrhoea and the like. Mioto’s sister Watati had a small baby — with diarrhoea — and I enquired its name. ‘Ini watakare,’ she told me. Literally, ‘Her name doesn’t exist.’ There was such a high rate of infant mortality that names were generally not given until the child had attained the age of six or nine months. There’s a wilder element in every community. Most children who came to see me would pick up the picture books which were kept in a big plastic bag, sit quietly looking at them (occasionally asking me to act out how a gorilla or a cas- sowary behaves) and put them back in the bag when they left. But the children of Sasaha and Kofeno had a different view of the world. They’d open the books and wear them as hats, before throwing books and chairs and whatever around my tiny house. But I scolded and they quietened down (at least until the next time). Most of the protein comes from the river, easy to catch in those waters. There’s also game in the forest, including two varieties of peccary (or wild pig), tapir and deer. One morning there was a hullabaloo at about seven o’clock. I thought of going out to see but didn’t, being in the throes of a nice little analytic problem (this being my best time of day for thinking). It would like as not be the village pigs in the pineapple patch, and the kids amongst the pigs. But I should have gone to investigate. Apparently, a deer had blundered through the village in the night, banging against house walls. Kamo had got down from his hammock, picked up a gun, shot the deer, and then gone back to sleep. Oko- mobi, who told me about it, said that he’d slept right through, hadn’t heard a thing. At daybreak Kamo followed the trail of blood, finished off the wounded animal and returned to the village with dead deer on shoulders, evincing the noise I had heard. into the amazonian jungle 287

But the main hunter was Motobi. He’d go off into the jungle all alone, skil- fully track his prey and almost always come home with a peccary for supper. Motobi was a terrific friend but far from ideal as a linguistic consultant. In contrast to the finely-honed judgements of Okomobi, Mioto, Soki and others, he’d say that just about any string of words was acceptable. However, it was okay to work with Motobi on straightforward things like the genders of animals and plants. The principal village of the Jamamadí tribe — speaking a dialect mutually intelligible with Jarawara — was only about three hours walk away I was told (in terms of positions of arm extended towards the sun). One could get there and back in a day. Well they could. We arranged that Motobi and I would walk to the Jamamadí village on 28 June 1993, and then the next day the plane coming to take Alan and his family back to Porto Velho would first of all call at Jamamadí and fly the two of us back to Casa Nova (where I was staying on for a while). Thanks to Motobi’s consideration, it was a most enjoyable journey. He walked at my pace, not his, and assisted in passage over the narrow fallen-log bridges. Motobi paused every now and then, as if he needed to, but it was really to let me catch breath. And he carried my backpack as well as his own for part of the way. In fact, it would have been only a slight burden for him. I’ve seen Jamamadí men carry a seventy kilo sack of manioc flour on their back on a day-long hike to the Purús, stopping off at Casa Nova — the half-way point — for a ten-minute break. It took us five hours to walk (and five minutes back by plane the next day). Although having drunk at every stream along the way, I was really thirsty and flopped down at a Jamamadí house just before the main village, saying: Oko‘ faha-ba taa ti-na-hi.’ This is a direct command: ‘You ti( -) give (taa) my (oko) future (-ba) water (faha)’, with -hi (added to the auxiliary -na- of non-inflecting verb taa -na- ‘give’) indicating immediate positive imperative, feminine gender (agreeing with the subject pronoun ti- ‘you’, since all pronouns take feminine agreement). This is the normal polite way of requesting a drink (and it worked). An old missionary couple, Barbara and Robert Campbell, had been working with the Jamamadí since 1962 and their dwelling stood at village edge. ‘Aren’t you going to sleep in the white man’s house?’ the Jamamadí enquired. ‘No, I don’t have the key. Motobi and I will hang our hammocks in one of your huts, if that’s alright.’ We sat around with a curious group, and I checked a few dialect differences involving lexemes and genders and suchlike. Mano is ‘arm’ in both dialects, but whereas we say o-mano for ‘my arm’, the Jamamadí say o-mono (with the o of mano assimilating to the o vowels on either side). 288 I am a linguist

After dark they asked if I’d like to hear some songs. Sure. Ajaka style, with which I was familiar. But these were sung by a group of young women and were all about Abi Deoso, ‘God the Father’. I realised what was happening. After almost three decades of missionary endeavour, the Campbells had made a break-through just a couple of years before. An intruding Branco had been shot by the Jamamadí and buried at the end of the airstrip. But he was such an evil fellow that they really did fear his spirit. The Campbells said that Jesus is all powerful and only he can protect you — better convert double-quick! And with this went injunctions not to drink and not to listen to (what the Camp- bells considered to be) evil Brazilian popular music. Now, the Ajaka which was being performed was all about the Christian God. So I recorded it, and said thanks. Motobi evinced disdain at what was happening. ‘That’s not proper Ajaka.’ ‘They can probably sing traditional style as well,’ I suggested. ‘No, they know nothing,’ he said. ‘Well, let’s at least ask.’ ‘Okay.’ How to phrase it. Could they sing Ajaka jokana, adding the adjective jokana ‘real, prototypical’? No response. Try again. ‘How about Iti kaa Ajaka, “grandfather’s Ajaka”?’ Now a considerable response, a murmur of excitement and apprehension. An old shaman was fetched from a distant hut. The Ajaka pole was erected, as it should be. The shaman led the singing, as he should. Hesitant at first, but gaining in concentration and confidence. The singers stand in line at the beginning of an Ajaka performance but after a while join hands and circle the pole, first one way, then the other. ‘Let’s do that.’ ‘Yes, let’s.’ The people seemed happy at this resurgence of their traditional life-style. Even Motobi had to agree that they were coming on, getting back something which had been suppressed. (The following week at Casa Nova, an old Jamamadí shaman called Sikinaso came to call and led a rousing Ajaka way into the night. There were still a few dissenters among the Campbell flock.) We tied our hammocks in an empty hut (mine fell down twice before I managed to get the knots right). ‘I’ll just go over and sniff a little snuff,’ Mo- tobi confided, ‘helps one get to sleep.’ I got out a flashlight and a volume of Euripides (in translation) with the same aim. My field trips on Jarawara were all accompanied by a Greek dramatist — Aristophanes in 1991, then Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus. Next morning, waiting for the plane, we played back the previous night’s recording. The christian Ajaka, heads nodded. Then the grandfather’s Ajaka, to vigorous assent from some, morning-after doubt on other faces. We went back to Jarawara-land. (Sadly, Motobi met his death in 2000, when out with a group into the amazonian jungle 289

of Campbell’s christianised Jamamadí. The details are not clear — people were drunk, he was knifed, body thrown into the river. Some say that the Jamamadí murdered him.) The consequences arising from our visit to the Jamamadí village are described in the next chapter.

Now to settle down to a really tricky bit of linguistic analysis. A transitive clause in Jarawara must be in one of two constructions, either focussing on the A, transitive subject (an A-construction) or on the O, transitive object (an O-construction). If the topic of a clause (established by what precedes in the discourse) is the A, then an A-construction must be used as in ‘(Okomobi came) and OKOMOBI saw Mioto’. If the topic is the O, then an O-construction is used, as in ‘(Okomobi came) and Mioto saw OKOMOBI’. There are subtle differences of form between the two construction types, depending on the nature of the A and O and whether or not suffixes are included for tense or for mood (this is declarative, interrogative, imperative, and so on). I worked out that there were three parameters to consider: (1) Whether the transitive subject (A) of the clauses is first or second person singular, or first or second person plural, or third person singular, or third person plural. (2) Same four possibilities for transitive object (O). (3) Whether the clause has just a tense suffix, or just a mood suffix, or both, or neither. That gives a total of 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 possibilities. Each of these had to be investigated, to see if there was both an A-construction and an O-construction available, and what the structure of each was. I found examples of most in the burgeoning collection of texts, and was able to pursue judicious elicitation to fill in gaps. While I was doing this, a little at a time, some of the required data came up in new texts that were being recorded and analysed. It turns out that there is an A-construction in every instance, and always an O-construction if the O is third person. In addition, there is an O-construction if the A is third person and the O is first or second person, but only when the clause includes both tense and mood suffixes. And there are significant differences in the components of each construction type, according to the values of each parameter. This was possibly the most profound piece of linguistic detective work that I’d ever achieved. (It was published as a paper in 2000.) Linguistic analysis provided lots of intellectual excitement. And there was often a spot of adventure on the side. The fish poacher story was mentioned 290 I am a linguist

in Chapter 1. How Izaki, the local official of FUNAI, took Okomobi and Mo- tobi with him to accost Brancos who were fishing in waters designated by the government as belonging to the Jarawara. Izaki, Okomobi and Motobi seized the giant pirarucu fish which had been caught. Those poachers had been in the employ of a local boss who was called simply Branco (literally ‘white’) since his skin is pretty light whereas most of the non-Indians (so-called ‘brancos’) in that region are some shade of light brown. The following Saturday, Okomobi announced that he was going down to the river for trading with Branco. Yes, I could come along too. In the middle of the hour-long walk to the dry-season port, Okomobi stopped to pick up a large solid block of latex which he’d gathered from his rubber trail over the past few months and would now be used for trade. (The best rubber comes from trees on land that is seasonally flooded, not from those on terra firma, where the Jarawara have their village.) Then we paddled down the Cainaa for an hour-and-a-half, and walked across land to the Purús. Nearing the main river, Okomobi stopped to make a sheath for his knife (out of a wide reed), to wear it on belt for easy access. Best to be prepared for the worst. I’d heard all about Branco, but it was interesting to actually see things. The boat in which he sailed up and down the Purús. The young girl in negligee, lolling on double bed, ready whenever Branco might be. Branco blustered but he couldn’t really complain about what Izaki had done since his men had been poaching. But two of the confiscated pirarucu had already been salted and Branco announced that he was going to charge Okomobi for the salt, debit it to his account. We stood in Branco’s stateroom, drinking small cups of strong sweet coffee, as everyone does in Brazil. It was a three hour journey home, as I tried to remind Okomobi. Eventually, we did take our leave and managed the canoe part by day. But the final hour’s walk through mud and over small streams was after nightfall. Okomobi went first and nikiniki fati, the flashlight — mentioned in Chapter 1 — strapped to my forehead (higher than Okomobi’s head) shone on the ground before him. ‘That’s our private moon,’ he remarked. ‘Oh, so you’re still alive,’ Alan’s wife, Lucilia, exclaimed when I got back to the village, covered in mud. She invited me — the only occasion this happened — to use their shower, fed by a rainwater tank. (Normally I was expected to bathe in the stream, like the Indians, which I didn’t really mind.) The next week Alan’s family went off and locked up their house, but I was permitted to use the bottled-gas-powered fridge to keep foodstuffs fresh. Cold water is wonderful in that hot climate. However, Alan didn’t have any since, into the amazonian jungle 291

he said, opening the fridge door too often used too much gas. But when the cat is away ... I thought it wouldn’t do too much harm to open the freezer twice a day. My two water containers were rather stylish — oval shape, of lightly tinted plastic. Fill them half-full and after a night in the freezer we had ice-cold water until mid-morning. All of my callers shared this elixir. But Okomobi stared at the water bottle, puzzled. ‘How did you get that large lump of ice in through such a small neck?’

SOURCES AND PUBLICATIONS

Quotations from pages 82, 98 and 133 of the Collected papers of Henry Sweet, arranged by H. C. Wyld, published in 1913 at the Clarendon Press, Oxford (originally published in the Transactions of the Philological Society, 1877-9). Extracts from Sweet’s letter to the Oxford Vice-Chancellor are presented in ‘The English school of phonetics’ by J. R. Firth, originally published in Trans- actions of the Philological Society for 1946 and reprinted in Firth’s Papers in Linguistics, 1934-1951 (published in 1957 by Oxford University Press, London); see pages 119-20. Sweet’s words were: ‘The general theoretical side of the study of language is at present represented in the University by the Profes- sorship of Comparative Philology. This term is ambiguous. If we identify it with Comparative Aryan grammar, there ought to be another Professorship of the Science of Language (philosophical grammar, etc,) ... ‘ He was describing what would nowadays be called a Professorship of (General) Linguistics. (In 1965 I wished to submit the grammar of Dyirbal that I was writing for a PhD and — since I had my MA from Oxford — wrote to the then Professor of Comparative Philology asking if this would be acceptable. He replied that it could not be submitted for a PhD at Oxford since Comparative Philology had always been regarded at that university as referring only to study of Indo- European languages.) A perspicuous biography of Sweet, by C. L. Wrenn, was published in the Transactions of the Philological Society for 1946, and then reprinted as pages 512- 37 of Portraits of linguistics, Volume 1, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok (published in 1966 by Indiana University Press in Bloomington). Trespassers on the Amazon by John Ure was published in 1986 by Constable in London. Volume 1 of the Handbook of Amazonian Languages, edited by Des- mond C. Derbyshire and Geoffrey K. Pullum was published in 1986 by Mouton de Gruyter in Berlin. 292 I am a linguist

Gunter Kroemer’s account of how he discovered the Suruwahá (Zuruahá) people is in his 1989 book A Caminho das Malocas Zuruahá: Reconhecimento e Identificação de um Povo Indígena Desconhecido, published by Edições Loyola in São Paulo. My grammar, The Jarawara language of southern Amazonia, was published by Oxford University Press (at Oxford) in 2004. This received the Linguistic Society of America’s Leonard Bloomfield Award for the best book published, worldwide, over all areas of linguistics, during a two-year period. 14 God and Magog in Brazil

The previous chapter (and the first one in this book) tell of the joyous times I had living with the Jarawara people at Casa Nova and studying their remarkable language. There were, however, two shadows hovering. One was the many-headed hydra of organised Christian religion. The other the cheeky som- nambulance of what posture as scholarly institutions in Brazil. The renowned physicist Richard P. Feynman tells of how he went to Brazil as a Visiting Professor and was puzzled that the students could answer some of the questions he posed but were stumped by others. ‘After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant.’ However, there were a couple of good students who could think. But then they revealed that they had been trained overseas and only recently arrived in Brazil. ‘I didn’t expect that,’ Feynman recounts. ‘I knew the system was bad, but 100 percent — it was terrible.’ He concluded that it was naive to think that because one ‘saw a university with a list of courses and descriptions, that’s what it was.’ My experience was similar. Unlike Feynman, I did encounter a few exceptions, but generally the academic standard was not far off zero. More on this later. First, a word or two concerning religion. As mentioned in Chapter 3, I’d experimented with this (as one does with so many things) as a youth and decided that the idea of there being a deity was both unlikely and unnecessary. Since then religion had been on the periphery of things. Almost all of those I associate with don’t need such solace. We use our minds for creative thinking rather than obeisance to an ineffable spirit. Belief in a god is comforting. It absolves one from responsibility (other than that of belief and worship). And it can fulfil a social role. In olden days the Lord of the Manor would on occasion hint to the village priest (whose vicarage and stipend he provided) about what to preach. No sedition, thank you, and render a proper tax unto the Lord — of the Manor, not the other one — if you please. Diversity of opinion makes the world an interesting place. And respect for the opinions of others causes it to be congenial. Yet many Christians (and no doubt 294 I am a linguist

adherents of some other faiths) believe that they have a monopoly on goodness. We follow the ten commandments, they say. But the last six commandments are pretty well universal, being followed by all types of societies, whether pagan or atheist or Christian or whatever — honour your parents, and don’t murder, commit adultery, steal, tell lies, or hanker after someone else’s things. The first four commandments are something of an ego trip for a deity who doesn’t seem terribly secure of himself (and is maybe a little bit narcissistic) — don’t have any gods besides me (surely this presupposes that there are others), don’t worship idols or take my name in vain, and don’t work on my day, the Sabbath. Back in 1963, when Alison and I were about to depart for fieldwork in North Queensland, her mother (who had seen colonial service in West Africa) remarked: ‘They’ll be paying your first class fare, Bob.’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘that’s not been offered. And if it was I wouldn’t take it, because the Institute of Aboriginal Studies doesn’t have much money and there are better things for them to spend it on.’ ‘Oh Bob,’ Mrs Crocket exclaimed, ‘but you’re not a Christian. I thought you didn’t have any principles.’ This arrogant attitude has recurred with some of the Christians I had dealings with in later years. Only they are honest and upright. Those who don’t follow the way of the Lord cannot be trusted or re- lied on. Really! Do the Christians expect atheists to habitually lie and steal, to molest children and commit murder? In point of fact, an atheist (or agnostic) doesn’t have to rely on what they think some deity tells them to do. People who don’t have a god to fall back on must perforce make their own decisions, based on a sense of responsibility, an ideal of decency, and respect for others. There is no confession and celestial forgiveness for an atheist who may have hurt someone else or damaged the environment. One has to live with having behaved shamefully, and attempt to learn from it. Reading about the religion of some local society, it can seem naive and foolish. In a Dyirbal religious tale which George Watson recounted, the first child came out of a boil on the leg of the first man. But, if carefully examined, the tales of major religions are equally unlikely and implausible. The first woman is made from a rib of the first man! Not to mince words, the Jewish religion seems pretty wacky. Then Christianity takes all that and adds a further veneer. A god who may or may not be corporeal inseminates a married woman (thus breaking his own seventh commandment) who is still a virgin (although married and inseminated). The woman gives birth to a son, who is corporeal and is the same god as his father. Then the Moslem religion provides further thatch to this house of fantasy. god and magog in brazil 295

Yet it is today considered respectable to believe in such things. In fact, the world is regressing. In the nineteenth century, national leaders could truthfully say that they had no religious affiliation and get elected (Abraham Lincoln being one example). During the past hundred years, many national leaders have been (thank goodness) thinking people. But scarcely a one would admit to being what they are — an atheist — or they wouldn’t get elected. Very many people in most western countries lack religious belief but it is not considered respectable to say this out loud. It is not considered good form to demonstrate intelligence by publicly shunning the house of fantasy. The world may be progressing (in some direction or other) but social conventions appear to be stronger now than they were a couple of centuries ago — against someone abjuring religion (let alone condemning it). It’s a fact of life that many people need religion. I don’t. But I do respect other people’s belief. In return, I expect them to respect my lack of belief. My mother did so, she even envied it: ‘I wish I was strong enough not to believe in a god.’ But there is a type of Christian who, when they meet someone who has not (yet) placed their fate in the hands of ‘the Lord’, sees it as their vocation to change this state of affairs. My philosophy is: you have your belief, the Jarawara have their rather different belief, I disdain belief. Let’s all live together and respect each other. A typical Christian response is that they have been (or will be) ‘saved’, and we should want to be too. This is what Ireally object to. Having a faith is a matter of personal choice. But do not force it onto other people. In Tom Petrie’s reminiscences of early Queensland, his daughter, Constance Campbell Petrie, writes of the Aborigines around Brisbane in the first years after the white invasion: ‘they were so light-hearted and gay ... And there were no missionaries in those days to make them think how bad they were.’ Western civilisation was founded in the wonderful society of Ancient Greece. (Have there ever been greater thinkers than Plato and Aristotle?) Greek religion was appealing and almost benevolent — a panoply of gods, each with their own specialism, behaving in many ways as humans do. The Christian religion — which supplanted this — has had a stormy history, marked by much violence, murder and coercion. Many instances could be quoted. In sixteenth century English, a number of avowed Protestants were burnt at the stake, by order of Queen Mary. When succeeded by sister Elizabeth it was the turn of leading Catholics to be tortured on the rack and then hanged. In the Spanish Inquisition quite a few thousand people were burnt because their beliefs varied a little from those prescribed. 296 I am a linguist

And then a bevy of priests enveloped the ‘new world’, employing old-fashioned methods of conversion — believe, or perish. In later centuries treatment was less extreme but still the notion of choice was denied. Around 1900, many of the Aboriginal people of Australia who still survived were rounded up (a bit like cattle) and sent to missions. The Anglican priests at Yarrabah, near Cairns, had a simple rule: if you didn’t go to church on Sunday, no rations for the week. When the Queensland government took over the mission, in mid-century, church attendance became non-compulsory and dropped from a few hundred to a couple of dozen. Conversion by decree did not, in this instance, stick. The Catholics mellowed with time. In the Americas, those indigenous peoples who had not been exterminated by the excesses of the sect in centuries past are now treated with a benign guardianship. But, as if to counter this, a new breed of zealots has arisen, the Evangelicals. Anthropologist Irving Goldman worked with the Cubeo in Colombia. In 1970, he recounts, ‘the Cubeo were a tribe deeply and perhaps irrevocably divided by religion and cultural convictions.’ About half were under the aegis of a Catholic mission, which had ‘decided on a drastic change of policy, from that of active conversion to that of respect for and even encouragement of native traditions, including religious and ritual practices ... The Evangeli- cal communities, on the other hand, had already abandoned all the highly visible features of Cubeo culture and were moving towards complete cultural oblitera- tion ... Under severe pressure from their young American Evangelical guardians, they broke almost all social relations with their Catholic kinsmen and tribesmen.’ Christianity started among white people and was then spread by their missionaries among black and brown. Some white-skinned people have grown out of it (although, as mentioned above, they may be shy about saying so) but many of the other races who have been converted maintain a solid obduracy. The Fijians always were a fighting people. Two bands of missionaries each had great success and then there was a religious war, the Catholic converts against the Wesleyans. By the time I arrived all was peaceful, so long as one conformed. As recounted in Chapter 10, I had no wish to rock the boat at first but hoped, in due course, to reveal that I didn’t really subscribe. It soon became clear that to do so would see me branded as a devil and hounded from the village. There was no possibility of choice. One of the largest missionary organisations is Wycliffe Bible Translators (which is what they call themselves when raising money from churches back home) or the Summer Institute of Linguistics (the preferred moniker when relating to the academic world, or foreign governments). Their members are god and magog in brazil 297

working on translating the New Testament (and sometimes the Old one as well) into about one thousand languages worldwide. In London and in Canberra, I’d had the best possible relations with SIL people who came to do MAs and PhDs. They were good scholars, producing sound linguistic work. We never discussed matters spiritual; I wasn’t asked whether I were a believer. Coming from different backgrounds, we had a common goal in writing grammars, in seeking out the structural intricacies of a language. On the first exploratory trip to Brazil in 1991, I visited several universities and museums and three SIL bases. Alan Vogel, at SIL in Porto Velho, invited me to work on his field language, Jarawara. It seemed a fine idea. As shown above, my linguistic work turned out to be terrific. But the surrounding hornet’s nest came as a most unwelcome surprise. I suppose I should have realised that the SIL folk who take themselves off to a university for a higher degree are not typical. Some of those left behind are steeped in prejudice. Irving Goldman’s comments, quoted above, about the ‘young American Evangelicals’ (who were from SIL) among the Cubeo can be replicated many times. Just recently, a colleague working in New Guinea told of SIL translators Marva and Robin Farnsworth meeting resistance from an influential elder who preferred to maintain his traditional religion rather than shift to some foreign doctrine. The Christian missionaries prayed to their Christian God to kill the elder. They are unashamed of this prayer, boast of it even. The elder lived on to a ripe old age. (The Farnsworths prepared a translation of the New Testament which was so poor that no one could understand it; later they began a revised translation, but gave up.) Each field trip I’d spend a few days before and after at the SIL Center, a ‘little America’ where everyone speaks English and eats good-ole down-home chow. ‘Are you a brother in the Lord?’ I was asked. A bewildered reply, ‘What?’, showed clearly that I wasn’t. In my mild Anglican upbringing the idea of Heav- en floated around, but we never dwelt on Hell or Satan. The middle-American cocoon in Brazil fairly vibrated with these notions. It’s difficult to conceive of ‘heaven’, although those who believe in it must presumably do so. One picks up clues. ‘I’ll be able to talk again with my saintly grandmother; how I remember the advice she gave me as a child and the way I’ve missed her since.’ But has it occurred to you that she may be fully occupied in talking with her saintly grandmother, and perhaps she with hers? It could be grandmothers all the way. (I mean to say, if they all behaved well, they’ll all be up there in heaven.) How far back? For ever, maybe millions of years (could be back as far as monkey ancestors). 298 I am a linguist

