Andrew Kenneth Pawley (born 1941 in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

), FRSNZ, FAHA, is Emeritus Professor at the School of Culture, History & Language of the ''College of Asia & the Pacific'' at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

Career

Pawley was born in

but moved to

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...

at the age of 12. He was educated at the University of Auckland, gaining a PhD in anthropology in 1966. His doctoral thesis, ''The structure of Karam: a grammar of a New Guinea Highlands language'', was dedicated to

Kalam ''ʿIlm al-Kalām'' ( ar, عِلْم الكَلام, literally "science of discourse"), usually foreshortened to ''Kalām'' and sometimes called "Islamic scholastic theology" or "speculative theology", is the philosophical study of Islamic doc ...

, a Papuan ( Trans–New Guinea) language of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

. He taught linguistics in the Department of Anthropology,

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

from 1965 to 1989, with periods at the

University of Papua New Guinea The University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) is a university located in Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea. It was established by ordinance of the Australian administration in 1965. This followed the Currie Commission which had enquired ...

(1969) and the

University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

(1973 to 1978). He moved to the

in 1990. He has taught at the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: '' Language'' ...

's Summer Institute in 1977 and 1985. Pawley took sabbaticals at Berkeley (1983), Frankfurt (1994) and

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (german: Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, shortened to MPI EVA) is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, that was founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Plan ...

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

(2001). Currently, he is Professor Emeritus at

's College of Asia and the Pacific.

Research

Pawley's research interests include Austronesian and Papuan languages and cultures, the prehistory of Pacific Island peoples, folk taxonomies and

ethnobiology ] Ethnobiology is the scientific study of the way living things are treated or used by different human cultures. It studies the dynamic relationships between people, biota, and environments, from the distant past to the immediate present.culture ...

lexicography Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoreti ...

, phraseology and idiomaticity. Andrew Pawley has completed dictionaries of Wayan (an

Oceanic language The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...

of Western

Fiji Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consis ...

); and of

Papuan language The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly ge ...

), in collaboration with

Ian Saem Majnep Ian Saem Majnep (c. 1948 – September 2007) was a naturalist from the Kalam people of Papua New Guinea who wrote about the plants, animals and the belief systems of the Kalam people while collaborating with the British anthropologist and ethnobi ...

. Since the mid-1990s, he has been collaborating with Malcolm Ross and Meredith Osmond on the ''Oceanic Lexicon Project'', an encyclopedic series using lexical comparisons to reconstruct the culture and environment of Proto-Oceanic speakers. Five volumes have been published, in 1998, 2003, 2008, 2016.

Key publications

Between 1960 and 2010, Andrew Pawley published 196 academic publications:See chapter “Andrew Pawley's writings”, in Bowden et al. (2010), pp.21–35. * 21 publications on

Polynesian languages The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...

and culture history, * 14 on Fijian and Rotuman languages, * 53 on Austronesian, especially Oceanic, languages and their culture history, * 29 on

Papuan languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogr ...

, including 19 on

. * 44 on

varieties of English Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar. For the classification of varieties of English only in terms of pronunciation, see regional accents of English. Overview Dialects can be defi ...

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...

and

pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

, * 35 on miscellaneous topics. Among these, the most important ones include: * Pawley, Andrew. 1966
''Samoan Phrase Structure: the Morphology-Syntax of a Western Polynesian Language''
Bloomington: Indiana University Archives of Languages of the World, 1966. *Pawley, Andrew (with Malcolm Ross and Meredith Osmond, eds.) '' The Lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society'' (5 volumes). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. *Pawley, Andrew (with Ralph Bulmer, with the assistance of John Kias, Simon Peter Gi and

). 2011
''A dictionary of Kalam with ethnographic notes''
Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Notes and references

Notes

References

External links

Andrew Pawley's academic profile
(homepage of the

). {{DEFAULTSORT:Pawley, Andrew Kenneth 1941 births Living people Linguists of Austronesian languages Linguists from Australia Linguists of Papuan languages Ethnobiologists University of Papua New Guinea faculty Paleolinguists Historical linguists