Geoffrey O'Grady (1 January 1928 -29 December 2008) was a
professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
whose primary field of specialisation was
Australian Aboriginal languages.
Life and career
O'Grady trained as a
jackaroo and worked as a
stockman at
Wallal Downs station pastoral lease some north-east of
Port Hedland
A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ha ...
from 1949 to 1955.
From 1952 he carried out linguistic studies, focusing particularly on the
Nyangumarta language
Nyangumarta, also written NjaĊumada, Njangamada, Njanjamarta and other variants, is a language spoken by the Nyangumarta people and other Aboriginal Australians in the region of Western Australia to the south and east of Lake Waukarlykarly, in ...
and
people
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
. Challenging the received notion that Aboriginal languages were lexically impoverished, O'Grady gathered some 4,000 roots which, together with
Helmut Petri and Gisela Odermann's list of 6,550 words compiled at
Anna Plains, gave proof of a rich language that could appropriate by assimilation and grammatical modification many concepts that were exclusive to the domain of Western civilisation.
Over two months in March/April 1961, O'Grady and the visiting American linguist
Ken Hale made a sweeping survey tour of coastal languages spoken from
Port Augusta in
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
to
Broome in
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
, and managed to record significant quantities of material from 26 languages.
Selected publications
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Notes
Citations
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:OGrady, Geoffrey
1928 births
2008 deaths
Linguists from Australia
20th-century linguists
Australian stockmen