What might heaven be like? I asked an elderly cat-lover if she thought there’d be any cats in heaven. ‘It wouldn’t be heaven otherwise.’ (But on what criteria would cats get there?) What would one do in heaven? I asked another believer and received the reply: ‘One wouldn’t do anything, except praise the Lord; it will be such a relief after the labours of this earthly life.’ But might it not be a trifle boring? Doing nothing. And for ever. It is surely the challenges which make life interesting — confronting problems, gaining satisfaction from solving them. Of course, one would be near to God, although his time might be pretty occupied with listening to prayers from those still involved in life (see below). But perhaps there wouldn’t be any unfolding of time in heaven. The ‘saved’ might be suspended in one indissoluble moment with nothing happening. (That would seem pretty similar to what we non-believers simply call ‘death’.) There were several score folk at the SIL Center just outside Porto Velho (‘colônia americana’ as the locals call it) — linguists taking a break from the native village, pilots, technicians, illustrators, administrators. I must emphasise that around half of these were unfailingly friendly and helpful to me throughout the twelve years of popping in and out on the way to the field. If I was there on a Sunday, it was politic — and interesting — to attend the four o’clock weekly meeting. An SIL member would tell their story, and reveal their spots. One Sunday afternoon, the author of the partial grammar of Pirahã (mentioned in the previous chapter) told of how he came from a family of criminals and had himself embarked on a nefarious career before he found Jesus. Well, that was certainly one use for the idea of a divinity. I remembered an old Aboriginal friend of mine from North Queensland who was almost killed in a motor accident when drunk and then God told him to stop drinking, which consequentially lengthened his life span. (Of course it should be possible to see for oneself the foolishness of excessive drinking, or robbing and stealing. But if not, then bring on the gods.) I devised a simple test for distinguishing types of missionary. Some would refer to the ‘doctors’ or ‘medicine men’ of Indian tribes as ‘shamans’ or as ‘pa- jés’ (the Portuguese term for shaman). These were basically good people, who would offer Christianity as an alternative or addition to the indigenous religion, which they would not try to suppress. And they would help Indians protect their territories from timber-getters and gold-seekers. They were, on the whole, sound linguists (the type we had welcomed to MA and PhD courses). The other ilk referred to shamans as ‘witchdoctors’. They would attempt to stamp out all non-Christian practices (as Irving Goldman describes for the Cubeo), and they were — with scarcely an exception — pretty poor-quality linguists. god and magog in brazil 299

One Sunday afternoon, a couple of ‘witchdoctor’ girls told of recent travels, with much mention of the evil one. On a fund-raising trip to the States, they had almost fallen out, which must have been the work of the devil. And then they’d totalled their hire car. Again it was Satan who must be responsible (no hint of human error). I sort-of wondered — are all car accidents caused by Satan, no human agency ever involved? As the talk unfolded, a devilish plan came to be revealed. They were about to finalise their translation of the New Testament, to give to the Apurina tribe, and Satan was plainly working over- time to subvert this. (Wouldn’t it have been easier for him just to burn down the warehouse in which the copies were lodged?) The pattern of prayer was particularly intriguing. Apparently it operates on a quantitative basis. In each house there was a list of three ‘prayer chains’. Whenever a crisis approached which might be alleviated by the Lord, the top name on each list would be notified. They would offer up a prayer themselves, then contact number two on the list who did the same and passed the message on to number three and so on. There might be a flood creeping up on a field location, with prayers requesting that it should not reach the village, and certainly not the missionaries’ house. Or a lap-top computer going a bit wonky in a village, where it was difficult to get it fixed. Twenty prayers on the same topic were more likely to succeed than just one, it seemed. Are they weighed on a scale? Or is there some sampling system so that with twenty requests there is more chance of getting one into the sample? (But I suppose the real function of the prayer chain was to confirm a sense of comforting communal solidarity.) Spending time with Evangelicals — at Casa Nova and at the SIL Centre — I got used to just about everything being attributed to God or his wily rival. A goodly shower to fill the rainwater tank — provided by you-know-who. Indeed, when I emerged from missionary-land and listened to the radio back home, it all seemed strange and a bit tame when news items were just reported, with no mention at all of divine will. During my first three spells in Brazil, the ‘witchdoctor’ brigade more or less ignored me. It was in 1994 that all hell broke loose. The previous chapter recounted how in 1993 Motobi and I walked five hours through the jungle to the main village of the Jamamadí tribe. How some younger people sang Christian songs in the Ajaka style. How Motobi got me to enquire whether they could sing ‘grandfather’s Ajaka’, in their own religion. How an old shaman was fetched and the past re-instated, to a combination of satisfaction and apprehension. 300 I am a linguist

Well, it seems that the crusty old missionary couple, Robert and Barbara Campbell, returned to the village six months after my visit. Then they went on to the biennial meeting of everyone from SIL Brazil, in Brasília, to make a public denunciation that I’d tried to undermine their missionary work. When I returned to Porto Velho a month or so later, John Taylor (the Director of Tribal Affairs) had flown up from Brasília to investigate the accusations. Firstly, I was said to have encouraged a Jamamadí man to take a second wife. This was a traditional practice, which the Campbells had forbidden. But that question had never been raised while I was there. Okay, that was the least complaint. More importantly, I was said to have ‘bawled out’ the Jamamadí for singing Christian songs and that had put back the Campbells’ work of conversion by five to ten years (they had been at it since 1962). It was all totally untrue. I’d listened to the Christian songs with interest, and recorded them. Played them back the next morning. But then we’d asked whether they wanted to sing traditional songs. And that was another thing that the Campbells had absolutely forbidden. It’s probably true that it set back the conversion program a good bit. I had recorded both Christian and non- Christian songs. It was the latter that was considered unacceptable, but the Campbells turned it around by falsely accusing me of rebuking their flock for singing Christian ones. John Taylor went with the Campbells to the Jamamadí village to check things out there. Two months later he wrote: ‘I want you to know, Bob, that I and my colleagues were entirely satisfied by your explanations ... Since some of my colleagues were very disturbed by these adverse comments about what you were purported to have said, I felt it only fair that you should hear about them and have the chance to explain your side of the story. I want first of all, Bob, to apologize to you that a few of my colleagues have questioned your integrity. I want to assure you, however that the leadership not only esteems you very highly, but wishes to state publicly that we do not think your integrity or credibility has been in the least compromised ... I would like to further compliment you on your Christian and conciliatory spirit as together we worked through these problematic questions. You could have been irritated and indeed very angry. Instead, you showed grace and a desire to continue working with us.’ This was a wonderful letter to receive. Unfortunately, it didn’t satisfy the ‘witchdoctor’ faction, who continued to treat me like a leper.

There is an amazing diversity of indigenous languages in Brazil, showing many features scarcely encountered elsewhere in the world. A certain amount of god and magog in brazil 301

work has been done on these by the SIL and other missionaries, and by people from local universities and museums. It was thus that I entered on my first visit to the country, in early 1991, with eager expectations. Which were, alas, not to be fulfilled. I found in the linguistics departments of Brazilian universities a handful of Americans who would not be able to get a job back home, and a number of Brazilians who should not have been given a job there. Only some of those in each department had a PhD, which would be a sine qua non in a first-world nation. Not that people weren’t welcoming, at that time. In each department I visited, a number of students would give little presentations on some aspect of the language they were working on. I’d take notes and that evening in my hotel room write up a fair summary of the gist I’d been able to extract, plus comments such as the following. ‘MA student, had two short field trips, said people gave wrong information on the first trip and had to start again on second. [My comment: should record and analyse texts, rather than just ask questions in Portuguese.] Seems to have unsure knowledge of language.’ And: ‘overall for department, very poor level of work and understanding.’ I talked to almost everyone who had done any work on an indigenous language. In some cases this had spanned three decades, and all they’d published were a couple of ten-page articles. I read many MA theses and the few PhD dissertations there were. Sixty pages, purporting to be a full grammar of a language. Notebook comment: ‘This looks like the simplest language in the world. Not at all, just one of the poorest linguists one could imagine.’ I only met one scholar whose work could rank alongside that from anyone in the USA or Germany or Australia. This was Professora Lucy Seki at the Uni- versity of Campinas. She’d been sent off to do her PhD in Moscow by a slightly left-leaning regime, and received a fair training there. When Lucy returned to Brazil a right-wing military junta had seized power and looked askance at her time in Russia. But Lucy was just a scholar who wanted to learn linguistics and pursue a career in it. She had been working for more than twenty years on Kamaiurá, a Tupí-Guaraní language spoken in the Xingu reservation. En- couraged by Alexandra Aikhenvald and myself, she did produce a really good grammar of the language, in 2000. It was the first book-length grammar of an Indian language by a Brazilian. As described in the previous chapter, Lucy Seki sponsored me for a research visa, and this turned out to be a lengthy process. I had to supply all manner of information, such as names of parents. After about eight months, the visa did come through. But the permit was, by error, in the name of my father, William 302 I am a linguist

Ward Dixon. He’d died the previous year, and the very last thing he would have wanted to do was go and live in an Indian village with no electricity or running water and a maximum of biting flies. But — that’s Brazil. I did fieldwork for several years on that visa with the wrong name but officials either didn’t notice or didn’t care. That’s also Brazil. In Australia and most other countries there is an established routine for linguistic analysis. One should spend at least six months living in a community where the language is used. The basic data consists of texts, stories told by a native speaker and transcribed in the field with their help. One also learns from trying to speak the language and being corrected whilst doing so; and by just noting what people say around one in the context of daily life. This is ‘immersion fieldwork’. Every one of these basic principles was ignored by students in Brazil. They would spend just two or three weeks in a village and confine themselves to asking questions in Portuguese. They would record lists of words (not texts) but not write anything down in the field. Bring the tape-recording back to university and attempt to transcribe it there, on their own, with no native speaker to help. Note down every phonetic sound and from the distribution of these try to work out the significant sounds (the phonemes). In fact, these two tasks must be done together, in the field, with continual feed-back from speakers. The results were, of course, often woeful (that is, wrong). But even Lucy Seki defended such a system. ‘That’s how we do things in Brazil.’ The following year, in 1992, I actually took part in the examination of an MA thesis. The candidate had written that ‘numbers are nouns’, a bland statement. I enquired what reasons she had for saying this. The reply was: ‘Oh, maybe they’re not nouns, maybe they’re adjectives.’ But what I wanted was some justification, a bit of argumentation, not simply an opinion. Just recently, I tried to understand a PhD dissertation from Brazil. The student had spent a few months at a good university elsewhere and heard sound linguistic talk all around without being able to understand it. Her dissertation included all the right terms — the buzz words — but used in seemingly random ways. The contents page looked good but the chapters which followed were incoherent and incomprehensible. It had been examined and approved by Bra- zilian linguists, who probably wouldn’t have understood it if the terms had been used appropriately. Ride again, Professor Feynman! All this is sad but essentially innocuous. What is particularly painful is the antagonistic attitude of those who call themselves linguists in Brazil towards SIL. Before describing this, it’s good to step back and take stock of the parties god and magog in brazil 303

involved. It was mentioned in chapter 12 that in Australia anyone with a thimbleful of indigenous blood can be called an Aborigine. Applying this principle in Brazil, well over three-quarters of the population would be classified as Indians (a higher proportion in the north, a little less in the south). Portuguese colonisers typically didn’t bring their women with them, but married or co- habited with Indians, so that the whole nation is more-or-less light brown in colour. (Also included in the mix was a fair sprinkling of black slaves fetched from Africa.) The work ethic in Brazil is poor, support funding not good. And it is basically a Roman Catholic nation. SIL missionaries are predominantly white Americans, with a sprinkling of others from Canada, Europe and places like Korea. Of the several hundred SIL people I’ve met, not one was an African-American. They receive reasonable funding, from supporters and churches back home. The SIL Centers have planes, which are well serviced and flown by excellent pilots. I didn’t notice a frantic level of activity at any SIL Center — some teams take thirty or more years to translate the New Testament — but there is steady progress. The publications of SIL linguists do compare rather favourably — in both quantity and quality — with those of Brazilian linguists. SIL members are fairly extreme Evangelicals. Every few years they have to complete something like a State- ment of Faith, to ensure there has been no backsliding. (For example, a continuing belief in miracles is essential.) Brazilian linguists, almost en masse, really abhor both the good folk and the less good folk of SIL. Won’t talk to them. Try to stop them getting grant money and research permissions. In March 1991 I spent a week in Belém (Portuguese for Bethlehem), a large city at the mouth of the Amazon. Three good days at the SIL Centre; I listened with interest to a discussion on pronouns in languages of the Tupí family. Then three pleasant days at the Goeldi Museum, where there was also a discussion on Tupí pronouns. Each group was dealing with the same topic, but the Museum linguists wouldn’t countenance having a joint meeting with the missionaries. I tried to pass on ideas from the first group to the second, and they were really interested. But talk together — no! And so it goes on. One doesn’t just pursue a stand-off by not talking. Spread a few malicious rumours about the other side. The SIL people are said to be engaged in gold exploration and in drug running — all utter nonsense. And are they agents of the CIA? Well, I’m sure that none of those at Porto Velho (even the ‘witchdoctor’ variety) were. Of course Brazilian scholars don’t like it — as I don’t — that SIL is pushing its own brand of Christianity into Indian communities. But there are Brazilian Catholic organisations doing the same thing. Probably most gall- 304 I am a linguist

ing is the fact that some SIL linguists are more productive than Brazilians in compiling grammars and dictionaries and publishing them.

Amazonian languages are, in my eyes, the most fascinating in the world. And they are also the least known. Cambridge University Press have a ‘language survey’ series (the first volume in it had been The languages of Australia, by me, back in 1980) and they readily agreed that Alexandra Aikhenvald and I should edit a volume, The Amazonian languages. There would be a long chapter on each of the major genetic groups, shorter chapters for the smaller families, two chapters surveying languages on which less was known, and a couple of chapters on small linguistic areas. Aikhenvald and I share the same attitudes. We do not condemn any one group but try to perceive the best in each. The most appropriate scholar was invited for every chapter, some of them SIL members (from the Brazilian, Co- lombian and Peruvian branches), others Brazilian linguists. Invitations were sent out in late 1995, asking for a first draft by August 1996 if possible. There would then be upwards of a year for correspondence between editors and author, and one or two revisions of the initial version, with the final typescript to be sent off to the publisher by about June 1997. All of the SIL people we invited answered promptly, sent in drafts more-or- less on time, and undertook the (sometimes extensive) revisions we suggested. Some of the Brazilians wrote their chapters in Portuguese with Alexandra Aikhenvald translating them into English (and doing a good deal more besides). The largest family is Tupí, one branch of it being Tupí-Guaraní, including some of the best-known and best-described languages. It seemed appropriate to us to have two chapters here, one on Tupí with only minimal mention of Tupí-Guaraní, and one on Tupí-Guaraní. Cheryl Jensen, a fine linguist from the SIL Center at Belém, agreed to undertake Tupí-Guaraní and she got this in on schedule. The hardest chapter to get a taker for was Tupí. We asked one Brazil- ian, and then another. Rumour has it that they didn’t want to be in a volume with SIL people. (Although it may be that they realised they weren’t quite up to the task of writing such a chapter.) The preceding chapter tells of how, when I first got the idea of going to work in Brazil, advice was offered by an old friend — SIL linguist Des Derbyshire (he wrote a fine chapter on the Carib family in our Amazonian volume). He said that I must write to Professor Aryon Rodrigues, the elderly patriarch of Brazilian linguistics and warned that he probably wouldn’t reply. And he didn’t. Since then I’d met Aryon, even stayed at his house, and knew that — although he had god and magog in brazil 305

never done any significant fieldwork himself — nobody has a sounder knowledge of the literature. Rodrigues was really the only person capable of dealing with Macro-Jê languages, so we sent him an invitation. Of course he didn’t reply. Eventually, we called him on the phone. Yes, he would do Macro-Jê. And he’d also quite like to undertake the Tupí chapter. Terrific, this would solve the problem. But, could Aryon stick to the time schedule, first drafts of both chapters within about six months, everything to be finalised by mid-1997? Yes, he could. All other chapters progressed smoothly, 1996 faded into 1997, nothing from Aryon. In April 1997, Alexandra Aikhenvald went to a conference in Houston Texas which Aryon also attended. He had a bit of a draft for the Macro-Jê chapter (nothing yet on Tupí). She worked with him on how it could be improved, and suggested that he might add at the end a table of phonological correspondences. The whole volume was ready to go, as planned, by June 1997, except for Aryon’s two chapters. Then in November a fullish draft of Macro-Jê did arrive. As editor, I tidied it up a bit and added, from my own knowledge of the literature, sections on ergativity, valency-changing processes, and switch-reference marking. Aryon approved my new version (it was still about 75 per cent his work). Twelve months before, we’d sent him the chapter on Tupí-Guaraní by Cher- yl Jensen, who had done an MA under Aryon and included copious references to his work. We emphasised that Aryon was to focus on the other subgroups of Tupí. Nothing came. Time rolled on. We telephoned him, did so every week. The publisher’s editor from Cambridge wrote. Finally, in May 1998, a chapter titled ‘Tupí’ did arrive. Hurrah! But hosannas turned to headaches when we read it. Aryon’s chapter was almost all on Tupí-Guaraní languages, only a small portion on the nine other branches of the family, which were his bailiwick. What could be done? To publish the book without a Tupí chapter would be unsatisfactory. To include what were effectively two chapters on Tupí-Guaraní would be ridiculous. Scrap the volume? Or get someone else to write the Tupí chapter, without any delay? So I did it, with Aikhenvald’s assistance. I had virtually all the publications there were, plus some theses, and copious notes made from talking to people in Brazil. I wrote the chapter and sent it to Aryon on 15 June 1998, offering three alternatives:

1. We use the edited version of the Tupí chapter which I’m sending to you, making corrections and additions in the light of what you suggest should be done to it. But you will have to let us have these quickly. The chapter to be published under your name. 306 I am a linguist

2. Ditto, but published under our joint names to show that you are not taking full responsibility for it, but that I have had some input. 3. We make alternative arrangements for the Tupí chapter.

By 3 we meant that the chapter I had written would be published under my name; I would have had to omit two examples from an unpublished source I had taken over from Aryon’s draft; everything else I had used was in the public domain. Aryon replied that he accepted ‘alternative 1’. He sent some additions and corrections which I used. He requested that the sections on subordinate clauses and on pivots should be omitted, but we retained these. Luciana Storto, a bright Brazilian linguist who was then doing a PhD on Karitiána, a Tupí language (in Chomsky’s department at MIT, of all places) read the draft and made a number of most useful comments. And we were able to send the final typescript off to Cambridge University Press in July 1998, just a year behind schedule. (Aryon later told people that he didn’t consider the Tupí chapter to be his. Quite correct. But he didn’t have to choose ‘alternative 1’. And he did accept payment from Cambridge University Press for having written the chapter.) At the beginning of the volume we did, as editors, introduce the topic and the chapters which followed. Because of the situation that existed (and which still exists), we felt that it would be remiss not to provide some suitable comment, saying: ‘In other parts of the world (for instance, Australia) there is mutual respect and cooperation between missionary linguists and scholars from the local universities. In contrast, in most (although not all) South American countries there is antipathy — sometimes even open hostility — between the two groups.’ We mentioned some of the unfounded accusations levelled at SIL, concerning gold and drugs, and then continued:

There is good and bad in every group. Some of the missionaries do — as is alleged — attempt to destroy the native culture and religion and replace it with their own brand of fire-and-brimstone Christianity. (These people should be banned; they also tend to be those who do the poorest linguistic work.) But many of the missionaries do much more good than harm. They may help protect the lands of a native tribe from invasion by gold miners and the like. They often provide medicines. They will help a people adapt to the outside world that is gradually intruding into their lives. And they can also (over and above the business of Bible translation) provide grammars, primers, vocabularies, volumes of traditional texts, and assist in literacy work. god and magog in brazil 307

In many places the lack of cooperation between the two groups is marked. One may find a group of missionaries and a group of academic linguists (of similar quality) working on the same set of languages, but with neither referring to the work of the other in their publications. They sometimes won’t attend the same conferences; they decline to communicate and cooperate in a way that would be beneficial to all.

We then stated that ‘the standard of scholarship in South American linguistics is not high,’ appending the caveat ‘we must add that there are notable exceptions on both sides — a number of descriptive studies that achieve a high standard of clarity and explanation.’ Because of these comments, when the book was published — in mid 1999 — all hell broke loose (for the second time in this chapter!). The very people who we had most in mind when saying ‘not of high quality’ responded in a way that showed their quality had been overstated. An incoherent attack was submitted to the electronic newsletter Linguist List but rejected by them. It maintained that neither of us could read Portuguese or Spanish and had referred only to things written in English. What can one say? A glance at any of the bibliographies reveals a preponderance of publications in languages other than English. (For example, the bibliography for the Tupí chapter has 26 items in Portuguese, 10 in German, 5 in French and 24 in English. With a comparable range for others of the chapters we had written.) Other comments were of a similarly undiscerning nature. The main grumble was quite clear. The critics were annoyed because we had not launched a full-frontal attack on missionaries. We had tried to produce a balanced volume with balanced comments, but in a war (and it appears these people did see it in that way) one must unequivocally take sides. It was only a small minority who attacked us but — as so often in such circumstances — they were highly vocal. Many Brazilian linguists wrote in our favour. Comments such as ‘the attack against you found little support and was the beginning of a strategy by a small group to occupy positions in the national bureaucracy and exclude foreign funding, study abroad, etc. that they could not themselves control.’ Terry Malone, a linguist from SIL Colombia who had not been involved with the volume, said in her review: ‘non-specialists in South American languages perhaps have no idea of the courage and hard work it took to produce this volume.’ A reviewer from outside the fray, Edward J. Vajda (of Western Washington University in the USA) opined that ‘the editors have done a superb job in uniting the disparate contributions and their nec- 308 I am a linguist

essarily uneven presentation of material into a unified whole.’ He concluded that the book should serve to attract new scholars to the task of ‘documenting the region’s disappearing languages’ and ‘then this pioneering volume may in retrospect come to be viewed as one of the most important linguistics books of the late 20th century.’ The most revealing comment came from a linguist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (who had studied abroad), accusing us of being ‘clearly Eu- rocentric, expecting from people here the same attitudes towards productivity that one has in Europe or the States,’ and adding ‘I also hate the lack of profes- sionalism and the slow pace prevalent in Brazil.’ So there it was, in a nutshell. As Feynman pointed out, the ‘academic’ world in Brazil puffs along in its own groove. People don’t want to work hard, why should they? They don’t want to think, why on earth should they? And they maintain that it is unfair to compare them with people in first-world countries, who have a strong work ethic and the will to achieve. Pity the poor languages, then. Those spoken in North America receive fine analysis and description from the many good linguists resident there. Are the languages of South America condemned to be under-documented because the pace of academic life in those countries is relaxed (and proud of it)? Well, there is Lucy Seki’s fine grammar. Recently a few young Brazilian linguists have gone overseas and received good training (but some of the best have chosen to stay away). In 2003, Aikhenvald published a fine grammar of Tariana (and she has put out shorter accounts of two other Arawak languages). Another intruder, in the person of me, wrote a hefty account of Jarawara. It is all very much needed.

Let’s now swing back the focus to the village of Casa Nova. For me this was simply a place of linguistic delight and convivial comradeship with the Jarawara people. Alan Vogel, of course, had his own agenda. On my first visit there in 1991, I enquired what he had actually said to the villagers about this. ‘When I first came, in 1987, I told them I wanted to translate the Bible into their language.’ ‘Have you said anything about it since?’ I asked. ‘No.’ It seemed to me that the Jarawara thought Alan spent several months of the year living in their midst because he liked it there, and wished to learn the language. I knew it would take a few years for me to complete the grammar (although I wouldn’t have reckoned on this extending to twelve), and that Alan would be slowly pursuing his aims. The fact that I’d visit the village for a month or two each year was immaterial to what he did. The Jarawara would undoubtedly assume at least the outward mantle of Christianity. It could be interesting to god and magog in brazil 309

observe the process of conversion, or so I thought in 1991. I had absolutely no idea of the anguish this would cause me. First exposure came in 1992, not in Casa Nova but in the Jarawara village of Agua Branca, two-and-a-bit hours walk along a narrow jungle path. There reside a couple from a different missionary organisation, one that just deals in conversion without going to the considerable trouble of translating the New Testament into an indigenous language. An American man who we can call Hiram (Hiram P. Missionary) and his attractive Brazilian wife, for whom the soubriquet Sheba is appropriate. Hiram and Sheba organised a great Jarawara casamento (that is, marriage) occasion. As with many societies, the Jarawara did not have any ceremony for marriage; a man and a woman would just start to live together. But one Jarawara man from Agua Branca had been taken to a Brazilian city and seen the pomp of a Catholic wedding. He wanted the same thing for himself and his wife of a couple of years. Hiram, a staunch Protestant, most certainly didn’t want this to happen. So he decided to organise his own nuptial ceremony, at Agua Branca. Alan and I and just about everyone else from Casa Nova walked across. ‘Hiram won’t be declaring them man and wife,’ Alan assured me. ‘He’s not an ordained minister so he can’t do that. He will make a speech, though.’ There’d been a farewell feast when I left Waitabu village in Fiji, and the guest of honour must make a speech. I planned to write a draft and then get Sepo to offer improvements and corrections. But that wasn’t Sepo’s way. He wrote the speech and then went over it with me. After that I wandered off into the forest to practise delivery, making sure I knew what intonation patterns to employ. Thinking back to this, I enquired of Hiram if, after writing his speech in Jarawara, he’d checked it with a native speaker. No, not necessary. But Hiram had been there no more than a year, and I knew (from written notes in Jarawara he’d sent to Alan) that his command of the grammar was hazy. Well, Hiram delivered his speech while all the Jarawara stood around po-faced. Jarawara has its own intonation pattern: the voice goes down at the end of clause within a sentence and up at the end of a sentence. Hiram’s voice went up when it should have been down and down instead of up — up and down, up and down, rather than down and up, down and up. He then spoke in Portuguese, clasped the couple’s hands together, rings were exchanged, invocation declaimed. Ordained or not, Hiram did seem to be doing his stuff. It isn’t a wedding — a western-style wedding — without a cake. Sheba made one. Well, having only a tiny oven, she actually made 17 cakes and piled them 310 I am a linguist

up. A quite new food for the Jarawara and very popular it was. Hiram and Alan put a few dollars together to purchase a European-type pig. (Not a tasty Brazilian wild pig, or peccary.) One took up a plate, received a dollop of manioc flour and then a piece of porcine fat. I wandered to the edge of the clearing, followed by a dog who’d plainly divined my intent, and threw it the portion of pig, eating just nutty manioc flour. I didn’t have a sore stomach the following day, but others did. There are two sorts of dance party in Jarawara villages — either dancing to records of Brazilian pop music, or singing in traditional Ajaka style. The groom (good for him!) had opted for an Ajaka celebration. A shaman stood by a tall pole intoning the words, with responses by men and women lined up beside him. Then, after fifteen minutes or so, all joined hands and danced around the pole, a few revolutions this way, then change direction and a few that way. Alan joined in the ring. And Sheba did. I recorded the singing until the tape ran out and then joined in too, holding hands and echoing responses. Hiram just sat to one side. ‘Why didn’t he join in?’ I asked Alan the following day. ‘Because they were songs to heathen spirits, and he wouldn’t participate in that sort of worship.’ An American Evangelical couple were staying for a few days with Hiram and Sheba. Tourist-like, they had a video camera which was pointed every which-a-way. But Hiram specifically requested that no film be made of the casamento, in case ‘anthropologists’ (the word shot out like a dart of evil) might get hold of the film and accuse them of trying to change the Jarawara’s culture. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Jamamadí and Banawá are mutually intelligible with Jarawara. These are dialects of what can be called the Madi language. Now it is always good to work on as many dialects as possible. A language is a little like an iceberg — one bit may be above the surface in a certain dialect but only present in covert form for another. In Australia, I’d benefited immensely from being able to work on two dialects of Warrgamay, two of Yidiñ, and five of Dyirbal. But here it was virtually impossible. I’d gathered some information on Jamamadí during my short visit to ‘the Campbells’ village’, described above. Alan and I had visited the Banawá village in 1991 and I’d worked a little with a Banawá speaker at the Porto Velho Center in 1993, but the SIL team there (Ernie and Barbara Buller) were as proprietorial over ‘our people’ as were the Campbells. I obtained enough information about the Jamamadí and Banawá dialects to perceive significant similarities and some interesting points of difference from Jarawara, but the political situation meant god and magog in brazil 311

that I couldn’t fully investigate these in the way I did in Australia. The grammar of Jarawara that I produced would have benefited from a more systematic cross-dialectal comparison. There were thus three SIL teams, each working on translation of the New Testament into a dialect of the same language, dialects which are mutually intelligible — the Campbells on Jamamadí, the Bullers on Banawá, and Alan Vogel on Jarawara. It was for them and their financial supporters — not for me — to decide whether such triplication of effort should be justified. But the odd thing is that they didn’t cooperate. I asked Ernie Buller if he’d looked at the fine grammar of Paumarí — from the same small Arawá family — co-written by Shirley Chapman, his colleague at the Porto Velho Centre. He hadn’t, although there are many points of similarity with Banawá and Chapman’s analysis would have been of great assistance to him. Neither the Campbells nor Bullers had read Alan Vogel’s MA thesis on Jarawara, from the University of Texas. These missionary linguists had adjoining study cubicles in the SIL Centre but they seemed not to talk to each other. I corresponded with Ernie Buller and he was generous in answering questions. Then he asked me one, in connection with his Bible translation: do the Jarawara make much use of rhetorical questions? I had no information on this. So I wrote to Alan, he provided a couple of examples and I passed these on to Ernie (not really liking to say where they came from). There was I, sitting in Australia, acting as an information conduit between two missionaries in adjacent rooms at Porto Velho. Alan Vogel had worked out bits of the grammar of Jarawara but many topics he simply wasn’t aware of. There are phonological rules, things like ‘omit syllable -ha- at a certain position in a word with respect to stress’. More than a dozen such rules in fact. I worked these out and explained them to Alan. He’d alert me when he thought he’d found an exception to one of the rules, I’d investigate and this might lead to reformulation of the rule. Typically, when I arrived on a field trip, Alan might provide an example of a sentence he’d heard which included what appeared to be a new suffix. He left it to me to get further examples, work out its functional properties, and where it fitted into the overall grammatical scheme for the language. Alan had had a fair basic training in linguistics from SIL and during his MA course. Between 1991 and 1995 I was able to add to this, explaining many of the recent developments in typological theory and how to understand and explain the sort of complex grammatical phenomena which abound in Jarawara. 312 I am a linguist

We must have been a study in opposites for the Indians. I’d joke and chat, and respond to their requests to imitate the behaviour and noises made by all manner of animals. Like most missionaries, Alan doesn’t have a great sense of humour. But he was a real friend to the Jarawara, listening to their worries and providing sound and measured advice. Alan didn’t hurry the process of conversion. At Agua Branca in 1992, Hiram and Sheba’s house was strewn with Biblical picture books; Alan’s house had none. Then in 1994 he createdA Bíblia em quadrinhos, cartoon-style depiction of a number of stories. Christianity was now creeping up on Casa Nova from two sides. Hiram and Sheba had themselves composed Christian songs (not all that grammatical, but vaguely recognisable as Jarawara) sung in a Brazilian way, with lots of hand-clapping and suchlike. (In fact religious and secular songs in popular Brazilian culture are extremely difficult to tell apart; one just has to listen to see whether or not the word ‘Jesus’ is mentioned.) Christianity came in a quite different garb for the Jamamadí, where the Campbells abhorred anything like Brazilian popular or religious music; they preferred a quieter style, a simplified variant of traditional singing with the names of deities changed. By 1995 these influences, and Alan’s low-key approach, were just having their effect. A youngish fellow called Bibiri could be called the first convert; he was composing his own Christian songs in Jarawara, to be sung in the style introduced by Hiram and Sheba at Agua Branca. It was four years before I returned. Alan had enrolled in a PhD course at the University of Pittsburgh, and had been indoctrinated with Chomskian formal linguistics, which was not at all appropriate for our kind of descriptive work. It involved casting aside most of what he’d learnt at the University of Texas and from me, effectively going back to the state of linguistics in the 1960s. And Alan was very definite about it. On previous field trips Alan (with or without wife and children) had been in the village with me for part of the time, but then they returned to Porto Velho so that it was just me and the Jarawara. On the 1999 trip I was never alone in the village. The hut which the villagers had constructed for me in 1992 had been eaten by termites (five years is considered a normal hut-life there) so I slept in a small erection which let in every sort of insect. Linguistic work was, as always, magnificent. But I did find it hard to sleep, to relax. Mosquitos and pium flies a-plenty, bits of out-of-place Chomskyism, and — most unsettling of all — Christianity. I’d heard it said that when conversions commence, missionaries tend to discriminate between those who have accepted the Lord and folk who prefer god and magog in brazil 313

to stick to their traditional beliefs. The Vogel’s pastor from Porto Velho came in on the plane which was to take me away, and the first person to be introduced was not village chief Okomobi (still a heathen at that time) but Bibiri ‘the leader of the Christians’. Instead of the restrained and haunting songs of the Jarawara’s age-old religion, explaining how their spirits made the jungle to be the way it is, every night ears would be assailed by semi-syncopated Christian songs, with hand-clapping, accompanied by a guitar that was always out-of-tune. One man, Kofena, who was not a convert — and, as far as I know, still isn’t — had a just-pubescent daughter. After her periods started, she was not to be seen in public, and went down to bathe with head covered in a blanket. Quite soon, there’d be a female initiation ceremony for her. Alan said he was keen to witness this. But Kofeno delayed it until after the Vogels had left. There are two religions at Casa Nova, in competition. Which will win? (No prize on offer for the correct answer.) My last field trip before finishing the grammar was in March and April 2003 and then I was the only outsider in the village. Alan let me stay in his house which has a wooden bed with a rubber mattress and a fine mosquito net. The best field visit of all — just me and the Jarawara. Checking up grammatical points, recording and analysing a couple of new texts, clarifying the meanings of old and new words, all amidst the glow of friendship. There were, of course, more converts, and raucous Christian singing in one house or another each night. But since the Vogels had built their own house a little way off the village proper, I only heard a bit of clapping in the distance. Many things had changed over the years. Football (the soccer variety) is in- disputably the national game of Brazil. From before my first visit, Jarawara boys and men (and some girls) would play football around dusk, goalposts erected on the end of the missionary airstrip. If I happened to enquire what the score was the same answer was always supplied: ‘it’s equal.’ Traditional society had not featured competition. They did not count goals, didn’t play to win, just for the enjoyment of the game. However, by 1995 the score was being kept. A team of Jamamadís would walk four hours through the jungle, play a game against Casa Nova, and walk four miles back. They lost — well, wouldn’t you if you’d had a hard four-hour trek before kick-off? By 2003, there was a government medical station at Casa Nova, which was meant to serve a wide area (including Agua Branca and the Jamamadí village). A nurse would come for six weeks, but then it might be several months before the next visit. Jarawara men had always had a smattering of Portuguese, but 314 I am a linguist

the women scarcely any. The nurse, of course, spoke nothing but Portuguese, so the women had to learn some in order to communicate with her. In this and other small ways, the domain of use of Portuguese is widening, and that of Jarawara consequently narrowing. The medical station is plainly an excellent innovation, but it must inevitably bring in its train some diminution of Jarawara language and culture. I hadn’t been able to be honest with the people of Fiji about my religious stance; that was the way things were in that nation. At the SIL Center in Porto Velho, and with Alan, I had said nothing explicit. But the Jarawara were my friends, and they weren’t at all like the Fijians. Every evening, ten or twenty people would descend on Alan’s house when I was staying there, to chat, and kid each other and me, and have some fun. One evening talk turned to Christi- anity. So I said it: Krente ama okere, ‘I am not a Christian’. I thought it appropriate to let people know that there was at least one foreigner around who didn’t subscribe to what had been presented to them as the party line. The response was rather wonderful: ‘Is Alan a Christian?’ I replied in the indisputable affirmative. (Why do you think he’s been coming here for the past 16 years, I wanted to shout out.) I must admit to feeling a twinge of apprehension the next day. My regular friends and language helpers popped in and out during daylight hours. But would the mob come around as usual after dark? Half-past-six, no one came. Seven o’clock, empty house. Then three little boys (who seemed to do everything together) climbed up the steps to my front door. I showered them with snacks, in gratitude. And then everyone else arrived, more than ever before, even including Bibiri. Christianity was still an option for them, and I was entitled to my choice. Not that too many of the Brazilians in Porto Velho would be likely to share this view. Having a couple of days there after leaving Casa Nova, while waiting for the plane home, I walked around and around — a church on every corner. However I did experience one unreal moment. There was a tall building, bearing a large sign which seemed to say:

CENTRO DE AGNÓSTICO

Wow! Here, in Porto Velho? But, as I walked closer, a tree had been obscuring two letters at bottom left. It was actually a medical building: CENTRO DE DIAGNÓSTICO. Well, the illusion was lovely for the moment that it lasted. god and magog in brazil 315

SOURCES

Quotations from pages 212, 218 and 219 of Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!, Adventures of a curious character, by Richard P. Feynman, edited by Edward Hutchings, published in 1985 by W. W. Norton in New York. The Ten Commandments were first set out in Chapter 20 ofShemoth (literally ‘Names’), the second book of the Jewish Torah. When this book was taken over into the Christian Old Testament, it was renamed Exodus. Quotation from page 16 of Tom Petrie’s reminiscences of early Queensland (Dating from 1837), recorded by his daughter [Constance Campbell Petrie], republished in 1932 by the Queensland Book Depot in Brisbane and Angus and Robertson in Sydney (originally published in 1904 by Watson, Ferguson of Brisbane). Quotations from pages 300-1 ofThe Cubeo, Indians of the northwest Amazon, 2nd edition, by Irving Goldman, published in 1979 by the University of Illinois Press. Lucy Seki’s Gramática do Kamaiurá, Língua Tupi-Guarani do Alto Xingu was published in 2000 by Editora Unicamp in Campinas, Brazil. It was reviewed by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald on pages 316-19 of Language, volume 78, June 2002, and by me on pages 120-2 of the International Journal of American Linguistics, Volume 68, January 2002. Review of The Amazonian languages by Terry Malone on pages 29-49 of Notes on Linguistics, Volume 2, Number 1, 2001. Edward J. Vajda’s review was published on pages 187-94 of the Journal of Linguistics, Volume 37, March 2001. A grammar of Tariana, from northwest Amazonia, by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2003. ‘Paumarí’, by Shirley Chapman and Desmond C. Derbyshire is pages 161-352 of Handbook of Amazonian languages, Volume 3, edited by Desmond C. Derby- shire and Geoffrey K. Pullum, published in 1991 by Mouton de Gruyter in Berlin.

15 A productive partnership

The 1990s ushered in what was to be the happiest and most satisfying period of my life, due to two notable events — one of a personal nature, in 1992, and the other an academic recognition, in 1996. In 1991, the Australian Research Council initiated Senior Research Fellow- ships, allocating twenty across all disciplines and all the universities of Aus- tralia. It was coincidental that one of these came my way just after I gave up the headship of the department (after twenty years and six months at the helm). No more administration. No more teaching, unless I wanted to. Teaching is, of course, an important part of a university. From a lecturer’s point of view, there are two benefits. The satisfaction of imparting the fundamentals of a subject to bright and interested students, together with the feed- back they can provide. And, as mentioned in Chapter 6, it is only by teaching that one really masters a discipline. Distrust anyone who has had pure research positions career-long; their knowledge and understanding is likely to be confined (that is to say, spotty). During the 1960s in Edinburgh and London, and especially during the 1970s in Canberra, I’d effectively turned myself into a good all-round linguist by a combination of teaching across all sub-fields of linguistics, and intensive fieldwork-based analysis of languages. After a while, teaching becomes a habit. An enjoyable — and useful — occupation, but not necessarily the best use of scholarly skills. I continued on with a fairly heavy teaching load through the 1980s when it would have been more sensible to devote a higher proportion of time to writing. Then, when I was awarded the Senior Research Fellowship and didn’t have to teach at all, there were mild withdrawal symptoms, like an actor or musician feeling the need for audience approbation each evening. But these did soon recede. I’d done my share of undergraduate instruction, and could now concentrate on my own research and — a little way down the line — organising that of others. And so I worked as never before. Continued with the lifetime-long comparative study of the 250 or so indigenous languages of Australia. And revised and expanded the substantial paper on ‘ergativity’ (which had been published 318 I am a linguist

in the journal Language in 1979) as a monograph. I completed a draft of this in 1992 and — as is my wont — circulated it to a score or so of colleagues for their informed comment and criticism. The first paragraph of the preface in this draft went:

I never intended to work on ergativity. The topic more-or-less crept up on me, embraced me, and has never really relaxed its hold. Not that I am com- plaining. It is a little like being seduced by the most intelligent and beautiful woman, whom I would certainly have yearned for if I’d known of her existence before it actually happened.

However, three of the twenty readers (two men and one woman) objected, commenting that it was ‘offensive and trivialising’. (Political correctness was just then emerging from embryo.) I disagreed, but one has to test the temperature before diving in, so it was changed to a less engaging form:

I never intended to work on ergativity. The topic more-or-less crept up on me, embraced me, and has never really relaxed its hold. Not that I am com- plaining — working on ergativity has provided the most intense intellectual satisfaction.

The book was published in 1994, and has been reprinted a number of times. And then to the most important encounter of my life. Professora Lucy Seki was sponsoring me for a research visa to work on Jarawara and I spent the month of June 1992 with her at the State University of Campinas, in southern Brazil. There I met Alexandra (Sasha) Aikhenvald — see plate 24 — who was professor at the Federal University in Florianópolis, a little further south. She came from Moscow and had emerged — like a butterfly out of a striated cocoon — from the corruption and repression of Soviet Russia. Aikhenvald was, simply, the partner for whom I’d been waiting all my life. Alexandra Aikhenvald’s paternal grandfather was a leading economist who was arrested in 1932 for opposing Stalin concerning the wisdom of collectivi- sation. He was executed in 1941, although it was more than forty years before his family found out exactly what had happened to him and when. His wife — mainly because she was his wife — was sent off for eight years of hard labour and then indefinite exile. Her maternal grandfather was a high officer in what was later called the KGB, and had played a role in the prosecution of the paternal grandfather. In April 1937 he was arrested as part of Stalin’s purge and a productive partnership 319

executed four months later, although the family didn’t find out about this for another twenty years (and Alexandra was able to pinpoint his place of execution and burial only in 2006). The maternal grandmother was also sent off for eight years’ hard labour and then exile, for being the wife of ‘an enemy of the people’. Alexandra’s father and mother were, perforce, brought up by friends and relatives. Then, both were exiled, in 1949 (when about twenty years of age), simply by virtue of being the children of ‘enemies of the people’. They met in exile. In 1951 her father, Yuri Aikhenvald — who became an outstanding poet, writer and literary critic — was then arrested, as part of an anti-semitic campaign. Like many others, he feigned mental illness to avoid being sent to a forced labour camp. Alexandra’s parents were reunited only in 1955, after Khrushchev rolled back the carpet of repression a little following Stalin’s demise. She was born in 1957. Alexandra Aikhenvald was the brightest student at school and intended to study Classics at the Moscow State University. But the head of that department, A. A. Takhogodi, stated that with such a Jewish name she would not be accepted. So — to our eternal benefit — she enrolled in the Department of Structural and Computational Linguistics. Obtained excellent results for BA and MA examinations. Then they denied her a PhD scholarship, again because she was Jewish. So she got a job as Research Assistant in the Institute of Orien- tal Studies, within the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and did a PhD (on Berber languages, from North Africa) in her spare time. But in what circumstances? Worse than those of disadvantaged indigenous peoples in Australia. Sharing a small apartment of two rooms plus kitchen with parents, aunt, husband (who didn’t get on with parents) and baby son. One would be listening to BBC World Service radio broadcasts in one room, another watching television in the other room. Amongst this, with child on lap, Alexandra typed out a fine PhD dissertation. It was published, in three parts, and won First Prize in the National Competition for Publications in Oriental Languages in 1988 and again in 1990. At the early age of thirty- one, she was appointed Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Oriental Languages. Then escape from that awful country. Escape to anywhere. To Brazil, nothing much academically, but a free country. And with lots of lovely indigenous languages, which the Brazilian linguists themselves had most certainly not done justice to. She undertook intensive fieldwork in the north-west — across a river border from Colombia — on several languages from the Arawak family. 320 I am a linguist

We met several times in June 1992 and then again in September, as I returned from the field. Alexandra came to Canberra the next January, and we taught together at a Workshop on Arawá languages at the SIL Porto Velho Center during July and August. Alexandra had applied for an ARC Senior Research Fellowship and was awarded one in September 1993. There were only ten that year, across all Australian universities. Both in Russia and in Brazil she had published prolifically — high-quality books and papers, including a grammar of Modern Hebrew (published in 1990, second edition in 2009) and also one on Biblical Hebrew (which had been accepted for publication but was wallowing within the system). She took up the Senior Research Fellowship, at the rank of Professor, at the Australian National University in February 1994. When the renowned scientist Thomas Huxley got married, in 1855, his friend Charles Darwin sent greetings and a word of warning: ‘I hope your marriage will not make you idle; happiness, I fear, is not good for work.’ He need not have worried; Huxley made botanical observations concerning his honeymoon locale. Neither did I have cause for concern. We didn’t feel the need to marry (‘been there, done that’) but a lifetime commitment to someone who is even more of a workaholic than oneself can only lead to increased concentration and productivity. It is wonderful to have as partner someone who is one’s intellectual equal. (If it wasn’t for male pride, I’d be honest and say ‘intellectual superior’.) We have remarkably similar views on life, abhorring cant, sloppiness and sloth. And we work well as a team — tossing ideas back and forth, intertwining our separate fields of expertise, collaborating on every kind of endeavour. Really, it is a case of one plus one making rather more than two.

Meanwhile, in the linguistics department, a process of erosion began. It had not been easy to decide who should succeed me as head. Bill Foley, who would have been a strong candidate, had just left for the chair at Sydney. Anna Wierz- bicka had been promoted to professor but she absolutely declined to undertake what, within the Australian system, every professor is expected to do — take on a major administrative role for at least a couple of years. So I nominated Dr Povar (let him be called thus), the only faculty member who hadn’t really wanted to move to Australia — only coming because he couldn’t get a job in North America. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the academic status or the intellectual achievements which enable one to provide inspiring leadership. Things just fell apart. Or rather, they were pulled apart. The titles of many courses were changed with the words ‘linguistics’ and ‘phonetics’ eliminated. (Why be ashamed of the name of one’s discipline?) The a productive partnership 321

freshman course ‘Principles of linguistics’ became ‘Introduction to the study of language’, ‘Sociolinguistics’ became ‘Language and society’, ‘Introduction to comparative linguistics’ became ‘Language change’ and ‘Phonetics and phonology’ was renamed ‘Sounds of the world’s languages’. When I was head, the department had been characterised by efficiency and collegiality. I’d always ask around for my colleagues’ opinions on important issues in order to make everyone feel that they were part of the decision-making process. Now things were vague and decisions seemed to be made on an ad hoc basis, by one person alone. A number of people would complain about some happening. ‘I knew you wouldn’t approve,’ responded Povar, ‘that’s why I didn’t ask anyone.’ Morale plummeted. The department’s bright undergraduate students chose to move elsewhere for graduate study. At first I wasn’t much affected (saddened but not affected). Remained in the same roomy office, working away. Had an array of Research Assistants (financed by ARC grants) in nearby rooms. Then, in early 1995, the crunch did hit. The department was moved into a new building and I was allocated an office about half the size of the old one. I have lots of books. Rows of journals back over thirty years — journals I am on the editorial committees of, journals I subscribe to. Oodles of files — field notes, drafts of the many things I’ve written. They just didn’t fit into the new room. Alexandra Aikhenvald took a number into her office, others I relocated to home, a few were sold. The only place to pin a map that I particularly wanted to have handy was on the low ceiling. I have about thirty shelving-metres of files on the 250 Aboriginal languages of Australia, built up since 1972. These were confined to a cupboard in the corridor with difficult access. I had to pull out half of the files on languages from New South Wales in order to get at one from Queensland. When working on a group of Australian languages, I need to have all relevant materials spread around, and there just wasn’t enough desk space. Also, in the new building, Povar started throwing his weight around. Re- search staff — Aikhenvald and me and our research team — were considered to be a lower life-form than those who ‘did teaching’ (however poorly) and we were denied secretarial assistance. I could go on, listing further happenings, but to do so would be otiose. Suffice it to say that 1995 was not the best of years, although I did of course continue to work steadily through it all. But from then on, things went up, and continued up for the next ten years. About eight o’clock one evening in February 1996, there came a phone call from Mary O’Kane, head of the Australian Research Council. Would I be prepared to accept an ARC Special Investigator Award of $200,000 per annum 322 I am a linguist

for the next three years? Yes, I thought I might. Every year, each of the ARC subject committees chose one scholar to receive such an award, and I was the nominee of the Social Sciences and Humanities committee. They selected people who had a strong record of grant-getting, and this award meant that they didn’t have to spend time on making applications for the next three years. (The scheme was discontinued after 1999.) It provided a carte blanche to work on what one wanted. A couple of weeks later, Mary O’Kane rang back to finalise things. Alexandra Aikhenvald and I already had a joint grant of $120,000 for each of 1996, 1997 and 1998, for a project on ‘The categories of human languages’. In view of this, Mary O’Kane suggested that I should receive $80,000 for each of 1997 and 1998 and then $200,000 in 1999. ‘But the large grant is half Aikhen- vald and half me,’ I pointed out. ‘Alright, how about $140,000 for each of the first two years?’ the ARC boss suggested, ‘isn’t that a good bit of bargaining?’ Thus had a corner been turned. If the ARC thought so highly of me why did I stand for being marginalised within the department? It takes time and effort to spend money — the new award plus the grants which Aikhenvald and I already had. One has to advertise jobs, look after staff in countless little administrative details. So Alexandra and I and the people working on our projects moved out of the department, forming a new unit: The Research Centre for Linguistic Ty- pology (RCLT). It wasn’t a simple matter of course, but I won’t go into all the political connivings that were required. A critical point was that the Australian government gives each university a bonus for every dollar they obtain from outside funds; at that time it consisted of a Research Quantum (RQ) of 28 cents in the dollar and a Research Infra- structure Block Grant (RIBG) of 15 cents in the dollar. With Aikhenvald’s and my Senior Research Fellowships and our various grants we pulled in close to half a million dollars, which attracted RQ and RIBG of just over two hundred thousand. The Faculty of Arts agreed to pay for a full-time administrator and an annual housekeeping budget of $15,000 (to cover phone, mail, photocopying and the like). There was need for a building. These things don’t just happen, one has to devote effort. The main barrier to any academic endeavour in an Australian university is that the central administration invariably puts itself first. One branch looks after another branch as if they were the raison d’être for the institution, rather than being put there to facilitate teaching and research. There was an old prefabricated building of nine rooms called ‘F block’ which we might be able to have. Then, late one Tuesday afternoon I was told that the Internal Au- dit section, currently in E block (with only seven rooms), wished to move to F a productive partnership 323

block because the views from the windows were nicer. Moreover, I was told, the move was to take place in two days time, on Thursday. At about six o’clock on the Tuesday I confronted the man in power, a recently-appointed Pro-Vice- Chancellor-for-something-or-other. Told him who I was. We went across to E block and found one of the Internal Audit staff still at work (how he must have regretted working late that night!). It turned out that that section only had three and a half staff in their seven rooms. So, on 18 December 1996, RCLT was officially inaugurated and moved into F block. The university had built in some bookshelves but there was no money available for furniture. (Unsurprisingly, Povar had blocked the removal of anything from our old offices in the department.) I was taken to an underground store and was able to lay claim to a number of ancient desks which had been discarded by other parts of the university. Chairs were more difficult. So Alex- andra and I simply went to a second-hand furniture warehouse and bought a stack, out of our own pockets. But who cares about material impedimenta? On the intellectual level, RCLT took off immediately, like a rocket. We appointed a fine administrator who looked after everything non-academic, leaving Alexandra and I free to concentrate on linguistics. (During the last half of 1996, while planning for RCLT, about one-third of my time had been spent on administrative matters.) Our joint ARC Large Grant on ‘The categories of human languages’ boasted a range of Research Assistants — one working mostly on Papuan languages from New Guinea, one on the languages of sub-Saharan Africa, another on Ethiopia and North America, a fourth on South-east Asia. They produced grammatical descriptions of selected languages, either tongues on which they had worked themselves, for a PhD, or those for which good materials were available. Each description was cast in terms of a uniform typological framework. Chapter 17 was on Negation, Chapter 18 on Commands, Chapter 19 on Questions, and so on. When one of us wanted to embark on cross-linguistic study of a particular category — say, Questions — we’d consult Chapter 19 of each of the forty or fifty completed files. These enabled us to recognise recurrent patterns and identify variations on them, which could then be studied further by consulting primary sources. We wrote to half-a-dozen of the top typologists — in Germany, the Neth- erlands, Japan and the USA — asking if they’d like to spend between three and six months at RCLT as Visiting Fellow. We’d pay their fare and provide a few hundred dollars a week as living allowance (nothing like a full salary). All said ‘yes’. With the move from the deadening atmosphere of the department to F 324 I am a linguist

block, our intellectual profile blossomed, everybody — Research Assistants, Visiting Fellows, a couple of PhD students, and Alexandra and me — interacting in a continual state of academic ebullience. I’d been thinking about the history of languages. There must have been languages spoken at the time modern man evolved, at least 100,000 years ago. But the oldest dates posited for a proto-language (the common ancestor of a modern language family, such as Indo-European or Uralic) are less then 10,000 years in the past. What happened before then? Borrowing an idea from biology, I posited a ‘punctuated equilibrium’ model of language development. During lengthy periods — lasting thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of years — the languages in a particular geographical region would have been in an equilibrium situation, borrowing features back and forth but without any radical changes. From time to time an equilibrium state would be punctuated by some important happening. For example, one social group might develop agriculture. With this more successful method of food production, they would dominate their hunter-gatherer neighbours. The agriculturalists would expand, split up into several groups, each with its own dialect that would in time develop to become a separate language. At the end of the period of punctuation, the genetic relationship between languages could be shown by a ‘family tree’ diagram. Then a further long period of equilibrium might set in. I wrote this up as a short book, The rise and fall of languages, which Cam- bridge University Press fast-tracked for publication in December 1997. It engendered a good deal of controversy; all reviews were absolutely positive save one, which could scarcely have been more negative. The book sold well, with a Japanese translation following in 2001 and a Chinese one in 2010. I also continued with the long-term comparative project on Australian languages. For her first Senior Research Fellowship, Alexandra Aikhenvald produced a seminal text Classifiers: a typology of noun categorization devices, published by Oxford University Press in 2000 with a paperback edition following two years later. We both continued steadily working on Amazonian languages — Alexandra on Tariana, me on Jarawara — and, as mentioned in the previous chapter, collaborated in editing The Amazonian languages for Cambridge University Press. Alexandra established herself as the leading expert on languages from this region, becoming familiar with every bit of literature and entering into correspondence with just about every relevant linguist. The most valuable thing we did was inaugurate a regular series of Interna- tional Workshops, each on a topic of current theoretical interest. About fifteen scholars take part each time, half a dozen from RCLT or nearby institutions a productive partnership 325

with the rest being flown in from around the world for the workshop week. A ‘position paper’ is circulated six to eight months in advance, setting out the parameters for investigation. Each presenter has sixty to seventy minutes — followed by twenty to thirty minutes for questions and discussion — to describe how a language that they know well, and have done intensive fieldwork on, fits in with the parameters of the position paper. We have four speakers on each of Monday, Tuesday and Thursday with three on Friday, followed by general discussion. On Saturday morning there is a sum-up paper, followed by further discussion and then plans for publication. (Wednesday is a day off, for local sightseeing or whatever; that way nobody plays hookey from any of the sessions.) Each participant sends in a revised version of their paper, taking account of what went on during the workshop week. We get these refereed and send them off to a publisher who arranges for further refereeing. The most appropriate and suitable papers are then published, in volume form. Each volume has been hailed as a ‘state of the art’ presentation, and all have sold well. The August 1997 International Workshop was published as Changing valency: case studies in transitivity — it covers things like passives and causatives — by Cambridge University Press in 2000, with paperback issue in 2010. Selected papers from the 1998 Workshop were published in 2001 by Oxford University Press under the title Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance, problems in comparative linguistics, with a paperback edition in 2006. Our success in gaining grants and fellowships continued. In addition to the ARC sources, Aikhenvald obtained a substantial sum from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in New York. In 1999 she obtained a second five-year term as ARC Senior Research Fellow. I was awarded a second SRF in 1996 and then a final one in 2001, the last year of the scheme. (ARC replaced it with something a little different, decided in a very different manner.) As mentioned before, our soft money brought the university over $200,000 in RQ and RIBG. In another university this whole sum (less, perhaps ten per cent) would have been passed on to us, since we were the people who earned it. But in the ANU it went to the Faculty and we got the benefit of a little less than one-third in administrator’s salary and housekeeping budget. This wasn’t a wonderful situation but we lived with it. Until in 1998 there appeared a new Dean of Arts (who — to my eternal dis- credit — I had nominated for the position). He said we could only have $10,000 for housekeeping. But we needed $15,000, the same as last year — lots of people to look after. Sorry, but ‘no’. So I requested that we be allowed to move out of 326 I am a linguist

the Faculty to be a free-standing unit within the university; that way we’d get the full RQ and RIBG. The Dean said he had no objection to this. Then he changed his mind, but omitted to tell me. I heard in a roundabout way, sought an audience, and had it confirmed: ‘I was too hasty before. You cannot leave, we need your money.’ (Yeah, to subsidise unsatisfactory teaching in the Faculty, which didn’t justify its cost through student numbers.) Well, I’ve never been someone to give up. We wrote to the Vice-Chancellor, stating that our situation was ‘untenable and intolerable’. He referred it to a temporary Deputy Vice-Chancellor who confirmed that we would receive an additional $140,000 or so were we to leave the Faculty. But this wasn’t to be countenanced. Well, the ANU wasn’t the only university in the land. We received an en- ticing offer to relocate to La Trobe University in Melbourne. This appealed for three reasons. At that time, La Trobe had a very good linguistics department, featuring three top scholars. The library was excellent. The trump card was Vice-Chancellor Michael Osborne, who was a giant of a man — in size, in intellect, and in vision. The downside was the La Trobe was, overall, rather definitely a second-rate university. We should have heeded friends who said: ‘I can see why you want to move from the ANU. But why La Trobe?’ The reason was because Michael Osborne promised so much. And delivered it, while he was still there. In the short-term, it was a good move. But in the long-term it turned out to be about the most foolish thing we could have done. Let’s talk about the good times first. Michael Osborne took a particular interest in our well-being, doing everything he could to make sure we were enabled to achieve the highest academic standards. Many people would opine that his trust was well repaid. First of all, he had a magnificent building available. The Larundel Psychiatric Hospital — located right next to the university — had recently been closed down by the state government (as was happening all over the world). The university had purchased the buildings with the federal government providing funds for refurbishment. We were offered a 1910 two-storey stone building, which was Heritage Listed, and two million dollars for refurbishment and furnishing. When Michael Osborne showed us around, in early February 1999, it was as if the patients and nurses had just left — corridor cupboards marked ‘pyjamas top’ and ‘pyjamas bottom’. Two large dormitories upstairs, commodious sitting and dining rooms downstairs. We measured up walls and windows and devised a plan with 27 rooms, the maximum possible allowing that each should have a window. Plenty of space for my voluminous library and Alexandra’s fast growing collection, plus an archive for my thirty metres of files on Australian languages. a productive partnership 327

RCLT officially relocated to La Trobe University on 1 January 2000, with fine facilities and reasonable funding, which we greatly augmented with external grants. (People who haven’t done it scarcely realise what a difficult and time- consuming business it is applying for soft money. You don’t always succeed, but we kept at it and won more often than not.) Osborne was himself a fine academic, a leading scholar of Greek with a keen interest in nurturing the humanities. He had been a fellow in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and had decided to establish a similar entity in his university. RCLT was to be an inaugural element within it. ‘You don’t want to be part of a faculty,’ he told us, ‘having a Dean telling you what to do all the time. The University Council has approved your being part of the IAS, responsible directly to me’. When we arrived, I enquired of the Vice-Chancellor how we would fit into the organisational framework of the university, the committees and boards and suchlike. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that sort of thing,’ he advised, ‘just get on with your work.’ So we were spared the surfeit of committees, identified in Chapter 7 as the bugbear of modern universities and barrier to productive scholarship. Osborne just trusted us to do a good job, and extended every assistance for that endeavour. There were many satisfactory aspects to the way RCLT operated at La Trobe, during the years when Aikhenvald and I ran it, plus just one worrying feature. Top of the plus list was that each year RCLT was able to host four or five Visit- ing Fellows, who were top-notch scholars in our type of linguistics from across the world. The criteria for invitation were stringent — someone who had made a theoretical contribution to the discipline and also worked at the coal-face, as it were, undertaking intensive fieldwork and publishing a comprehensive grammar of some previously undescribed language. We weren’t able to offer much — an airfare at the cheapest rate, furnished accommodation, and a small living allowance (nothing like a full salary). This was fine for our distinguished visitors. What they wanted was the academic atmosphere and the intellectual excitement which Alexandra and I strove to provide. A couple of examples can be provided to show how the Visiting Fellows appeared to appreciate us just as much as we valued their contributions. Ho- Min Sohn of the University of Hawaii (the leading world expert on Korean and also a distinguished scholar in the field of Austronesian linguistics) spent five months with us in 2007, working on his Middle Korean Grammar, plus books on Linguistic Politeness in Korean and Grammaticalisation in Korean (together with three other projects). Professor Sohn’s report on his Fellowship commences: 328 I am a linguist

I believe that my affiliation with IAS-RCLT will remain the most productive, meaningful and memorable experience in my academic life, thanks to the invaluable opportunity IAS and RCLT have generously given me and to the wonderful research environment, as well as enthusiastic support, guidance and encouragement that Professors Bob Dixon and Sasha Aikhenvald have graciously provided me. I have been greatly impressed by how efficiently, meticulously and productively RCLT is operated by Bob and Sasha. Espe- cially, the superb weekly seminars have enormously enriched my linguistic knowledge and broadened my research perspective.

Carol Genetti, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, was an invited Visiting Fellow in 2002, and then returned in 2004 as an Honorary Visiting Fellow. Her monograph A Grammar of Dolakha Newar — published in 2007 by Mouton de Gruyter in Berlin — was awarded the Association for Linguistic Typology’s Georg von der Gabelentz Award for the best reference grammar written during 2004–2008. Genetti’s acknowledgements section includes the following:

This book would never have been completed without the priceless opportunity to be in residence at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology in Melbourne, Australia, where the majority of the manuscript was written and revised. In the entire world, there is not a better place to write a grammar than in that centre, surrounded by others with the same pursuit. Special thanks to R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Aikhenvald for inviting me to partake in the vibrant intellectual atmosphere of RCLT and for all their ideas, comments, advice and encouragement.

In all, about 30 books have been identified by Visiting Fellows as being completed, or substantially written, during their term at RCLT. To this can be added 15 by Honorary Visiting Fellows (scholars who spent a sabbatical with us entirely at their own expense). Cambridge University Press runs a monograph series of Language Surveys. The first volume had been my The languages of Australia in 1980 and the elev- enth our The Amazonian languages in 1999. RCLT, under the leadership of Al- exandra Aikhenvald and myself, played a major role in bringing to fruition further volumes in the series. The leading Indian linguist Bh. Krishnamurti completed The Dravidian languages while with us in 2001, and top South Ameri- can scholar Willem Adelaar did significant work onThe languages of the Andes a productive partnership 329

at RCLT in 2002. Victor Friedman and Brian Joseph have been working on a volume on the languages of the Balkans while at RCLT, both separately and together, between 2001 and 2006. When Zygmunt Frajzyngier was a Visiting Fellow in 2003 we put him in touch with Cambridge University Press to be editor of a volume on Afro-asiatic languages. Maarten Mous was writing the chapter on Cushitic languages for that book during his time at RCLT in 2006. The list could go on. Another most positive feature was the International Workshops, in which Visiting Fellows played a major role. The week-long format which had evolved at the ANU was retained and again proved satisfactory. There was an Interna- tional Workshop each year from 2000 to 2005, on ‘Word’, ‘Evidentiality’, ‘Ad- jective Classes’, ‘Serial verb constructions’, ‘Complementation’ and ‘Grammars in contact’. We then switched to a biennial timetable with 2007 featuring ‘The semantics of clause linking’. Not every workshop paper makes it through and that way we get a taut, well-integrated volume. Cambridge University Press and John Benjamins Pub- lishing (from Amsterdam) put out some of the early volumes. Then Oxford University Press offered to handle all future volumes (subject to their normal refereeing procedures) in a series entitled Explorations in Linguistic Typology. They have all done very well, selling out the hardcopy printing within a year or so and then being reissued in paperback. Each volume has received uniformly laudatory reviews. A favourite is that by Edward J. Vajda of Areal diffusion and genetic relationship: problems in comparative linguistics (papers from the 1998 International Workshop, published in 2001):

Like previous collaborative efforts by Aikhenvald, Dixon and their colleagues at the vibrant and incredibly productive Research Centre for Lin- guistic Typology (now located at La Trobe University, Melbourne), this book marks a qualitative theoretical advance bound to influence linguists’ thinking on important issues. At the same time it provides a superb foundation to which future scholars of diverse theoretical persuasions can readily add their own refinements.

We also had ‘Local Workshops’, which Aikhenvald and I took turns in running, year and year about. In February one of us presented a position paper on some construction type or grammatical category and then every fortnight two people each made a thirty-minute presentation on that topic in a language they know well. By September or October we’d have had thirty or so presentations and 330 I am a linguist

there was a final session where everybody joined in, putting forward inductive generalisations. The individual presentations were generally not published (although sometimes a revision of the position paper was) but everyone said what a great help it was, when writing that chapter of their grammar, to see similar problems in other languages and how they are dealt with there. Local Workshops commenced at the ANU, covering such topics as ‘Relative clause constructions’ and ‘Questions’. In Melbourne they included ‘Copula constructions’, ‘Demonstratives’, ‘Imperatives and other commands’, ‘Comparative constructions’, ‘Direct and indirect speech’ and ‘Word-class-changing derivations’. Each year we had two new PhD students, who came from countries across the world, attracted by the prospect of working under our supervision on the grammar of a previously undescribed language. The languages were typically — but not exclusively — from South America and Papua New Guinea. In Australian universities, a PhD program generally does not include any coursework; a student must have received a full training in the discipline (usually, by completing a coursework MA) before commencing. They would spend three or four months with us, for orientation, then eight or nine months of immersion fieldwork in a village where their language of study is spoken. About twelve months back at the university writing a draft of the grammar, a second field trip of a couple of months (to check generalisations and fill gaps) and then about a year to finalise the grammar. Our PhD students were a pretty good bunch and they all did a fine job of producing a good grammar within the three-and-a-half year time-frame allowed by their scholarship. Well, they really had to. Nowadays, getting a PhD is a sine qua non for any further work within academia. There is nothing more satisfying than supervising work of a graduate student of the highest calibre, someone who will go to become a leader in the field (among my students over the years, half-a-dozen are now full professors at leading universities). And it is rewarding to encounter comments such as the following, from the preface to a PhD thesis submitted in 2007:

In Australia, I wish to thank my supervisor Bob Dixon and co-supervisor Sa- sha Aikhenvald — firstly, of course, for reading and re-reading many drafts and revisions of what is after all a fairly hefty document, and for their many comments and suggestions along the way — but also for simply having a place as unique and important as the Research Centre for Linguistic Typol- ogy, for doing all the work that is necessary to keep such a place funded, functioning and (ultimately) so vibrant and productive, and for making it a productive partnership 331

possible for people like myself to undertake large-scale descriptive projects which — in the absence of places like the RCLT — would simply not be possible.

The least satisfying aspect of RCLT concerned the quality, commitment and work ethic of some of the people we appointed as Post-doctoral Research Fel- lows (Postdocs) on a three-year contract. Like PhD students, they were expected to produce a grammar of a previously undescribed language, Unlike PhD students, most of them did not complete the task. A Postdoc provides an invaluable window of opportunity — between completing a PhD and getting a job in a teaching-and-research department — for concentrated research. It allows a young scholar to begin to establish their reputation and to begin publishing, before their time for this becomes limited by the demands of teaching. This is, I think, how people in science departments view a Postdoc. But not most of our people. They seemed to sit back, sigh deeply after the rigours of completing the PhD, do a little of this, a smidgeon of that, not a lot of anything. They would do fieldwork, but produce little from it. In some cases we encouraged Postdocs to prepare their PhD dissertation for publication. It just required a little revision, and then formatting, no more than a month or two’s solid effort. It took one Postdoc 15 months to do this, another more than two years, and a couple never did it (despite saying that they were working on the task). It was partly our fault. What we should have done was consistently apply high academic standards. But we didn’t. Instead we were greedy, wanted as many Postdocs as we could get, and in so doing compromised on quality. Not being a top-notch university, La Trobe didn’t attract as strong a field of people applying for the university’s annual round of Postdocs as, for example, the University of Melbourne. We’d put forward someone (from another university) who looked okay on the surface, with a PhD and a few publications. But much less impressive when you actually read what they had written. As mentioned in Chapter 11, in order to really succeed in a teaching-and- research job one has to have a certain dedication, working longer hours than the average postman. Then there are the high-flyers, who can’t stop working. Without the added burden of teaching, things aren’t terribly tough for a Postdoc. We didn’t expect too much from ours —— just (as their contract specified) 35 hours per week. But that did mean 35 hours of solid linguistic work, not of long lunch-breaks, miscellaneous chatter, and playing around with computers. 332 I am a linguist

In a regular university department, each faculty member must do their share of teaching, with research being fitted around the edges. As also mentioned in Chapter 11, my impression at the ANU was that many people in a teaching-and- research department did at least as much research, of at least as high a quality, as their colleagues in the Institute for Advanced Study. A high-flyer is fine in a research-only position; they have inner motivation. But other than these, our experience replicated what I had observed at the ANU. If a Postdoc had to complete something like a second doctorate by the end of their three years (with this being required for academic advancement) then they might put in a little more effort. But they don’t, and don’t. It didn’t quite make up for all the rest, but we were lucky enough to appoint a small number of Postdocs of meteoric character. One of these brought into our bailiwick sign languages, which are a most important, but often neglected, topic. We’d advertised a job with no thought of this and received a top-notch application from Ulrike Zeshan, who had worked on sign languages in Pakistan and India. During her time with us, Ulrike also worked on sign languages in Turkey and Egypt. And she undertook the first comparative study of grammatical categories in sign languages across the world. She was the first typologist of sign languages; she has now gone on to be director of International Centre for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies at the University of Central Lancashire. Ulrike Zeshan was a tower of strength, providing cogent comment to seminars on every kind of topic; she contributed a great deal to the intellectual vivacity of the place. As mentioned before, meetings are the bane of life in every university, a real impediment to achieving anything significant. Aikhenvald and I streamlined things so as to minimise interruption to the work schedule. Each Wednesday afternoon we had a forty-minute meeting for announcements and then a short presentation — by everyone in turn — a small problem in analysis which they solicited help in solving. This would be followed by a local workshop or a seminar of an hour and a half or a bit more. Wednesdays from 3.20 until 5.30 or 6. The rest of the week available for ones own research without interruptions (and, of course, for productive interaction with colleagues on linguistic matters of mutual interest). This schedule was appreciated by our Visiting Fellows — who had come to us in order to write a book or suchlike — and by PhD students and a few of the Postdocs. But, like the 20-hour-a-week brigade mentioned in Chapter 11, we were told (later) that some of or people wanted more committees and meetings. After all, it is easier sitting in meetings, saying something or other once in a while, than banging one’s head against a difficult analytic problem. a productive partnership 333

Alexandra Aikhenvald and I continued to forge ahead in our own work In a way, we were making up by the strength of our publications for the lack of activity on the part of most of the Postdocs. Of course, success brings envy. It is not nice to realise that others are jealous, but it is an indication that one has achieved something to be jealous about. Typically, people wish for the reward without the effort. One of my ex-students (now a long-term faculty member) complained — that is the right word — that I had received many of the grants I had applied for from the ARC whereas he’d scarcely been successful in any. He wasn’t much satisfied when it was pointed out that I work solidly, including most evenings and almost every weekend. Never watch TV (save for a soupçon of cricket in the summer). In contrast, he has a full social life, lots of sporty activity, and so on. He hadn’t gotten around to revising his PhD for publication, over a period of almost 20 years! Many people in universities have a narrow field of interest and expect everyone else to adopt a similarly blinkered stance. When in 1985 I went off to do fieldwork on Fijian, people said, ‘Oh, so you’ve given up work on Australian languages.’ Not true at all; fieldwork in North Queensland continued at a steady rate. (After all, there are 52 weeks in the year.) My magnum opus, Australian languages, their nature and development (777 closely-printed pages) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2002 as the fourteenth volume in their Language Survey series. It is a comprehensive re-working of the 1980 volume, The languages of Australia, taking account of new publications during the in- tervening twenty years, and my radically innovative ideas. Then in 1991 I published A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles, to mutterings that I was supposed to work on Australian languages, or Fijian, or something, but surely not on English. But it is my native language; what more natural for a linguist than to undertake linguistic analysis of their native language? Then fieldwork in Amazonia in the 1990s. ‘Don’t invade our field, stick to Australia!,’ was one reaction. I have just published the first two volumes of a lengthy three-volume tome,Basic Linguistic Theory, which will include chapters on twenty or so grammatical categories — negation and causatives, relative clause constructions and genders, copula clauses and possession, and so on. One referee for a grant proposal suggested (a) that such a book was not needed; and (b) that it is immodest for a single scholar to attempt to cover every topic in grammar. The chapter on ‘possession’ could only be written by someone who had spent all their life — that is, the minor portion of it they devote to research — working on possession; and so on. The grant-giving body (the ARC) saw through this web of envy, 334 I am a linguist

ignored the referee’s recommendation for rejection, and did provide a most substantial grant. Besides the grammar of Jarawara, I also published, in 2004, a reconstruction of the phonological system of proto-Arawá, the putative ancestor of the five languages in the small Arawá language family, to which Jarawara belongs. Other endeavours included well-received studies on Causatives (2000) and Demonstratives (2003), that are in effect first shots at chapters for the basic linguistic theory book. As mentioned before, the 1991 volume on English was greatly expanded for a new edition in 2005, and I have continued with steady research on other topics in English grammar. Alexandra Aikhenvald has also been discomforted by the writhing tentacles of jealousy. I had to tell her that the only way of avoiding this would be to join the twenty-hour-a-week club and achieve little. As mentioned before, her first Senior Research Fellowship produced Classifiers, a typology of noun categorization devices (559 pages, Oxford University Press 2000, paperback 2002) which is acknowledged to be the standard work in the field. This didn’t please a European linguist who had published a couple of papers on this topic, now outmoded by Aikhenvald’s work. This was virtually all they had done — no other arrows in the quiver. Then, from the second SRF, there came an equally significant work,Evidentiality (479 pages, Oxford University Press 2004, paperback 2006). She has just published a third typological study, Imperatives and other commands (also from Oxford University Press). ‘But you are supposed to be a classifier and evidentiality expert,’ the cry arises, ‘you must leave imperatives to the imperative experts.’ Hard luck; Aikhenvald is a linguist and —like me — reserves the right to work on any aspect of her chosen discipline. In 2005, Alexandra Aikhenvald obtained the rarely-awarded degree of Doc- tor of Letters (the same as I had received from the ANU in 1991, described at the end of Chapter 10). This was by examination of fourteen high-quality papers (592 pages in all) plus four books: Classifiers, Evidentiality, the magnificent A grammar of Tariana, from northwest Amazonia (729 pages, Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2003, paperback 2006) and the well-received Language contact in Amazonia (370 pages, Oxford University Press, 2003). One of the examiners (from Germany) opined that she is one of the ten best linguists in the world. Aikhenvald wouldn’t have obtained this higher doctorate by examination — the first awarded by La Trobe University since 1991 — if her work hadn’t spanned a wide swathe of linguistics, in considerable scholarly depth. It’s surely the same in every field — business or art or writing or acting or music. Success is like a mountain, to be ascended one level at a time. Each a productive partnership 335

stage is arduous, requiring concentration, effort, and planning. Non-achievers, simply standing on the plain beside the mountain, often lack appreciation of what is involved. The missionary (or ex-missionary, it varies) author of the sketch grammar of Pirahã — whose ‘salvation’` through the aid of Jesus Christ was mentioned in the previous chapter — wrote what purported to be a review of our book The Amazonian languages. He admired Alexandra Aikhenvald’s recent research but said that she’d only been able to reach such a fine level of achievement after joining RCLT. This is turning the mountain upside down (or, alterna- tively, putting the cart before the horse). It was because of her high-quality books and papers while in Russia and Brazil that the ARC awarded a Senior Research Fellowship at professorial level. It was because of further high-quality work since coming to Australia, and further grants gained, that Aikhenvald and I were empowered to establish RCLT. (It didn’t just fall from the sky.) We made enquiries and it turns out that the reviewer does not read Russian, so his opinion concerning Aikhenvald’s early work could only be due to divine communication. Our star was shining ever brighter. In 2007, Peter Trudgill reckoned that we were one of the five top linguistic groups in the world. This was due in part to the publications of Aikhenvald and myself, to the high stature of the Visiting Fellows we hosted each year, to the International Workshops and the volumes they generated, to some of the PhD theses, and to those few Postdocs who did produce outstanding work. At the same time, the university as a whole was steadily diminishing in stature. When we arrived it was third university of choice for school-leavers in the Melbourne area (some way below the Uni- versity of Melbourne and Monash University). A few years later, La Trobe had slipped to fifth position, having been overtaken by RMIT and Deakin. The slice of the national research funding which La Trobe managed to secure each year was decreasing rather alarmingly. And so on. At first, we had stimulating relations with the teaching-and-research department in the faculty. Then their three international stars departed — one into retirement, one to a chair at another university, the other to Europe. Because of the poor reputation of the university as a whole, it was hard to attract good- quality applicants for these positions. After all, who wants to have to spend much of their time teaching students of lower and lower quality. Michael Osborne had set us up as something apart from the main body of the university. Whereas at the ANU we had had close contact with anthropologists, archaeologists, people in Asian and European language departments, 336 I am a linguist

and more besides, at La Trobe the RCLT was more-or-less a self-contained oasis. There was, as you’d expect, immense jealously from some quarters. “Why should you have his building, the freedom to devote yourselves to research?’ ‘Well, because we deliver the goods.’ A friend (an ex-student), who was far wiser than me, became seriously worried. ‘What’s going to happen to you when the Vice-Chancellor goes? This building, your independence ...’ In all naivety I tried to calm his fears. ‘We have the results. Any right-thinking person will appreciate the contribution we provide.’ Michael Osborne was deposed (his term) in December 2005. The blue sky turned a different colour, although not all at once. La Trobe University at first appeared to be in a state of melt-down. There was a discussion at the Academic Board along the lines — if, in five years, La Trobe University had ceased to exist, would it matter, would anyone notice? The general opinion was that it wouldn’t matter a damn. Then a new management team came to power, keen to do things their way, with people paying due obeisance to the bosses at the top. (I’ve never been much of a hand at obeisance.) It was hard to work out exactly what was being done, or why. Some people viewed the happenings and suggested that there might be a campaign to dismantle or abolish Michael Osborne’s good works. We had been out on a limb — which was fine while our protector was around but now became a rather dangerous situation. And it had become a bit of an embarrassment to be part of such an institution. So in 2008 Alexandra Aikhen- vald and I pulled the rip-cord and jumped. For a short while after we left, there still was at La Trobe a ‘Research Centre for Linguistic Typology’, including just a few of the people who we had appointed, and with a shadow director. In some respects, the academic principles which we followed appeared to have been inverted. Most glaringly, there was (despite the name of the Centre), a paucity of significant work being done on linguistic typology. In North Queensland, the region in which I have been doing fieldwork since 1963, James Cook University had just established the Cairns Institute for advanced research on most matters to do with the tropics. In January 2009, Al- exandra Aikhenvald was appointed to the first Professorship and as Research Leader, People and Societies of the Tropics. I officially retired, but am working about as hard as ever and JCU have made me an Adjunct Professor (with an office and full facilities). It is a matter of pleasure to place their name on my continuing flow of publications. a productive partnership 337

The intellectual ebullience which we had created down south is now brim- ming over in Cairns. We have appointed PhD students and Postdocs (making sure, this time around, to apply high academic standards). A considerable number of the linguists we most value (from around the world) are to spend time with us as Visiting Fellows. Our tenth International Workshop, on ‘Pos- session and Ownership’, is being held in September-October 2010. James Cook University, which serves the whole of North Queensland, is forward-looking and also the friendliest milieu I’ve ever been a part of. Alex- andra Aikhenvald and I have found lots of like-minded people to collaborate with — including anthropologists, archaeologists, botanists, zoologists, people in education and Aboriginal Elders such as Ernie Grant, high-stepping son of my first great teacher Chloe Grant. The future is indeed bright.

SOURCES

Darwin’s letter to Huxley is quoted on page 187 of Life and letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, by his son Leonard Huxley, published in London by Macmillan, 1903. Edward J. Vajda’s review of Areal diffusion and genetic relationship: problems in comparative linguistics appeared in the April 2004 issue of the journal Word. Ulrike Zeshan’s many important publications include ‘Interrogative constructions in sign languages — cross-linguistic perspective’, on pages 7-39 of volume 80 of the journal Language (2003); and ‘Head, hand and face — negative constructions in sign languages’, pages 1-58 of volume 8 of Linguistic Typology (also 2003).

16 Living a life

The narrative thus far will have shown the reader what sort of person I am. Here is how I perceive it. I value truth, honesty and effort. Judge things as they are, not in terms of any current fashion. Judge people as they are, not in terms of who their parents or patrons are or where they come from. (This ties in with a dislike of hereditary office.) Place a high value on transparency, eschewing secrecy (a.k.a confidentiality) save in extreme instances. When I’ve been head of an academic unit, anyone would be free to go through our files; there is absolutely nothing to hide. The simplest and most satisfactory attitude is to be straightforward about things. My way of dealing with the world is to expect the worst outcome. If that eventuates, so be it. If there should be success — what a pleasant surprise! But, allied to this, is the overarching principle: never give up. If at first you don’t succeed then keep on trying. (Of course, if you embark on something which is later perceived to be misguided, or if the odds are just too heavily stacked, then exit at once.) More and more, universities are hidebound by rules and regulations. I have never tried to become familiar with every bit of red tape, and then work out what it may allow. Instead, I have followed the principle enunciated to me by Dennis Fry, erstwhile Professor of Phonetics at University College London (mentioned in Chapter 6) — first decide what you want to do, and then work out how to achieve this. (A way can always be found.) A most important quality of mind is to be determined, and continue to be determined, no matter what pitfalls may be encountered on the way. Pick yourself up, brush off the dust, and get on with the job. All I ask of anyone — myself, my children, students, colleagues — is that you make the best use of the talents you have, applying them sensibly and conscientiously. Surely the mark of a civilised society is that everyone should strive to do things well. I do not consider that all people are inherently equal, or should be treated equally. Some try harder and achieve more. 340 I am a linguist

Plato is one of the finest thinkers the world has known. His assessment of democracy, mentioned in Chapter 10, is worth repeating. The idea is surely farcical that the village idiot or a road sweeper should be accorded the same vote as the president of a university, or the self-made director of a thriving company. With universal suffrage, the mediocre are likely to choose the mediocre. And, once elected, greatest effort is typically directednot towards measures for the long- term good of the nation, but to doing things which will ensure re-election next time around. Plato compared democracy to when a teacher fears and panders to his students, who as a consequence despise him. In democracies today, many people do despise the politicians. This is surely an indictment of the system. Religion is a peculiar idea, almost unimaginable if it wasn’t all around, present in some form in every human society. The reason is simple — many people need it, as a comforting cushion against the enormity of life. One doesn’t have to depend just on one’s own judgement but on that of a god (or gods), who may command and also (best of all) forgive. Some people are able to rise above the hoi polloi, taking responsibility for their own actions. But — since mediocrity rules — the ability to dispense with religion comes to be regarded as something mildly disreputable. I’ve never envied anyone. Of course, I have learnt from studying the work of people with high intelligence and achievement. Basically, I have tried just to be myself, to achieve what I can by my own efforts. There are many objects of fascination in the world and I have an unquenchable curiosity, wanting to understand how every kind of thing works and the techniques for solving every problem — whether mundane or esoteric — in the world around. Truth is a precious commodity, often hidden under the bushel of ‘political correctness’. One day — a couple of decades ago — a TV crew invaded my office. Blinding arc-lights, probing microphone. ‘Are Aboriginal cultures and languages dying?’ I agreed that they were. ‘Would you say that white people have been responsible, in some small way, for this?’ ‘Yes, in a very big way.’ ‘How?’ ‘By coming here in the first place,’ I replied. ‘If we’d stayed back in Eu- rope, Aboriginal cultures and languages would have remained and flourished. As soon as we invaded, it was inevitable that — in time — they would perish.’ I was simply being honest. (It’s my belief that this item was not used on the news that evening.) Why beat about the bush? One ought to take care not to offend people need- lessly, but bad work should (perhaps in the nicest possible way) be identified as bad work. To succeed in a university, it is important not to say inappropriate things to people in positions of power. (In many — although not all — cases, living a life 341

egos tend to expand with power.) Know when to keep quiet. But do not compromise your integrity by saying things which are not true, just because people would like to hear them. For me, personal peace and satisfaction come from honesty and also from civility, always acknowledging the efforts and achievements of others.

What does it mean to say that someone is ‘sceptical’? I have a penchant for checking up on every single thing that is told. A quotation is purveyed, perhaps a fascinating fact about some esoteric language. Always go back to the primary source and see what it says; if necessary, check further with the original author. (Many times, a secondary source has got things either slightly or seriously wrong.) Some general proposal becomes all the rage — maybe about the organisation of human language, maybe about how the world works or should work. I always try to step back, as it were, return to first principles, work out for myself whether this really is a valid or sensible proposal, and why. Once I have come to a decision that a certain course of action is appropriate, that a particular kind of analysis is justified, that a colleague has done good work and behaved in a responsible and sensible manner, then I will fiercely defend that action, analysis or person. It’s a matter of standing up for what one believes to be right — of loyalty, if you will. (But of loyalty based upon informed assessment.) One studies and acquires knowledge, learns an awful lot about some topic. But don’t get carried away! Always be aware of how much you do not know, be sure not to deceive yourself that you are the ultimate authority on a subject. (Can there ever be such?) Some questions may be provided with a reasoned answer. For others, the response might have to be: ‘I don’t know.’ Never be afraid to say this, when appropriate. And don’t be afraid to admit an error, to acknowledge that someone else has produced a better analysis of a given set of data than you. Within academia, there is a certain type who will say ‘X’ and then, some time later, ‘Y’. When the incongruity between these positions is pointed out, they deny it: ‘No, position Y was implicit when I stated X.’ Cutting through force of personality, and rhetoric, the only person this scholar is kidding is themself. The more I know — and over the years I obviously have accumulated a fair amount of knowledge and insight — the greater the awareness that there is so much more which I do not know. This is, in part, what makes life worthwhile — the excitement of realising that there is so much out there, to be explored and investigated. 342 I am a linguist

It’s a good feeling I find, when a young scholar comes up with a new and insightful result, which supersedes something you proposed in the past. For example, in my 1980 monograph, The languages of Australia, I suggested that the original form of the ergative case suffix across Australian languages should be -du after a consonant and-lu after a vowel. Then, in the early 1990s, Kristina Sands — while working as research assistant on my comparative Australian languages project — undertook a perceptive analysis of all available data and showed that the original form must have been simply -dhu (where dh is like d but with the tongue tip touching the teeth). It explains many facts which were left in limbo by my idea. Further checking demonstrated that Sands’ analysis was undoubtedly sound, and superior to mine. This was a significant step forward.

An important part of any scientific endeavour is disseminating the results. There are two approaches to academic writing in a field like linguistics, according to whether the main aim is to impress, or to communicate. One group of scholars produces work in a magisterially convoluted style, awesome in its opacity. ‘What a clever person!’ people may exclaim. But such work doesn’t get read — or, more importantly, understood — and is unlikely to be much referred to. As mentioned in chapter 6, I began in this mode when describing Dyirbal. But then John Lyons commented that he — he, of all people — couldn’t easily understand it. So, in the summer of 1966, a new leaf was turned. Try to write in as straightforward a manner as possible, to make my work maximally accessible to readers. Whatever reputation I have is surely linked to this stance. Sure there are, as always, quibbles. Some have suggested that my work ‘isn’t theoretical enough’ because it is clearly written, rather than being enshrouded in a formalistic jargon. But such comments are more than outweighed by the fact that many people do appreciate and use and quote and build on the theoretical ideas which I’ve taken such pains to try to impart lucidly. Another irritating response is when people remark: ‘Oh, you are so lucky, being able to write clearly without any effort!’ Without effort! Nothing I publish has ever been through less than three or four drafts, sometimes being completely rewritten each time. A particular choice of expression may be mulled over for hours. In my experience, worthwhile achievement is only ever the result of considerable effort. But I suppose there is a knack to not revealing the extent of the exertion. As mentioned in Chapter 3, Professor David Aber- crombie was the finest teacher I had the privilege to study under. His lectures were simply an enjoyable experience; one didn’t realise till later how much had actually been learnt, in entirely seamless fashion. That’s the same technique. living a life 343

Clear writing involves considerable use of native English words — the short, sharp items of Germanic origin — and limited employment of longer words that come from Latin and French. It is good to employ reasonably short sentences, preferring full stops (or periods) to semi-colons. But style must be varied according to occasion. When I apply to a grant-giving body, the sensible ploy is dig out those long words and complex constructions. For example:

A necessary prerequisite for the proper fulfilment of the project will be examination of pre-existing source materials which relate to the matter under investigation.

This translates into non-grant-applying-for language as:

We will look at all previous publications on the topic.

It’s good fun, in fact. Spend the morning trying to write as straightforwardly as possible, to be understood by a wide range of readers. Then, after lunch, switch into highfalutin pomposity to try to impress the referees. The policy of making things simple can be extended — arrange life in a straightforward manner and you’ll be able to get things done without fuss. As mentioned before, apart from fieldwork — the high spot of any real linguist’s existence — I travel little since it really does break up the work schedule. For example, attending a conference which lasts a week is likely to take away about three weeks all told. Spend the week before preparing, and making sure that all graduate students’ work has been commented on, then the first week back will be needed for catching up. I’d rather spend three weeks at home steadily doing my job, and continuing to read, think and write. One can look over the conference program and, if any papers look interesting, write to ask the author for a copy. (Anything good is likely to be published before too long.) Anyway, conference papers often focus on the latest fashionable issue, here today and gone tomorrow (sometimes, fading away before being written up). Only a small portion of current work and publications is of any moment, likely to stand the test of time. The remainder is inconsequential; far better to devote time to studying and re-studying classic texts from past decades. Let’s not mince words — there are a lot of fools around, to be either avoided or humoured. Two of the really outstanding linguists of the twentieth century, Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), were mentioned in Chapter 9. Trubetzkoy was unfailingly polite in person, but in corre- 344 I am a linguist

spondence with Jakobson — the only person who he (quite rightly) considered to be his intellectual equal — ‘words and phrases like blockhead, fool, idiot, bloated celebrity, utter imbecility, perfectly insane and the like’ were bandied around. And, in offering advice to Jakobson on how to write, Trubetzkoy wrote:

Remember that, on average, linguists are dull, hostile to novelties, and un- used to abstractions ... Considering the relatively low intellectual level of an average linguist, you should have striven for utmost clarity and explained everything a thousand times.

There are a number of implicit assumptions in academia today, all basically unfounded. One is that everything which has appeared in print must be useful and correct. Another is that all opinions are equally good. A further idea is that any new work on a particular topic is necessarily superior to previous publications on that subject. Recently, a student writing on copula clauses referred to a work on that topic. ‘But that book is really pretty bad,’ I protested. ‘Well, I know it is, but there isn’t anything else I can refer to.’ What an answer! My technique for working on a linguistic problem is the same as that for dealing with life — go back to first principles, think it through in the most basic terms. Look at how the topic is dealt with in a fair selection of good and reliable grammars. (Once one has actually written a grammar, it is not hard to distinguish the good from the shoddy.) Study what the great linguists of the past have had to say. By all means look at recent general treatments — they do sometimes include a useful idea or two, and may refer to some new source which can be searched out. Then I write the paper. Send it around to a number of colleagues for critical comment; revise in the light of these. It should now be ready to go. But no, in order to have any chance of being accepted for publication, one last adjustment is required. Add references to all recent publications on the topic, however inane they may be. Now submit. The journal editor will send it out to referees, who are frequently not people of the highest quality. (Good linguists prefer to get on with their work, rather than devote too much time to assessing others.) There may be a fairly sensible referee report, with useful suggestions for improving the paper. Typically, there will also be a report from someone who has failed to understand critical bits of the argumentation (one of the type of person referred to by Trubetzkoy). This is annoying but it is also useful. I want the paper to be read and understood by people at all levels of intellect (or lack thereof). So, following Trubetzkoy, re-write and re-write in order to ‘explain everything a thousand times’. living a life 345

One of the scourges of today is ‘schools’ — groups of people following the idealisms of some leader, who may be accorded almost messianic status. These are associated with the p-theories discussed in Chapter 9: Chomskians, Hal- lidayans, and so on. In the science of linguistics — as in other sciences — there is no place for such affiliations. (We don’t come across a group of physicists calling themselves ‘Einsteinians’!) I have taught many fine linguists but (thank goodness) there has never been any hint of a ‘Dixonian school’. I try simply to impart the principles of linguistics as a science, and each pupil then marks out their own place in the field.

Let me ruminate for a moment. How have things changed since I entered university, fifty-odd years ago? England had by then more-or-less recovered from the Second World War. Life carried on improving until the late 1960s, but then progress fell away. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer, both within and between nations. There were in every nation progressively fewer places where one could go for a walk without fear of attack. The gathering vista of violence culminated in 9/11, and how authorities reacted to this made things worse. Religion — of all varieties — became more extremist and less tolerant of other views. ‘Political correctness’ has constrained freedom of speech and of action — by convention, if not by law. How have universities changed? There is a much higher proportion of administrators, as compared to teachers and researchers, and the top management get paid (in relative terms) far more than before. Also, the administrators seem to think that we exist for their convenience, rather than the other way around. This trend shows no sign of abating. Surely it must be easier to be a scholar today, with every sort of electronic air? Well ‘yes’ a little bit, and ‘no’ a significant proportion. And a major point to be borne in mind is — making things easier doesn’t automatically make them better. In the 1950s and 1960s one used a manual typewriter. I produced hundreds of pages of discography and hundreds and hundreds of pages of linguistics. Type four copies at once, using carbon paper. (Photocopiers only came in during the ‘60s and for a while were not at all common.) Hard to correct an error. One had to type accurately. And one did. I resisted electric typewriters at first, until they came with a correct ribbon. On a manual machine definite effort is needed to depress a key. With an electric model, finger only has to brush the surface and there it is, typed. Many more errors. At the end of each page, check carefully while still in the machine and rotate back to correct errors 346 I am a linguist

with the white ribbon. Then came word processors and computers. Even less finger pressure required, and so even more errors. But not to worry — there is ‘Spell-check’ which will put things right. Now one doesn’t have to concern oneself with how a word is spelled — just type in something approximate and Spell-check does the rest. You don’t need to think (don’t need to know) whether it is sieze or seize, ocasionnaly or occasionaly (or whatever!). Be as lazy as you want. So a whole generation grows up not really knowing how to spell properly! Computers are wonderful in that it is easy to make small adjustments to a late draft, rather than — as in the old days — having to re-type a big chunk just to eliminate one error, or else use cut-and-stick (literally, with scissors and paste). But, weighed against this, computers tend to deter people from undertaking major revisions at an early stage of writing when these are really needed. For example, a chapter was submitted for a book I was editing, intended for people with just a little linguistic knowledge. The whole exposition was dense, assuming a high degree of reader sophistication. I made encouraging noises but said that it needed to be totally re-cast, listing, as examples of what was needed, four points that were particularly obscure. In pre-computer days, the author would have re-written the chapter, using some bits from the first draft within a re-thought exposition; this would have involved re-typing everything. But now the draft was on the computer. It was resubmitted with just the four points reformulated, everything else exactly the same. But these were given just as samples of what was wrong. I had said that the first draft should be chucked away, and re-done. While a little better, the chapter was still largely incomprehensible and not at all suited to its purpose. (It never did get properly revised and published.) Again, computers encourage laziness, which leads to a poorer product. I have never composed serious things directly onto a typewriter, let alone a computer. (I do type directly onto the computer for less serious things such as letters, memoranda and grant applications, items which do not require multiple drafts.) Just like fifty years ago, the first draft is in pencil, on alternate lines of a ruled pad. I then go over it very carefully, correcting and revising (often re- thinking and re-writing whole sections). The third draft goes onto a keyboard, and involves further revision and re-wording. This serves as the basis for later drafts, but parts may again be re-written (more than once). To achieve decent results requires considerable effort. Reliance on computers, especially in the early stages of writing, tends to inhibit major revision. It is much harder to living a life 347

bring oneself to simply throw away an early draft and start again (since it is there, in the hard-drive, all nicely keyboarded). But there are so many other uses of computers. At the flick of a mouse a high proportion of world literature can be accessed. One can find almost anything. Yes, I agree. In the old days, to check some bibliographic item one had to walk across to the library and consult the large volumes holding Library of Congress and British Museum catalogs. Now it is all there at the tips of the fingers. And work I’ve been doing recently on English grammar and lexicon has benefited enormously from computer access to the updated revision of the Oxford English Dictionary. These are indeed fine advances. And also, what about e-mail? Aah, e-mail! It has changed the pace of the world. But to properly understand the effect of this innovation, let me compare across a number of decades in terms of administration, teaching, and fieldwork. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a fair administrative load on the head of a university department. I did as much teaching as any of my colleagues (sometimes more), supervised graduate students, and wrote books and papers. This was only possible through streamlining the administration. There was a fair-sized correspondence — concerning current and potential students, examinations, references, reviews, visiting fellows, dealing with the central administration, and so on. About once a week I’d dictate a dozen or so letters to a secretary who had good shorthand. She was a highly intelligent person and the advantage of dictating was that I could get her feed-back. When writing to somebody overseas one would allow a week for the letter to reach them, a couple of weeks for them to write a reply, and the return mail about a week — around a month in all. I’d generally reply to incoming mail within two weeks and that was about par for most people, across the world. Once a request or inquiry came in, I’d think about it for a few days, start framing the reply in my head, then it was all there — properly worked out — for the dictation session. Getting a reply within a month was absolutely alright. The department was run in an efficient and businesslike way. Today, letters are almost a relic. It is messages, e-mail messages. No longer the sensible input from a secretary with shorthand. The administrator must type messages themself, which takes a good deal of time. A major change is that people expect a reply immediately, the same day. If you don’t respond within two days they are liable to write again, in irritation: ‘Didn’t you get my message?’ Whereas before about an hour a week could be set aside for dictation of correspondence, today e-mail may take at least an hour each day. (Plus a few 348 I am a linguist

more minutes for deleting spam. There was no junk mail in times past.) Truly, thirty years ago the routine of an administrator pursued a steady melody; today, it is a series of staccato riffs. A crucial difference between then and now is something quite different, the matter of thoughtfulness. One received a letter making a series of proposals, mulled over it for a few days, thought over the pro’s and con’s of a number of alternatives. Decided on a considered response and sent off a cogent reply. Now, the impulse is to reply at once, get it out of the way. It is there, in the computer, no paper or envelope or stamp required. Gut reaction is purveyed, without any consideration at all. Then the person does think it over, weighs up the implications. Writes an hour later, modifying what was said before (maybe even negating it). Another message the next day, changed again. Quite likely a further emendation later in the week. It’s hard to keep up with where you stand. The respondent had said ‘yes’ — but was that the final decision, or an earlier one which was later contravened? Have to look back through the e-mails. All a bit of a muddle, and also a big time-waster. In pre-e days the thinking — and the jumping back and forth — would have been confined to the respondent’s end, with a letter being written after a week or so’s consideration, and all would be simple and clear. Okay, it is easy to write e-mail after e-mail after e-mail. But is itgood ? I have, of course, used e-mail for administrative tasks — but for many years eschewed it for personal purposes. A few people do still use the regular mails. ‘Since you don’t have e-mail, I’m sending this as a letter, but with hesitation. It’s really too inconsequential to justify a letter.’ And that sums it up. The ease of e-mail spawns far too many communications, many of them pretty trivial. And it all takes time. If I had an hour a day less for research, rather little would get done. A colleague found it hard to understand why I didn’t want e-mail. ‘It’s mostly just gossip,’ I replied. ‘But don’t you like gossip?’ he persisted. ‘I love gossip, and that’s why I don’t do it.’ I go to the university to work. Let’s now look at teaching, which was a major part of my life from 1964 until 1990. Keep things simple! This, I am sure, produces best results. Need a blackboard and chalk, nothing else. I’d instruct by interaction — talk for a few minutes about a certain type of analysis, then put some language data on the blackboard, students copying it into their notebooks. Pose a question to the class — how should we segment this item? Several suggestions, write each on the board. Consider, with help from the class, pro’s and con’s of each. Don’t let just a few people dominate things. ‘Someone who hasn’t said anything yet, what do you think?’ Not everyone will join in but a fair proportion do. This living a life 349

technique works with a freshman class of a hundred or more just as well as with a group of a dozen advanced students. Learn by actually doing linguistics — exploring the possibilities, assessing each, choose that which is most appropriate. Occasionally, I would have a one-page handout, a table of phonetic symbols or the like. But generally, definitions and axioms were written on the blackboard and taken down by students in long-hand. Effective? Well, I had a hand in teaching scores of good students, twenty of whom have gone on to permanent jobs in universities. (And, as mentioned in Chapter 11, I always gave all the lectures in my courses, rather than getting others to do some. I needed to, in order to properly impart the discipline.) Nowadays, some people may still teach in this way, but there is a tendency to do otherwise. Instead of enunciating general principles by writing on a board, for students to write down (and think about while doing so), typed notes may be handed out, or projected from a transparency. Lecturer explains a point of analysis, without feed-back from class. But the pervasive tendency today is towards power-point presentations. Lower screen, dim lights as the image beams. People watch. Can’t really take notes, too dark. One can learn a certain amount from listening and looking. But it’s not a patch on learning by interaction — the class actually doing linguistic thinking, under guidance from the teacher. In the old days, each lecture evolved in its own way, according to the character of the class. Would this be as likely to happen with a power-point presentation? When I was teaching, students would ask questions of the lecturer immediately after a class. And there were a couple of ‘office hours’ each week when they could come with well-thought out queries. I’d always write on the board my work and home phone numbers in case a student got really stumped and needed help, and they were sometimes used. Now, I’m told, it is not uncommon for students to bombard their teacher’s e-mail with enquiries which are typically petty — something they could have discovered through perusing the course syllabus or reading the textbook. E-mail, by its nature, encourages off-the-cuff inconsequential communication. But with dozens of students indulging in this! Pity the poor lecturer, trying to get a bit of research done in between times. Another area in which there may be a temptation to employ all possible electronic aids is fieldwork. The lure should be resisted. A tape-recorder is, of course, indispensable, plus notebook and pencil or pen. Nothing else is needed. Indeed, anything else would imperil the establishment of an ideal ambience for field linguistics. Try to keep to a minimum the introduction of things which a tribal people do not themselves use. I write down what I hear during daily 350 I am a linguist

life in a small notebook, always available in shirt pocket. Transcribe tapes into a large notebook. Write the text on the left-hand side of the page, second line for glossing each word and grammatical element, with translation of complete sentences on a third line. On the opposite page I diagram the grammatical structure of each clause, and also the way in which story characters thread the narrative. This couldn’t be done on a computer (or only with immense difficulty, and exertion of time). To have a computer come between linguist and language teacher would make it more formal and less friendly. Anyway, there is no electricity supply in many places where field linguists work, or if there is it may be intermittent and unreliable. And even if there were electricity, computers break down, especially in hot and humid conditions. Such a happening can leave the linguist stranded. (Notebooks, being made of paper, don’t break down.) (There is nowadays a growing tendency to employ video-cameras in the field. Indeed, some grant-giving bodies require this. This really would disturb the family atmosphere so important for successful fieldwork. And, from my observations, the more gadgets people bring into the field, the less they are likely to achieve in terms of intellectual quality.) I’ve produced quite a lot, achieved a good deal. The question is occasionally posed — ‘wouldn’t it have been possible to achieve more if electronic aids had been available to you all along the way?’ Well, apart from the usefulness of computers for alphabetising a thesaurus into a dictionary, the answer is an unequivocal ‘no’. The way I continue to be productive — as productive as before — is by minimising electronic reliance. I watch with sadness and wonderment as others flounder. There is an electronic parsing program which only really works for languages of a specific type. But people devote much effort to trying to apply it to languages of a different kind and have to adjust things so that in the end it doesn’t look like any sort of language any more. If I were more competitive, it could be a source of delight that they are, as it were, shooting themselves in the foot while I just continue on. But no, it is a matter of sadness that they mess about in this way instead of doing linguistics. Language description needs linguists, not computer technicians.

A major aim of linguistic fieldwork is to produce a grammar of a language — often, one that was previously undescribed — as a contribution to knowledge that will stand for all time. But grammars don’t get bought or read anything like as much as they used to. My first effort,The Dyirbal language of North Queens- land was published in December 1972. It had sold 510 copies by the end of 1973, living a life 351

followed by 81 in 1974 — 591 in the first two-and-a-bit years. (It was later issued in paperback and total sales were 2051 by the time it went out of print in 1994.) My latest effort, The Jarawara language of southern Amazonia was published in October 2004. In January 2006 the Linguistic Society of America bestowed on it their Leonard Bloomfield Award for the best book published worldwide across all fields of linguistics during a two-year period. Sales were 166 by Sep- tember 2005, with a further 36 by September 2006 — 202 in the first two years. And that included the nine-month period after it won a most prestigious prize. It seems that, in this staccato age, people buy and read books less than they used to and grammars much less. A lot of the day is spent sending and reading e-mails, or going for a doodle or five on Google. One lives in hope — what alternative is there? — that at some time in the future scholars will adjust their priorities and make time to read the classics of the past plus worthwhile publications of today.

It has been said that the system dulls the mind, stifles creativity. Not quite true. It is conformity to (the mediocrity of) the system which impedes original thought. My advice for young students of linguistics goes as follows. Recognise who are the really good scholars in your field and study their work most carefully. Pay glancing attention to the rest. Think things out for yourself, don’t accept what is being said around you without subjecting it to proper scrutiny. In particular, be distrustful of fashions, of short-cuts and of easy alternatives. Dare to be yourself! Remember that Sapir, Trubetzkoy and other great linguists achieved their results in traditional fashion — would these have been any better if they had been assisted by a computer? Use electronic aids in moderation, so that you are in charge of the machine and not vice versa. ‘Political correctness’ takes many forms. It frequently entails not being able to say what you think. The proportion of the population who condemn homo- sexuality is probably not too different now from what it was fifty years ago. The difference is that before you could freely express that feeling, now you can’t. One day recently, Professor B (a scholar I respect) offered to present me with a book which he’d been given to review but considered too execrable to keep on his own shelf. ‘But you gave it a good review!’ I exclaimed. ‘Well one does,’ came the reply. That’s the world we live in today. Write a paper on a certain topic, mentioning that R published a really incredibly poor book on the topic (giving reasons for this judgment) and your paper stands no chance of getting published. All you are allowed to say is something like ‘R provides an alternative view of this topic’. The current PC 352 I am a linguist

doctrine is that everyone is entitled to their opinion, everything which appears in print is as good as everything else, and don’t rock the boat! Back in 1989 I gave an hour-long conference presentation called ‘Are some languages better than others?’, suggesting that if linguistics is to come of age as a science it must — like other sciences — propose a methodology for evaluation. (This was described in Chapter 2 above.) It brought forth anguished howls: ‘I just couldn’t compare my language to another,’ a Polish linguist protested, ‘it would be like criticising my mother’. One of these critics had a husband who was a physicist. His reaction was: ‘You’re treating Bob Dixon like they did Galileo!’ It’s not easy, but one soldiers on.

A number of grumbles have been aired in this chapter, and in some earlier chapters. I was pointing out the difficulties which have to be circumvented or surmounted (or sometimes it is possible just to ignore them). Universities — especially Faculties of Arts — include many pockets of sloth and sloppiness. I was able to found and nurture a first-class teaching-and-research department at the ANU in the 1970s and 1980s. The Research Centre for Linguistic Typology was created in 1996 by Alexandra Aikhenvald and myself. It bloomed and prospered under the beneficial guidance of Vice-Chancellor Michael Osborne (and then abruptly faded). By a mixture of skill and hard work (plus keeping a weather eye open for opportunities, and exploring them), I’ve been able to pursue the goal of top-quality scientific linguistics for quite a few decades. But it is getting tougher and tougher to operate within an increasingly irrelevant university system. Bad trends are intensifying. A higher and higher proportion of university employees are administrators. In days gone by a university president would get paid perhaps half as much again as a top professor, now it is four or more times as much, and rising. Students are increasingly taught by power-point. There is a push towards shorter courses and lighter workloads. I doubt if the workload for the introductory linguistics course I taught in the 1970s would be countenanced today — three lectures and one tutorial each week, an analytical problem to be handed in and marked in almost every week, an end-of-semester essay, and a three-hour final exam. One of the most insidious interventions into the work of a scientific linguistics has been the establishment of university Human Ethics Committees (HECs). What began as a reasonable check on medical research has stretched out its tentacles in an inappropriate direction. Alexandra Aikhenvald and I have evolved our own set of ethical principles for the fieldworkers we look after, and some of them are at loggerheads with those of the HEC. We stress living a life 353

that extraneous elements should not be introduced into the life of a tribal village where a fieldworker may be living for nine months or more to learn and describe the language. Each culture has its own religion; do not attempt to introduce another. There will generally be no convention of competition — of winning and losing. Don’t interfere with this. No form-filling (difficult in any case, if there is little or no literacy). The community will accept you as a friend. Proper linguistic fieldwork is not a business arrangement, but rather a social undertaking. However, the HEC imposes its ethno-centric will — everyone in the community who the linguist might talk to must sign a form of consent before the funds for fieldwork are released. (You can’t get the funds until you’ve gone there, but you can’t go there until you’ve got the funds!) Or the HEC may be satisfied if the head-man of the village provides written permission. But in some societies there is no head-man! What are the ethics of a university committee which forces upon a tribal society its western-world regulations that by their nature will assist in undermining the cultural foundations of that society?

A question to ponder. If I were now 21, just finishing a bachelor’s degree, what would I-now recommend the young me to do. Opt for an academic career in a university? Things are a lot more difficult now than when I set out. And, what is worse, they show no signs of not getting even worse. The answer should perhaps be: ‘No — it may be better to explore another avenue.’ I could have been a share- or futures-broker and probably made a pile of cash. But money has never been a motivating factor. Or work as a management consultant (as mentioned in Chapter 3, this was an early option), which should provide a good deal of job satisfaction. But, with ruthless globalisation, this might be less attractive now than it was then. Or try to establish my young self as a professional writer. But I delight in running things and as just a writer wouldn’t have that opportunity. I suppose that really nothing else could have provided the same satisfaction as the job I’ve been doing. There would be no alternative to advising my young self to embark in the same direction. As mentioned in Chapter 8, Tilly Fuller was one of the last guardians of Yidiñ culture, lore and language. She recounted tales of tribal life in her young days, before it was destroyed by the inexorable economic advance of white Australia. ‘Happiness and fun’, was how she described it. So it has been for me. One has to push to one side all the not-so-good things around — the cant, the hypocrisy and the bureaucracy — and just get on with one’s own work. For the best part of half-a-century, I’ve had the most incredible intellectual satisfaction from just doing linguistics. 354 I am a linguist

There has been so much to value. Working to establish linguistics as a science. Evolving generalisations about the nature of human language. Pursuing fieldwork in diverse corners of the world, working out the structures of unusual languages. Organising things so that others could, in their own ways, follow these worthwhile goals. Yeah, happiness and fun, pretty well all the way.

SOURCES

Kristina Sands’ short book The ergative in proto-Australian was published in 1996 by LINCOM EUROPA in Munich. Quotations from page 326 of Anatoly Lieberman’s ‘Postscript’ toThe legacy of Genghis Khan and other essays on Russia’s identity, by Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetzkoy, published in 1991 by Michigan Slavic Publications in Ann Arbor. Solutions to problems from the end of chapter 6

Guri problem The first thing is to have a technique of arranging the data, then the pattern emerges:

midi- nubi bulu- nubi nubi foot head body in 1, 6, 9 in 3, 4, 5, 8

midi- sono bulu- sono sono knee buttocks thigh in 2, 7 in 1, 10

midi- bera bulu- bera bera hand/fist shoulders arm in 3, 10, 12 in 4, 6, 11

We see that

midi- is ‘with respect to the lower part of’ bulu- is ‘with respect to the upper part of’

Then:

huma- is ‘hit with short, sharp blows’ (covering ‘kick’ and ‘punch’) yabo- is ‘hit with pushing blow’ (covering ‘shove with knee’ and ‘butt with head’)

And:

-b is past tense 356 I am a linguist

-m is present tense -l is a subordinate marker (like a participle or a relative clause) and could here be translated as ‘with respect to’

The literal translation of sentence 1 is something like:

‘The man, with respect to the lower part of his body, delivered a short sharp blow to the woman, with respect to the upper part of her leg’.

And sentence 7 might be:

‘The man being big is with respect to the lower part of his thigh’

[Note that the secret is to analyse the Guri, not the English translations.]

Out-of-this-world problem At seven the next morning, Latso was awakened by the whoosh of landing lasers. Within minutes Elah, the Sapir in charge of South-Eastern Division, was looking over Latso’s notes. Within thirty seconds Elah had said ‘phew’; another twenty passed before he uttered ‘wow’, and then with a ‘wow-ee’ he pushed Latso aside and commenced scribbling frantically on the flyleaf of the University Converter. ‘First thing’ he shouted over his shoulder at Latso, whose skin was getting clammier every minute, ‘is to compare the forms. Look here!’ Elah had drawn up a chart:

EEL-PEOPLE IGUANA-PEOPLE da eel-people, us dan I bu animal bun other ma fish, food man weasel, food mi sun min sun wa weasel wan animal

‘There, it’s obvious,’ he exclaimed. Latso continued to look glassily at him, not saying a word. ‘See here,’ Elah continued impatiently, ‘it’s quite clear that all original consonant-vowel words have simply added n at the end. The languages must be solutions to problems from the end of chapter 6 357

related. Ergo, the eel-people must have developed into the iguana-people. Now look at the pronouns — da, which originally referred to the whole species, has now become a pronoun, ‘I’. Swadesh’s pattern 8-C, variant beta, page 789 of the Universal Grammar Handbook.’ He pushed the page to within an inch of Latso’s rigid gaze. ‘Originally, the only other beings with a grain of intelligence were land- dwellers. Animals. So there was an opposition between da and bu. What more natural than that bu should become the ‘other’ pronoun, referring to second and third person.’ Elah pointed to the third line of his chart: ‘ma was recorded as “fish” by those geologists fifty thousand years ago, but the correct meaning was obviously “food”. Now what do the iguanas eat nowadays? Not fish, because there are so many of them. What, then?’ A thin sound emerged from Latso’s hanging lips: ‘Weasels.’ ‘That’s right, weasels. Which is why there are so few. And the fact that there are so few accounts for the plethora of bandicoots, for there aren’t enough weasels to keep their numbers down. So ma still means food and now refers to weasels. The formwa is no longer needed in its original meaning, so it has been generalised to cover all animals, replacing bu which had earlier been promoted to be a pronoun.’ Elah scribbled again. ‘Compounding’ he said, ‘and then dropping the second vowel to fit the consonant-vowel-consonant pattern.’ Latso looked over his shoulder and saw what he had written:

wa plus ma, giving wama, weasel-food; that is: shortened to wam bandicoot

su plus mi, giving sumi, (place where one is) at rest (in) sun shortened to sum (shine); that is: grass

si plus wu, giving siwu, move (in) water; that is: fish shortened to siw

si plus la, giving sila, move (on) land; that is: iguana-people shortened to sil (after their emergence from the sea) 358 I am a linguist

Nodding gloomily, Latso took the pencil and added:

su, adds finaln , giving sun originally ‘be at rest’, now ‘lie down’

si, adds finaln , giving sin originally ‘move’, now ‘walk about’

bu plus su, giving busu, animal be at rest; that is, stand shortened to bus (habitual stance of animals)

Elah clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s it my boy. You’ve got it now. But, for the love of Boas tell me: why did you have to fetch me fifteen light-years to solve a simple conundrum like that ...?’

Latso never did get his PhD. I hate to tell you what he’s doing now. Bibliography

A number of minor publications are not listed here. These include articles in magazines devoted to jazz, blues and discography (1959–64 ), unsigned reviews in British Book News (1962–6), signed book reviews in newspapers (The Scotsman 1962-3, The Canberra Times 1981, 1986-90), and a number of letters to the editor and short articles in newspapers and university magazines. Note that publications on linguistics use the name ‘Robert M. W. Dixon’ until 1967 and ‘R. M. W. Dixon’ from 1968 on. Publications on blues and gospel retain ‘Robert M. W. Dixon’ throughout.

1962 Review a of G. Herdan, Type-token mathematics, in Archivum Linguisticum 14: 159-61.

1963 Book a Linguistic science and logic (Janua Linguarum, Series Minor Nr. 28). Paper- back. The Hague: Mouton. 108 pp. See also 1970d.

Articles b A logical statement of grammatical theory, as contained in Halliday’s ‘Cat- egories of the theory of grammar’, Language 39: 654-68. c A trend in semantics, Linguistics 1: 30-57.

Review d of Lázló Antal, Questions of meaning, in Linguistics 2: 96-102.

1964 Book a Robert M. W. Dixon and John Godrich (compilers). Blues and gospel records, 1902–1942. Hardback. London: B. A. L. Rust. 765 pp. See also 1969a, 1982b, 1997b. 360 I am a linguist

Articles and story b On formal and contextual meaning, Acta Linguistica 14: 23-46. c A trend in semantics: rejoinder, Linguistics 4: 14-18. d Under nom-de-plume Simon Tully: The perfect people, Worlds of IF Science Fiction 14 (6): 58-63.

Review e of Hans Freudenthal, Lincos: design of a language for cosmic intercourse, in Linguistics 5: 116-8.

1965 Book a What is language?, a new approach to linguistic description (Longmans Lin- guistics Library). Hardback. London: Longmans. xviii, 216 pp.

Review b of Paul Oliver, Conversation with the blues, in Jazz Monthly, November 1965, pp. 25-8.

1966 Articles a Mbabaram phonology, Transactions of the Philological Society for 1965, 41-96. b Mbabaram: a dying Australian language, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 29: 97-121. c How to understand aliens, Worlds of Tomorrow 3 (5): 115-22. d Alien arithmetic, Worlds of Tomorrow 3 (7): 114-19.

1967 Story a Under nom-de-plume Simon Tully: Whose brother is my sister. Worlds of Tomorrow 4 (4): 105-24.

Review b of Alfred G. Smith (editor), Communication and culture, in Man n. s. 2: 334.

1968 Articles a Noun classes, Lingua 21: 104-25. See also 1982a. bibliography 361

b Virgin birth [letter to editor],Man n. s. 3: 653-4.

Review c of Thomas A. Sebeok (editor), Portraits of linguists, in Journal of Linguistics 4: 299-300.

1969 Book a John Godrich and Robert M. W. Dixon (compilers). Blues and gospel records, 1902–1942, 2nd edition. Hardback. London: Storyville. 912 pp. See also 1964a, 1982b, 1997b.

Articles b Relative clauses and possessive phrases in two Australian languages, Lan- guage 45: 35-44. c Syntactic orientation as a semantic property, pp. 1-22 of Mathematical linguistics and automatic translation, Report NSF-24. Paperback. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Computation Laboratory. See also 1976g, 1982a.

Review d of Herbert Lander, Language and culture, in The Modern Language Review, January 1969, pp. 122-3.

1970 Book a Robert M. W. Dixon and John Godrich. Recording the blues. Hardback and paperback. 112 pp. London: Studio Vista, and New York: Stein and Day. See also 2001g.

Articles b Languages of the Cairns rain forest region, pp. 651-87 of Pacific linguistics studies in honour of Arthur Capell, edited by S. A. Wurm and D. C. Laycock. Paperback. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. c Olgolo syllable structure and what they are doing about it, Linguistic Inquiry 1: 273-6. See also 1982a. d Linguistics as a science, pp. 43-52 of Linguistics in Great Britain, II: Con- temporary linguistics, edited by Wolfgang Kühlwein. Paperback. Tübingen: Niemeyer. [Reprint of pp. 40-50 of 1963a] 362 I am a linguist

Review e The emergence of Noam Chomsky, review of John Lyons, Chomsky, in The Listener (21 May) 83: 690-1.

1971 Article a A method of semantic description, pp. 436-71 of Semantics, an interdiscipli- nary reader in philosophy, linguistics and psychology, edited by Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits. Hardback and paperback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See also 1982a.

Review b of A. Capell, A survey of New Guinea languages, in Oceania 42: 70-1.

1972 Book a The Dyirbal language of North Queensland (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xiv, 420 pp. Hardback; plus paperback edition just for Australian market, 1973. See also 1976b, 2009b.

Article b Proto-Australian laminals, Oceanic Linguistics IX: 79-103 [Journal dated 1970 but published in 1972.]

1973 Article a The semantics of giving, pp. 205-23 ofTh e formal analysis of natural languages, edited by Maurice Gross, Morris. Halle and Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. Hardback. The Hague: Mouton. See also 1975a, 1982a.

Review b of A. Capell and H. E. Hinch, Maung grammar, in Oceania 43: 328.

1974 Nothing bibliography 363

1975 Article a The semantics of giving [Reprint of 1973a, with explanatory notes in Japa- nese], pp. 49-78 of Selected theses on linguistics, 1975 edition. Hardback. To- kyo: Eichosa. See also 1982a.

Review b of Franz Boas, Handbook of American Indian languages, volumes 1 and 2, in Linguistics 152: 75-7.

1976 Books a Editor of Grammatical categories in Australian languages (Linguistic Series No. 22). Hardback and paperback. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aborigi- nal Studies; and New Jersey: Humanities Press. vii, 776 pp. b Worldwide paperback reissue of 1972a, The Dyirbal language of North Queensland (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xiv, 420 pp. See also 2009b.

Articles c Introduction, pp. 1-15 of 1976a. d The derivational affix ‘having’: Rapporteur’s introduction; Yidinj; Dyirbal; Rapporteur’s summary. pp. 203-4, 212-14, 242-4, 306-10 of 1976a. e Ergative, locative and instrumental case inflections: Rapporteur’s introduction; Yidinj; More on Yidinj; Rapporteur’s summary, pp. 313-15, 315-30, 327-9, 411-14 of 1976a. f Tribes, languages and other boundaries in north-east Queensland, pp. 207-38 of Tribes and boundaries in Australia, edited by Nicolas Peterson. Paperback. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies; and New Jersey: Hu- manities Press. g Syntactic orientation as a semantic property, pp. 347-62 of Syntax and semantics, volume 7: Notes from the linguistic underground, edited by James D. McCawley. Hardback. New York: Academic Press. [Reprint of 1969c.] See also 1982a.

Review h of S. A. Wurm, Languages of Australia and Tasmania, in Language 52: 260-6. 364 I am a linguist

1977 Book a A grammar of Yidiɲ. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 19). Hardback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xxiii, 563 pp. See also 1982a, 2010c.

Articles b Some phonological rules in Yidiny, Linguistic Inquiry 8: 1-34. c Where have all the adjectives gone?, Studies in Language 1: 19-80. See also 1982a, 2000g. d The syntactic development of Australian languages, pp. 365-415 of Mecha- nisms of syntactic change, edited by Charles N. Li. Hardback. Austin: Uni- versity of Texas Press. e Semantic neutralization for phonological reasons, Linguistic Inquiry 8: 599- 602. See also 1982a. f Delocutive verbs in Dyirbal, pp. 21-38 of Studies in descriptive and historical linguistics, Festschrift for W. P. Lehmann, edited by Paul Hopper. Hardback. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Review g of Edward Stankiewicz (translator and editor), A Baudouin de Courtenay anthology, in International Review of Slavic Linguistics 2: 465-73.

1978 Nothing

1979 Book a Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Barry J. Blake. Handbook of Australian languages, volume 1. Paperback: Canberra: Australian National University Press; and hardback: Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xviii, 390 pp.

Articles b Ergativity, Language 55: 59-138. c A note on Dyirbal ergativity, pp. 90-1 of Papers from the fifteenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. d Comments and corrections concerning Heath’s ‘Is Dyirbal ergative?’, Lin- guistics 17: 1003-15. bibliography 365

e The nature and development of Australian languages, pp. 431-43 of Annual review of anthropology, 1979. f Barry J. Blake and R. M. W. Dixon: Introduction, pp. 1-25 of 1979a.

Reviews g of Joyce Hudson and Eirlys Richards, The Walmatjari, in Language 55: 258-9. h of Colin Yallop, Alyawarra, in Language 55: 259-60. i of D. T. Tryon, Daly family languages, Australia and D. B. W. Birk, The Malak- Malak language, Daly River (Western Arnhem Land), in Language 55: 260-1. j of Diana K. Eades, The Dharawal and Dhurga languages of the New South Wales south coast, in Language 55: 261. k of K. C. and L. E. Hansen, Pintupi dictionary, in Language 55: 262.

1980 Book a The languages of Australia (Cambridge Language Surveys). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xxii, 547 pp. Hardback and paperback. See also 2011d.

Article b R. M. W. Dixon, Alan Hogan and Anna Wierzbicka. Interpreters: some basic problems, Legal Service Bulletin 6: 162-7.

Reviews c of Joyce Hudson, The core of Walmatjari grammar, in AUMLA (Australian Universities Language and Literature Association journal) 53: 125. d of Peter Sutton (editor), Languages of Cape York, in Language 56: 702-3. e of N. J. B. Plomley, A word-list of the Tasmanian Aboriginal languages, in Language 56: 703. f of W. H. Douglas, The Aboriginal languages of the south-west of Australia, in Language 56: 704. g of Joyce Hudson, The core of Walmatjari grammar, in Language 56: 911-2. h of Terry Crowley, The Middle Clarence dialects of Bandjalang, in Language 56: 912-3. i of The need for interpreting and translation services for Australian Aboriginals with special reference to the Northern Territory - a research report, in Aborigi- nal History 4: 226-9. 366 I am a linguist

1981 Book a Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Barry J. Blake. Handbook of Australian languages, volume 2. Paperback: Canberra: Australian National University Press; and hardback: Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xxiv, 427 pp.

Articles b Wargamay, pp. xxiv, 1-144 of 1981a. c Grammatical reanalysis: an example of linguistic change from Warrgamay (North Queensland),Australian Journal of Linguistics 1: 91-112. d Terry Crowley and R. M. W. Dixon: Tasmanian, pp. 392-421 of 1981a.

Reviews e of K. C. and L. E. Hansen, Thecore of Pintupi grammar, in Language 57: 245. f of Anna Wierzbicka, Lingua mentalis, in Lingua 55: 265-76. g of Frans Plank (editor), Ergativity: towards a theory of grammatical relations, in Journal of Linguistics 17: 368-71.

1982 Books a Where have all the adjectives gone? and other essays in semantics and syntax (Janua Linguarum, Series Maior 107). Hardback. Berlin: Mouton. xiv, 256 pp. [One of the nine chapters was written for this volume. The others are 1969c, 1973a, 1977c and 1977e (only minor revisions made); 1968a, 1970c and 1971a (substantially revised and rewritten); and a chapter based on parts of 1977a.] b Robert M. W. Dixon and John Godrich (compilers). Blues and gospel records, 1902–1943, 3rd edition. Hardback. London: Storyville. 898 pp. See also 1964a, 1969a, 1997b.

Articles c The grammar of English phrasal verbs,A ustralian Journal of Linguistics 2: 1-42. d Problems in Dyirbal dialectology, pp. 43-73 of Language form and language variation, Papers dedicated to Angus McIntosh, edited by John Anderson. Hardback. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

1983 Book a Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Barry J. Blake. Handbook of Australian lan- bibliography 367

guages, volume 3. Paperback: Canberra: Australian National University Press; and hardback: Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xxiv, 531 pp.

Article b Nyawaygi, pp. 430-525 of 1983a.

1984 Books a Searching forAboriginal languages, Memoirs of a field worker. Hardback and paperback. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. ix, 333 pp. See also 1989a and 2011e. b Under nom-de-plume Hosanna Brown. I spy, you die. Hardback. 184 pp. Lon- don: Victor Gollancz. [Novel.] See also 1985a, 2004c.

Articles c Dyirbal song types: a preliminary report, pp. 206-27 of Problems and solutions, Occasional papers in musicology presented to Alice M. Moyle, edited by J. C. Kassler and J. Stubington. Hardback. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger. d The semantic basis of syntactic properties, pp. 583-95 of Proceedings of the tenth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Review e of David Crystal (editor), Linguistic controversies: essays in linguistic theory and practice in honour of F. R. Palmer, in Australian Journal of Linguistics 4: 128-31.

1985 Book a Large-print edition of 1984b, Hosanna Brown: I Spy, You Die. Hardback. Bath: Chivers Press. 276 pp. See also 2004c.

1986 Book a Under nom-de-plume Hosanna Brown, Death upon a spear. Hardback 184 pp. London: Victor Gollancz. [Novel.]

Article b Noun classes and noun classification in typological perspective, pp. 105-12 368 I am a linguist

of Noun classes and categorization, edited by Colette Craig. Hardback and paperback. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Review c of Frans Plank (editor), Objects: towards a theory of grammatical relations, in Language 62: 437-9.

1987 Book a Studies in ergativity. Invited guest editor for special volume of the journal Lingua, volume 71. Also published, under the same title, as a hardback monograph by North-Holland Elsevier, Amsterdam. vii, 340 pp.

Articles b Studies in ergativity: Introduction, pp. 1-16 of 1987a. c Words of Juluji’s world, pp. 147-65 of Australians to 1788, edited by D. J. Mulvaney and J. Peter White (Volume 1 of Australians: a historical library). Hardback. Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon. .

1988 Book a A grammar of Boumaa Fijian. Hardback and paperback. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xix, 375 pp.

Article b ‘Words’ in Fijian, pp. 65-71 of Lexicographical and linguistic studies, essays in honour of G. W. Turner, edited by T. L. Burton and Jill Burton. Hardback. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Review c of A basic Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara to English dictionary and of Pompey Everard and others (editors), Punu: Yankunytjatjara plant use: traditional methods of preparing foods, medicines, utensils and weapons from native plants in Australian Journal of Linguistics 8: 337-8.

1989 Book a Reissue of 1984a, Searching for Aboriginal languages, Memoirs of a field worker. bibliography 369

Paperback. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ix, 333 pp. See also 2010e.

Articles b Australian languages. Canberra: Department of Aboriginal Affairs. 8 pp. [Pamphlet produced for free distribution throughout the nation.] c The Dyirbal kinship system, Oceania 59: 245-68. d The original languages of ustralia,A Vox 3: 26-33. e Subject and object in universal grammar, pp. 91-118 of Essays on grammatical theory and universal grammar, edited by Doug Arnold, Martin Atkin- son, Jacques Durand, Claire Grover and Louise Sadler. Hardback. Clarendon Press. See also 1991k. f Synchronic description requires diachronic explanation — an example from the Ngajan dialect of Dyirbal, pp. 1-19 of Language variation and language change, edited by Aditi Mukherjee. Hardback. Hyderabad, India: Centre for Advanced Studies in Linguistics, Osmania University. g We may lose, but we’ll go down fighting for what we believe in, Canberra Times, 12 April 1989, p. 9. [Article protesting against the federal government’s plan to amalgamate the Australian National University with the Canberra College of Advanced Education. The plan was abandoned.]

Review h of Peter Austin (editor), Complex sentence constructions in Australian languages, in Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1989, No. 1, pp. 76-7.

1990 Books a R. M. W. Dixon, W. S. Ramson and Mandy Thomas. Australian Aboriginal words in English: their origin and meaning. Hardback. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. xii, 255 pp. See also 1991e, 2006a. b Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Martin Duwell. The Honey Ant Men’s love song and other Aboriginal song poems. Paperback. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. xvi, 147 pp. [Co-editor; co-author of Introduction; collector, translator and editor for 18 of the poems.]

Articles c Compensating phonological changes: an example from the northern dialects of Dyirbal, Lingua 80: 1-34. 370 I am a linguist

d Summary report: Linguistic change and reconstruction in the Australian language family, pp. 393-401 of Linguistic change and reconstruction methodology, edited by Phillip Baldi. Hardback. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. See also 1992f. e Song lines as poetry, The Independent Monthly, September 1990, pp. 42-3.

1991 Books a A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles. Hardback. Ox- ford: Clarendon Press. xvi, 398 pp. See also 1992a, 1995a, 2005a. b Words of our country: stories, place names and vocabulary in Yidiny, the Abo- riginal language of the Cairns/Yarrabah region. Paperback. St Lucia: Univer- sity of Queensland Press. xiv, 312 pp. c Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Barry J. Blake. Handbook of Australian languages, volume 4 — The Aboriginal language of Melbourne and other grammatical sketches. Paperback. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. xviii, 410 pp. d Edited by Peter Austin, R. M. W. Dixon, Tom Dutton and Isobel White.Lan- guage and history, essays in honour of Luise A. Hercus. Paperback. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. viii, 289 pp. e Paperback edition of 1990a, Australian Aboriginal words in English: their origin and meaning. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. xii, 255 pp. See also 2006a.

Articles f Mbabaram, pp. 348-402 of 1991c. g Reassigning underlying forms in Yidiny - a change during language death, pp. 89-99 of 1991c. h A changing language situation: the decline of Dyirbal, 1963-89, Language and Society 20: 183-200. i Some observations on the grammar of Indian English, pp. 437-47 of Studies in Dravidian and general linguistics, a Festschrift for Bh. Krishnamurti, edited by B. Lakshmi Bai and B. Ramakrishna Reddy. Hardback. Hyderabad, India: Centre for Advanced Studies in Linguistics, Osmania University. j The endangered languages of Australia, Indonesia and Oceania, pp. 229-55 of Endangered languages, edited by Robert H. Robins and Eugenius M. Uh- lenbeck. Hardback. Oxford: Berg. See also 2000f. k Paperback reissue of 1989e, Subject and object in universal grammar, pp. 91- 118 of Essays on grammatical theory and universal grammar, edited by Doug bibliography 371

Arnold, Martin Atkinson, Jacques Durand, Claire Grover and Louise Sadler. Oxford: Clarendon Press. l Barry J. Blake and R. M. W. Dixon: Introduction, pp. 1-28 of 1991c.

Review m of William McGregor, A functional grammar of Gooniyandi, in Journal of Linguistics 27: 577-8.

1992 Books a Paperback edition of 1991a, A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press. xvi, 398 pp. See also 1995a, 2005a.

Articles b The origin of ‘mother-in-law vocabulary’ in two Australian languages, An- thropological Linguistics 32: 1-58. [Journal dated 1990 but published 1992.] c Naive linguistic explanation, Language in Society 21: 83-91. See also 2011c. d Australian languages, pp. 134-7 of The Oxford international encyclopaedia of linguistics, edited by William Bright. Hardback. New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press. See also 2003d. e ‘The Tully dialects’ are Dyirbal, Studia Linguistica 46: 72-6. f Summary report: Linguistic change and reconstruction in the Australian language family, pp. 193-201 of Patterns of change and change of patterns: Linguistic change and reconstruction methodology, edited by Phillip Baldi. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [Reprint of 1990d in a shortened paperback version — intended for students — of the original volume.]

Reviews g of Desmond C. Derbyshire and Geoffrey K. Pullum (editors), Handbook of Amazonian languages, volume 3, in Diachronica 9: 111-114. h of Johannes Bechert, Giuliano Bernini and Claude Buridant (editors), To- wards a typology of European languages, in Journal of Linguistics 28: 260-4.

1993 Article a Australian Aboriginal languages, pp. 71-82 of The languages of Australia, edited by Gerhard Schulz. Paperback. Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities. 372 I am a linguist

Reviews b of William Bright (volume editor), The collected works of Edward Sapir, V. American Indian languages — 1, in Canberra Anthropology 16: 121-3. c of Renaat Declerck, A comprehensive descriptive grammar of English in Lan- guage 69: 622. d of Michael Walsh and Colin Yallop (editors), Language and culture in Abo- riginal Australia in The Australian Journal of Anthropology4: 125-7.

1994 Books a Ergativity (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 69). Hardback and paperback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xxii, 271 pp. b Edited by Martin Duwell and R. M. W. Dixon. Little Eva at Moonlight Creek: further Aboriginal song poems. Paperback. St Lucia: University of Queens- land Press. xx, 169 pp.

Articles c Adjectives, pp. 29-35 of Theencyclopedia of language and linguistics, volume 1, edited by R. E. Asher. Hardback. Oxford: Pergamon Press. See also 2000h.

1995 Book a Tiksŭn Yŏngmunpŏp, translation into Korean by Kim Yun Kyung of chapters 1-8 of 1991a, A new approach to English grammar, on semantic principles. Hardback. Seoul: Munhwa-sa (Korean Culture Company). xiii, 422 pp. See also 2005a.

Articles b Fusional development of possessed nouns in Jarawara, International Journal of American Linguistics 61: 263-94. c Complement clauses and complementation strategies, pp. 175-220 of Gram- mar and meaning, a Festschrift for John Lyons, edited by F. R. Palmer. Hard- back. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Review d of Barry Alpher, Yir-Yoront lexicon: sketch and dictionary of an Australian language in Language 70: 593. bibliography 373

1996 Book a R. M. W. Dixon and Grace Koch. Dyirbal song poetry, the oral literature of an Australian rainforest people. Paperback. St. Lucia:. University of Queensland Press. xiv, 367 pp. (with accompanying CD/cassette from Larrikin).

Articles b R. M. W. Dixon and Alan R. Vogel. Reduplication in Jarawara, Languages of the World 10: 24-31. c Aboriginal people: Languages, pp. 76-80 of Volume 1 of The Australian encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition. Hardback. Australian Geographic. d Origin legends and linguistic relationships, Oceania, 67: 127-39.

Review e of Francesca C. Merlan, A grammar of Wardaman, a language of the Northern Territory of Australia in Language 72: 839-42.

1997 Books a The rise and fall of languages. Hardback and paperback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. vi, 169 pp. See also 2001c and 2010d. b Robert M. W. Dixon, John Godrich and Howard Rye (compilers). Blues and gospel records, 1890–1943, 4th edition. Hardback. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1370 pp. See also 1964a, 1969a, 1982b.

Articles c R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. A typology of argument- determined constructions, pp. 71-113 of Essays on language function and language type, dedicated to T. Givón, edited by Joan Bybee, John Haiman and Sandra A. Thompson. Hardback. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2011c. d Mary Haas: A real linguist of the Nth degree, Anthropological Linguistics, 39: 611-6.

1998 Articles a Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Dependencies between grammatical systems, Language 74: 56-80. See also 2011c. 374 I am a linguist

b Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Evidentials and areal typology: A case study from Amazonia, Language Sciences 20: 241-57.

Reviews c of F. R. Palmer, Grammatical roles and relations in Language 74: 217-8. d of Nicholas D. Evans, A grammar of Kayardild, with historical comparative notes on Tangkic, in Studies in Language 22: 507-15.

1999 Book a Edited by R.M.W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. TheAmazonian Lan- guages (Cambridge Language Surveys). Hardback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xxviii, 446 pp. See also 2006e.

Articles b Arawá, pp. 293-306 of 1999a. c Semantic roles and syntactic functions: the semantic basis for a typology, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Part 2: Papers from the Panels, pp. 323-41. See also 2011c. d Christie Palmerston: a reappraisal, Aboriginal History 21: 162-9. [Dated 1997, published in 1999.] e R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Introduction, pp. 1-22 of 1999a. f Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Other small language families and isolates, pp. 341-84 of 1999a.

Review g of Mark Harvey and Nicholas Reid (editors), Nominal classification in Abo- riginal Australia, in Australian Journal of Linguistics, 19: 121-3.

2000 Books a Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Changing valency: case studies in transitivity. Hardback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xvi, 413 pp. See also 2010e. b Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Barry J. Blake. Handbook of Australian languages, volume 5 — Grammatical sketches of Bunuba. Ndjébbana and Kugu Nganhcara. Paperback. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. xxii, 507 pp. bibliography 375

Articles c A typology of causatives: form, grammar and meaning, pp. 30-83 of 2000a. See also 2003e. d A-constructions and O-constructions in Jarawara, International Journal of American Linguistics 66: 22-56. e Categories of the noun phrase in Jarawara, Journal of Linguistics 36: 487-510. f Lenguas en peligro de Australia, Indonesia y Oceania, pp. 309-41 of Lenguas en peligro, edited by Robert H. Robins, Eugenius M. Uhlenbeck and Beatriz Garza Cuaron, translated by Isabel Verical. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Anthropología e Historia. [Spanish translation of 1991j.] g ¿Dónde quedaron todos los adjetivos?, pp. 87-171 of Lecturas de morphología, traducción y edición de Elisabeth Beniers. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. [Translation into Spanish of pp. 1-62 of 1982a, itself a revision of 1977c.] h Adjectives, pp. 1-8 of Concise encyclopedia of grammatical categories, edited by K. Brown and J. Miller. Hardback. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. [Revision of 1994c.] i R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Introduction, pp. 1-29 of 2000a.

2001 Books a Edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: Problems in comparative linguistics. Hardback. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xvi, 453 pp. See also 2006f. b Edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon and Masayuki Onishi. Non-canonical marking of subjects and objects. Hardback and paperback, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xi, 362 pp. c Gengo no kobo, Japanese translation by Midori Osumi of 1997a The rise and fall of languages. Paperback. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. 240 pp. See also 2010d.

Articles d The Australian linguistic area, pp. 64-104 of 2001a. e Internal reconstruction of tense-modal suffixes in Jarawara,Diachronica 18: 3-30. f Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon, Introduction, pp. 1-26 of 2001a. g Robert M. W. Dixon and John Godrich. Recording the blues. pp. 243-330 of Yonder come the blues: The evolution of a genre, edited by Paul Oliver. 376 I am a linguist

Hardback and paperback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Slightly revised reissue of 1970a.]

2002 Books a Australian languages: their nature and development (Cambridge Language Surveys). Hardback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xlii, 736 pp. See also 2007a. b Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Word: a cross-linguistic typology. Hardback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xiii, 290 pp. See also 2007b.

Articles c The eclectic morphology of Jarawara, and the status of word, pp. 125-52 of 2002b. d Copula clauses in Australian languages: a typological perspective, Anthro- pological Linguistics 44: 1-36. e R. M. W. Dixon and A. Y. Aikhenvald, Word: a typological framework, pp. 1-41 of 2002b.

Review f of Lucy Seki, Gramática do Kamaiurá, lingua Tupí-Guaraní do Alto Xingo, in International Journal of American Linguistics 68: 120-2.

2003 Book a Edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Studies in evidentiality. Hardback. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xiv, 347 pp.

Articles b Evidentiality in Jarawara, pp. 165-87 of 2003a. c Demonstratives: a cross-linguistic typology, Studies in Language 27: 61-112. d Australian languages, pp. 170-6 of International encyclopedia of linguistics, 2nd edition, edited by William Frawley. Hardback. New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press. [Revised and enlarged version of 1992d.] e Reprint of 2000c, A typology of causatives: form, grammar and meaning, as pp. 332-83 of Morphology: Critical concepts in linguistics, edited by Francis Katamba. volume IV, Morphology: its relation to syntax. Hardback. London: Routledge. bibliography 377

f Ruth Monserrat and R. M. W. Dixon. Evidentiality in Mӯky, pp. 237-41 of 2003a.

2004 Books a The Jarawara language of southern Amazonia. Hardback. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xxi, 636 pp. See also 2011a. b Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Adjective classes, a cross-linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 1). Hard- back. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xxii, 370 pp. See also 2006g. c Paperback reissue of 1984b, Hosanna Brown: I spy, you die. London: Back- in-print books. 184 pp. See also 1985a.

Articles d Adjective classes in typological perspective, pp. 1-49 of 2004b. e The small adjective class in Jarawara, pp. 177-98 of 2004b. f A program for linguistics, Turkic languages 7: 157-80. g Proto-Arawá phonology, Anthropological Linguistics 46: 1-83. h Correction of error, Linguistic Typology 8: 145-6.

2005 Book a A semantic approach to English grammar. Hardback and paperback. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xvii, 543 pp. [Revised and expanded version of 1991a.]

Article b Comparative constructions in English, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 41: 5-27. See also 2011c. c Ken Hale: an appreciation, Anthropological Linguistics. 46: 342-5. [Journal dated 2004, published 2005.]

2006 Books a R. M. W Dixon, Bruce Moore, W. S. Ramson and Mandy Thomas. Austral- ian Aboriginal words in English; their origin and meaning, Second edition. Paperback. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. xiii, 251 pp. [Revised and enlarged edition of 1990a.] 378 I am a linguist

b Edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Serial verb constructions, a cross-linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 2). Hardback. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xxiv, 369 pp. See also 2007c. c Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Complementation, a cross-linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 3). Hard- back. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xvi, 288 pp. See also 2008a. d Edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Grammars in contact, a cross-linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 4). Hardback. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xx, 355 pp. See also 2008b. e Paperback reissue of: 1999a, The Amazonian Languages (Cambridge Lan- guage Surveys). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xxviii, 446 pp. f Paperback reissue (with corrections) of 2001a, Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: Problems in comparative linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xvi, 453 pp. g Paperback reissue (with corrections) of 2004b, Adjective classes, a cross- linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 1). Oxford: Oxford University Press. xxii, 370 pp.

Articles h Serial verb constructions: conspectus and coda, pp. 338-50 of 2006b. i Complement clause types and complementation strategies in typological perspective, pp. 1-48 of 2006c. j Complement clause type and complementation strategy in Jarawara, pp. 93-114 of 2006c. k Complementation strategies in Dyirbal, pp. 261-79 of 2006c. l Grammatical diffusion in Australia: free and bound pronouns’, pp. 67-93 of 2006d. m Annotated bibliography of the Arawá language family to 1950, International Journal of American Linguistics 72: 522-34. n The rticlesa in English, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 42: 31-36. See also 2011c.

2007 Books a Paperback reissue of 2002a, Australian languages: their nature and develop ment (Cambridge Language Surveys). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xlii, 736 pp. b Paperback reissue of 2002b, Word: a cross-linguistic typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xiii, 290 pp. bibliography 379

c Paperback reissue (with corrections) of 2006b, Serial verb constructions, a cross-linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 2). Ox- ford: Oxford University Press. xxiv, 369 pp.

Articles d Field linguistics, a minor manual, Linguistic fieldwork,a special issue of Lan- guage Typology and Universals, edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, 60: 12-31. e Clitics in English, English Sudies 88: 574-600. f Roman Jakobson and the $2 bills, Historiographia Linguistica 34: 435-40.

2008 Books a Paperback reissue (with corrections) of 2006c, Complementation, a cross- linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press. xvi, 288 pp. b Paperback reissue (with corrections) of 2006d, Grammars in contact, a cross- linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 4). Oxford: Oxford University Press. xx. 355 pp.

Articles c Deriving verbs in English, Language Sciences 30: 31-52. d Comparative constructions: a cross-linguistic typology, Studies in Language 32: 787-817. e Australian Aboriginal words in dictionaries — A history, International Jour- nal of Lexicology 21: 129-52. See also 2011c. f Twice and constituency, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 44: 193-202. See also 2011c.

Review g of Hermann Nekes and Ernest A. Worms, Australian Languages, edited by William B. McGregor. in Anthropological Linguistics 49. 75-80. [Dated 2007, published 2008.]

2009 Books a Edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. The semantics of clause linking, a cross-linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 5). Hardback. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xviii, 410 pp. See also 2011b. 380 I am a linguist

b Paperback reissue of 1972a, The Dyirbal language of North Queensland (Cam- bridge Studies in Linguistics, 9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xiv, 420 pp. See also 1976b.

Articles b The semantics of clause linking in typological perspective, pp. 1-55 of 2009a. c The semantics of clause linking in Boumaa Fijian, pp. 218-38 of 2009a. d Language contact in the Cairns rainforest region, Anthropological Linguistics 50: 223-48. [Journal dated 2008, published 2009.] e Zero and nothing in Jarawara, pp. 125-37 of Form and function in language research: papers in honour of Christian Lehmann, edited by Johannes Helm- brecht, Yoko Nishina, Yong Min Shin, Stavros Skopeteas and Elisabeth Ver- hoeven. Hardback. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. See also 2011c. f The grammatical status oft he same, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 45: 3-11. See also 2011c. g Australian Aboriginal words in dictionaries: response to Nash, International Journal of Lexicology 22: 189-90. h Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Speaking Greek in diaspora: language contact and language change, Hellenic Studies 17: 55-75.

2010 Books a Basic linguistic theory, Volume 1 — Methodology. Hardback and paperback. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xvi, 382 pp. b Basic linguistic theory, Volume 2 — Grammatical topics. Hardback and paper back. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xvii, 490 pp. c Paperback reissue of 1977a, A grammar of Yidiɲ (Cambridge Studies in Lin- guistics, 19). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xxiii, 563 pp. d Chinese translation by Zhu Xiaonong, Yan Zhincheng, Jiao Lei, Zhang Ca- icai and Hong Ying of 1997a, The rise and fall of languages. Beijng: Beijing University Press. See also 2001c. e Paperback reissue of 2000a, Changing valency: case studies in transitivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xvi, 413 pp.

2011 Books a Paperback reissue (with corrections) of 2004a. The Jarawara language of southern Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xxi, 636 pp. bibliography 381

b Paperback reissue (with corrections) of 2009a, The semantics of clause linking, a cross-linguistic typology (Explorations in linguistic typology, volume 5). Oxford: Oxford University Press. xviii, 410 pp. c Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Language at large. Leiden: Brill. [Includes one single-authored and one co-authored chapter both written specially for this volume, plus revised versions of 1997c, 1998a, 1999c, 1992c, 2009e, 2005b, 2006n and 2009f (combined), 2008f and 2008e.] d Paperback reissue of 1980a, The languages of Australia (Cambridge Library Collection). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xxii, 547 pp. e Paperback reissue of 1984a, Searching for Aboriginal languages, memoirs of a field worker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ix, 333 pp. See also 1989a

Forthcoming Book a Basic linguistic theory, volume 3 — Further grammatical topics. Oxford: Ox- ford University Press.

Article b Gradual loss of a gender contrast. To appear in a Festschrift volume edited by Andrej A. Zaliznyak, Tatiana M. Nikolaeva, Tatiana C. Civyan and Peter M. Arkadieva. Moscow: Jazyki slavyanskoj kul’tury.

Index

A, S and O syntactic functions 100-3, 65, 80, 83-4, 161, 165, 213, 257 164-5, 171, 185, 222-3, 289 Australian National Dictionary 260 Abaza language 84 Australian National University Abercrombie, David 62, 342 (ANU) 108-22, 132-41, 232-43, 268- Abergowrie 160 9, 325-35 Aborigines, Australian 83-94, 154-65, aversive case 164 245-65 adjectives 27-33, 39-40, 64, 109, 130-5, Bakoki Jarawara 12, plate 3 170-3 Banawá dialect 6, 275, 310-11 African languages 96 Bandjalang language 262 Agua Branca 275-81, 309-13 Barbaram, see Mbabaram language Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 301, 304-8, Barber, Chris 68 315, 318-37, 352, plate 24 Bates, Deacon L. J. 70-1 Ajaka songs of the Jarawara 15-17, Batman, John 246 288, 299, 310 Bau dialect of Fijian 203-11 Aldin, Mrs Mary K. 77 Bell, Jeanie 261, 265 American Record Corporation 76 Bellenden Homestead 154, 255 analysis, linguistic 185-6 Bengali language 29 Andrews, Avery D. 199 Bennett, Albert 88, 94, 101, 155, plate 13 ANU, see Australian National Bennett, M. M. 264 University Bibiri Jarawara 312-14 Apresjan, Juri 121 Biggs, Bruce 241 Apurina language 299 Biran (Beeron), Paddy 89, 254 Aristotle 295 Birmingham Jubilee Singers 70 Armstrong, Louis 68 Biyaygirri dialect of Warrgamay 159 Athens 129, 147 Blackburn, Mr Justice Richard 250 Atherton tableland 87 Blackstone, Sir William 250 Australian disease, the 136 Blackwell, Aleka 27, 39 Australian Institute of Aboriginal Blesh, Rudi 69 (and Torres Strait Islander) Studies Bloch, Bernard 178, 188 384 I am a linguist

Bloomfield, Leonard 39, 176-7, 292, 351 Casa Nova 1-22, 275-91, 308-14 Bluebird records 75-6 Chalam, Joe 84 blues and gospel music 67-80, 162 Chandless, William 19 Blust, Robert 240 Chapman, Shirley 311, 315 Boas, Franz 62, 84, 176, 358, 363 Chappell, Hilary 188 Bogi, Aqela 205 Chauvard, Marcel 75 Bolden, Buddy 199 Chinese, see Mandarin Chinese Bolinger, Dwight 106 Chmura, Helene 73-4 boomerang 246, 259 Chomsky, Noam 62-4, 101, 103, 167, Bordertown 162-3 178-81, 188, 191-3 Bosworth, J. 269 Christ Church, Oxford 55-7 Botenawaa Jarawara 277, plate 7 Clare Hall, Cambridge 195 Boumaa, Fiji 204-13 Clump Point 87 Bourke, Governor Sir Richard 241 Cocky, Lambert 159-60 Bowring, Miss 44, 115 Cokanacagi, Josefa (Sepo) 203-12, Boyd, Nora 159 309, plates 17 and 21 Bramcote School 45-51 Coller, Derek 74, 76 Brancos 22, 275-8, 288-90 Collins, Alec 87 Bright, William 188 Collins, Sam 71 Broonzy, Big Bill 76 Columbia Phonograph Brown, Hosanna 199 Company 70-76 Brunswick Record Company 76 Colyer, Ken 68 Buller, Ernest and Barbara 310-11 commandments, ten 294, 315 Burzio, Luigi 223, 243 commodity trading 201-2 comparative constructions 32, 172-3, Caginiliwalala, Jone 203 330 Cainaa river 1, 16, 279, 290 complement clauses 193-7 Cambridge University 195 Comrie, Bernard 120, 171, 187, 212, 270 Campbell, Robert and Barbara 287-8, confidentiality, see secrecy 295, 320 Cook, Captain James 238 Canberra College of Advanced Edu- corroborees at Murray Upper 88, 254 cation 137, 268 Cowan, Lindsay 93 Canberra Times 269, 274 Cowgill, Warren 99 cannibalism 92, 211 Crawford, Sir John 119 Capell, Arthur 64-5, 108 cricket 45-6, 51-4, 68, 353 Cardwell 87, 265 Cubeo language 296-7, 315 Carey, Dave 72 Curr, Edward M 162-3 Carib language family 304 Curtis, Birdy 84, 277 index 385

Damin language style 242 -en suffix in English 170 Danish language 26, 180 English-Malay dictionary Darwin, Charles 320 project 139-40 Davis, George 156 ergativity 100-3, 165, 171, 185, 222-3, Dawkins, John 268-9 243, 274, 305, 317-8 Dawson, James 263 Estes, Sleepy John 69, 73 de Ridder, Peter 63 ethics committees 86, 93, 352-3 de Saussure, Ferdinand 62, 175-6 Euramo 84 Debo, Angie 264 evaluation 35-8, 167, 173, 187, 226, 352 Decca Records 73-6 evidentiality 21-40, 173, 187-8 Delaunay, Charles 72 explanation 30-2, 170, 176 Demetre, Jacques 75 democracy 130, 135, 210-11, 227, 340 Farnsworth, Robin and Marva 297 demonstratives 30-1, 64, 330, 334 Feynman, Richard P. 293, 302, 308, 325 Dení language 282 Fiji 13, 203-12 Derbyshire, Des 274, 291, 304, 315 Fijian languages 203 Dharuk language 259-60 Finnish language 172 Digman, Mosley 89 Firth, J. R. 59, 99, 291 Dinwiddie Colored Quartet 78 Flexner, Abraham 130-2, 152 discography 67-80, 162, 195, 283 Foley, William A. (Bill) 320 Doherty, Peter 234, 237 Forde, Daryll 96-7 Dolby, Patrick 47-55 Forster, Captain 44 Dravidian language family 28-9, 328 Frajzyngier, Zygmunt 329 Duwell, Martin 268 Francis, Dick 133, 198 Dyabugay language 92 French language 25, 28-9, 172 Dyangun dialect 92 Friedman, Victor 319 Dyirbal language 3, 8, 31, 84-106, 159- Friend, Mary 44 65, 171-2, 183-98, 211-13, 249-55, 285 Fry, Dennis 115 dialects 85-7 Fuller, Tilly 157, 198, 247, 254, 353, genders 25, 89-90, 96-7, 144 plate 16 songs 88, 254-5 FUNAI (Fundação Nacional do Indio) in Brazil 7-11, 276, 286, 290 Earle, Rev J. 269 futures trading 201-3 Edinburgh 53-66, 75, 92, 95, 101, 167, 191, 198, 203, 317 Gavidi, Elia (moomoo levu) 207, Eḍo language 172 plate 19 Elia Waqa 206 genders 14, 25-31, 64, 67, 89, 90, 96-7, Emmerich, Charlotte 274 144, 287 386 I am a linguist

Genetti, Carol 328 Hausa language 60, 172 Gennett records 71, 76 Hazlewood, David 208 German language 30-1 heaven Gillespie, Dizzy 69 language spoken in 253 Girramay dialect of Dyirbal 84-91, nature of 297-8 159-61, 251-3 Henry, Elizabeth 255 Givón, Tom 211-12 Henry, Ida 252-5 Glen Ruth station 159 Henry, James 255 Glenelg, Lord (Charles Grant) 246, 264 Henry, Spider 255-6, plate 23 Goddard, Ives 106 Herbert River 159 Godrich, John 73-80 Hercus, Luise 268 Goldman, Irving 296-8, 315 Herdan, Gustav 64 Gollancz, Livia 199-200 Heron, Long 87 Gollancz, Victor 199 Hixkaryana language 274 gospel music 72-80 Hjelmslev, Louis 60, 167, 180, 182 Grant, Chloe 84-94, 101-4, 154-5, 204, Hockett, Charles 188 248-54, plate 11 Hope, A. D. 133 Grant, Ernie 86-7, 253, 263, 337 Hopi language 61 Greece, Ancient 295 Howitt, A. W. 263 Greek language 143, 164 Huddleston, Rodney 95, 108, 270 greetings in Jarawara 2, 5, 9-10 Hungarian language 25, 31 Grimes, Charles (Chuck) 275 Hutton, Len 52 Gugu-Mini language 92 Huxley, Thomas 320, 337 Gulngay dialect of Dyirbal 85, 87 Hyderabad, India 197 Gunditj-mara 263-4 Gunggay dialect of Yidiñ 249 Igbo language 32-3, 40, 110 Guugu Yimidhirr language 238, 259 immersion fieldwork 133, 205, 302, 330 Haas, Mary 120 India 197 Haiman, John 109, 112 Indo-European family 28-9, 106, Hale, Ken 88, 106-7, 161, 212, 236, 243 291, 324 Halle, Morris 180, 188 inductive generalisations 61, 95, 110- Halliday, M. A. K. (Michael) 53, 65, 11, 153, 167, 171, 187, 320 90, 107, 177, 270 Ingham 84, 87, 159-60 Hardwick, Tubby 67 Inoke Soqooviti 205 Harris, Roy 270 international workshops 223, 324-37 Harvard University 54, 61, 105-9, interview fieldwork 205 177, 233 Irvine, Tony 252 index 387

Jakobson, Roman 177-8, 188, 343-4 Krishnamurti, Bh. 120, 328 Jalnguy respect style 85-6, 154, 252-4 Kroemer, Padre Gunther 277, 292 Jamamadí language and village 3, 6, Kuno, Susumu 105 14, 275, 287-9, 299-300, 310, 313 Kuurn Kopan Noot dialect 263 Jambun, see Jumbun community Kwakiutl language 62 James Cook University 336-7 Jarawara language 1-26, 31, 36, 46, 93, Lahu language 30-1, 36, 39 172-3, 187, 205, 276-97, 308-24 Lak language 31, 40 songs 15-17, 288, 299, 310 Lakoff, George 107 Jawoyn language 247 land rights 161, 251, 256-62 jazz 67-80, 199 Langdon, Margaret 120, 184 Jazz Directory 72 Langdon, Pompey 156-7, 254 Jefferson, Blind Lemon 70-1 Language linguistics journal 165, 178, Jensen, Cheryl 304-5 188, 241-3 Jerry, Bessie 252-5 Lardil language 106, 242 Jirrbal, see Dyirbal Latin language 28, 253, 269 Jirru dialect of Dyirbal 87 Laycock, Donald C. 238-43 João Jarawara 9-10, 16, 278 le Roux, Frank 199-200 Johnson, Dr Samuel 145-6, 152 Leite, Yonne 292 Joseph, Brian 329 Linguistic Inquiry journal 158, 187 Jowiri singing style of Jarawara 17 Lyons, John 101, 164, 267, 270, 342 Jumbun community 161, 251, 256, 262 Mabo, Eddie 258-9, 265 Kamo Jarawara 4, 10-16, 286, plate 7 McCarthy, Albert J. 72 kangaroo 238, 259-60 McCawley, James D. (Jim) 104, Keenan, Edward 171, 188 120, 198 Keesing, Roger 237 McIntosh, Angus 58-9 Khrushchev, Nikita 319 Malinowski, Bronislaw 83 Kinnell, Bill 68 Malay language 139-40, 242 kinship, Australian Aboriginal Malone, Terry 307, 315 247, 264 Mamu dialect of Dyirbal 87, 91-2, Kirrama station 87 155, 251-3 koala 259 Mandarin Chinese 179-80, 188 Koch, Grace 255, 264 Manowaree Jarawara 4-5, 13, 17, 33, Kofena Jarawara 313 plate 4 kookaburra 259 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Korean language 32, 172, 329 (MIT) 106-7, 161, 177, 180, 183, 243, Kreidler, Charles A. 198, 214 273 388 I am a linguist

Matthews, P. H. (Peter) 212, 243, 270 New Hot Discography 72 Mbabaram language 29, 39, 88, 92, New Orleans jazz 69, 199 94, 96, 101, 155, 198 Ngajan dialect of Dyirbal 87, 252-3 Macro-Jê family 305 Ngunawal language 263 Mehta, Ved 180-1, 188 Nichols, Johanna 120 Mel’čuk, Igor 120, 199 Nida, Eugene 92 Milner, George 241 nikiniki 6, 17, 23 Mioto Jarawara 2-20, 285-9, plate 5 nikiniki fati 17, 290 missionaries 178, 239, 296-8 Nobel prizes 150, 215, 233-4 in Australia 91, 155-6, 163, 249, Nottingham High School 47-53, 198 263, 295-6 noun classes, see genders in Brazil 1-22, 53, 224-9, 274-7, novels 198-203 287-8, 298-313 Nyawaygi language 84-92, 101, 159- in Fiji 208-9, 298 65, 191, 193, 213, 252, 262, 265 MIT, see Massachusetts Institute of Nyungar language 260 Technology Mobile Four 70 O, A and S syntactic functions 100-3, Morton, Jelly Roll 15, 68 164-5, 171, 185, 222-3, 289 Morwap language 242 O’Kane, Mary 321-2 Moses, Dick 155-8, 198, 249, plate 15 OKeh record label 72-6 mother-in-law respect style, see Okomobi Jarawara 6-11, 21-2, 277-87, Jalnguy plate 6 Motobi Jarawara 11-14, 16, 287-90, Old English 27, 34, 83, 170, 269 299, plate 8 Oliver, Paul 73-80 Mous, Maarten 329 Osborne, Michael J. 326-7, 335-6, 352 Mouton publishers 61 Osmania University 197 Muriata, Jack 252 Oxford University Murray, Jimmy 87-9, 96 as student 48, 54-9, 65 Murray, Maryann 87-8 offered chair 269-73, 291 Murray, Mick 252 Murray River 85, 255 Pacific Linguistics Murray Upper 84-9, 161, 251-6, 272, 277 publications 238-43 Palm Island 91-3, 159, 253 Nagel, Ernest 168, 188 Palmer, Alf 91, 169 National Association for the Advan- Panassié, Hugues 75 cement of Colored People 68 Paramount records 70-6 New Guinea languages 32, 35, 236, Parker, Charlie 69 245, 297, 323, 330 Parsons, Jack 74, 76 index 389

participant observation 169 Research Centre for Linguistic Ty- Paumarí language 282, 311, 315 pology (1996–2008) 322, 328-30, Peek Whurrong dialect 263 336, 352 peer group review 227, 231 Research School of Pacific (later: and Pennsylvania German 30, 39-40 Asian) Studies, ANU 108, 232-6 Pesetsky, David 223, 243 Research School of Social Sciences, Petrie, Constance Campbell 295, 315 ANU 232-4 Petrie, Tom 295, 315 rhotics 160, 164 Phillip, Governor Arthur 246, 250, Robins, R. H. 270 264 Rodborough School 44-5, 115 Philological Society 269, 291 Rodrigues, Aryon D. 274, 304-6 phrasal verbs 35, 61, 106, 191-2, 212-14 Ross, Ian 267 Pike, Kenneth L. 60, 92, 178, 180 Ross, John Robert (‘Haj’) 107, 180-1 piranha fish 13 Rumsey, Alan 246 pirarucu fish 11-12, 15, 290 Runaway, Rosie 154, plate 14 plagiarism 143-4, 231, 340 Russell, Tony 80 Plato 210, 295 Russian department 217 Plowman, Colin 119 Russian language 26, 32, 182-3, 189 Pohl, Frederik 81 Rust, Brian A. L. 75-6 Portuguese language 7-11, 22, 24, 172, Rye, Howard 78-80 275-6, 301-9, 313-14 prediction 25, 33-40, 167-73, 187 S, A and O syntactic functions 100-3, Pullum, Geoffrey K. 243, 291 164-5 ,171, 185, 222-3, 289 Purus River 1, 7, 13-14, 19-22, 275-9, Sacker, Hugh 115 287, 290 Sands, Kristina 342, 354 Sanskrit language 25, 28 Quechua language 173 Sapir, Edward 60, 84, 101, 167, 176, Queensland Museum 253 178, 351 Quirk, Randolph 267, 270 Sassoon, Siegfried 198 Satan 297, 299 race series 72-3, 78, 80, 162 Saussure, see de Saussure Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 168, 188 School of Australian Linguistics 161 Rainey, Ma 68-9 School of Oriental and African Ramson, W. S. (Bill) 260 Studies 96 Random House dictionary 260 Schramm, Gene 64 Raymond, Molly 252-3, plate 22 science fiction 80-1 Read, Allen Walker 188 Seaton, Willie 84, 160-1, 262 Rensch, Karl 112 secrecy, dislike of 117, 228, 339 390 I am a linguist

Seki, Lucy 8, 276, 301-2, 318 Trent Bridge Cricket Ground 45-6, Sepo, see Josefa Cokanacagi 51, 68 Seroff, Doug 79 Trubetzkoy, Nikolai 177, 343-4, 351 Sheahan, Dan 160 Trudgill, Peter 120, 270, 335 Siko (Chiko) Jarawara 4, 9, 277-8 Tully, Simon 81 Silverstein, Michael 106, 120 Tully High School 253 Smetham, Ken 51 Tully River 83, 85 Smith, Adam 210 Tupí family 301, 303-7 Smith, Bessie 15, 69 Tupí-Guaraní subgroup of Tupí Sohn, Ho-Min 327 family 301, 304-6, 315, 376 Soki Jarawara 13, 17, 20, 286-7 Tuyuca language 26, 39, 173, 187 Sonrai language 83 speech formulas in Jarawara 2, 5 University College London 95-9, 109, stagging 57-8 115, 120, 196, 213, 339 Stahle, J. H. 263 University of California at San Stalin, Joseph 318-9 Diego 184 Storto, Luciana 306 Urdu language 60 Summer Institute of Linguistics 2, Ure, John 291 274-5, 296-314, 320 Suruwahá language 277-8, 292 Vajda, Edward J. 307, 329 Survey of English Usage 196 van Schooneveldt, Cornelis 64 Swahili language 25-6, 31-2 Victor Records 73-6 Sweet, Henry 269-70, 291 Vintage Jazz Mart 68, 71-4 Sykes, Roosevelt 72-3, 77 visa application for Brazil 8, 274, 276, 301-2, 318 Takhogodi, A. A. 319 Vocalion Records 76 Tamil language 28-9 Vogel, Alan 1, 22, 275, 278, 286, 297, Taplin, George 162-3 308, 311 Tasmanian languages 258 Taveuni island, Fiji 13, 203-4 Wagaman language 92 Taylor, John 300 Waitabu village 203-6, 309, plate 20 Tindale, Norman B. 87-8, 162, 264 Wakari Jarawara 277 tobero bird 18 Warlpiri language 106-7 Tolkien, J. R. R. 57 Warren’s Hill 87 Tooth, John 159-60 Warrgamay language 87, 91-2, 101, Toulmin, Stephen E. 169, 188 159-60, 165, 198, 213, 310 Towers, B. E. (‘Barch’) 51, 198 Warungu language 87, 91-2, 101, 159 Townsville 159-60 Wasow, Thomas 181, 189 index 391

Watkins, Calvert 106, 108 Wycliffe Bible Translators,see Sum- Watson, George 91-4, 101, 154-5, 196, mer Institute of Linguistics 198, 252-3, 294, plate 12 Wyler, Michael 73 Wero Jarawara 2, 4 Wheatley, Jim 275 Yagara language 260 Wheatstraw, Peetie 69, 73 Yarrabah settlement 155-6, 160-1, 249, Whitlam, Gough 161, 251 296 Whorf, Benjamin Lee 62, 167 Yidiñ language 36, 86, 92, 101, 155-61, Whyatt, Bert 74, 76 165, 191, 198, 211-13, 247-54, 268, Wierzbicka, Anna 320 285, 310, 353 Williams, Jabbo 68 Yolngu people 250, 256-7, 264 Wiradhurri language 259-60 ‘witchdoctor’ criterion for typology Zeshan, Ulrike 332, 337 of missionaries 298-303 Zhu Dexi 188 wombat 259 Zinkernagel, Rolf 234 Word, linguistics journal 178, 337 Zulu language 60 Worora language 64 Zuruahá, see Suruwahá Wurm, Stephen A. 108, 236-43 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. Chapters 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 dialects 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. 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" of 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 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 in 1991 from the Australian National University. Chapter 10 19. Elia Gavidi (my Mooomoo Levu 'big uncle'), wise and benevolent chief of Waitabu village. Chapter 10 20. The Fijian village 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 inheritance 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