I Wayan Arka (born 1962) is an Indonesian-Balinese

linguist Linguistics is the 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. Linguis ...

, lecturer, scholar and researcher at

Udayana University Udayana University ( id, Universitas Udayana, abbreviated as UNUD) is a public for-profit university in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia. It was established on September 29, 1962 and it used to belong to the Airlangga University that mainly located in ...

(UNUD) in

Bali Bali () is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nu ...

, Indonesia and 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 and ...

(ANU) in

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

, Australia. Arka completed his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

with a major in English Linguistics at

in Bali, Indonesia in 1985 before completing his

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

Teaching English as a second or foreign language Teaching English as a second language (TESL) or Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) are terms that refer to teaching English to students whose first language is not English. The terms TESL, TEFL, and TESOL distinguish betwee ...

(TESOL) /

Applied Linguistics Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, communication rese ...

Hasanuddin University Hasanuddin University ( id, Universitas Hasanuddin) which is abbreviated as Unhas, is one of the largest autonomous universities in Indonesia. It is located in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Unhas was established on September 10, 1956, and n ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

in 1990. He moved to

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 Mountain ...

, Australia in 1995 to complete his

Master of Philosophy The Master of Philosophy (MPhil; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. In the United States, an MPhil typically includes a taught portion and a significant research portion, during which a thesis project is conducted under supervision. An MPhil m ...

with a specialisation in

linguistics Linguistics is the 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. Linguis ...

. Arka obtained his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

in 1999. Arka is currently a professor of linguistics at the School of Culture, History & Language (CHL) of the College of Asia & the Pacific (CAP), ANU (2007–present), a lecturer at UNUD (1985–present) and invited visiting scholar at the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics,

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

(2019–present).

Research Interests

Arka specialises in Austronesian and

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 geogra ...

of Indonesia. His research spans various sub-disciplines of linguistics, including

linguistic description In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community. François & Ponsonnet (2013). All acad ...

language documentation Language documentation (also: documentary linguistics) is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speec ...

linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

theoretical linguistics Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the n ...

formal linguistics Formal linguistics is the branch of linguistics which uses applied mathematics, applied mathematical methods for the analysis of natural languages. Such methods include formal languages, formal grammars and first-order logical expressions. Formal li ...

and

computational linguistics Computational linguistics is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, comput ...

. Arka works with

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention *Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band *Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...

minority communities across Indonesia, including Papua, to explore new ways of documenting languages, gain an understanding of the complexity of

language endangerment An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

and produce insights into linguistics and related disciplines to advance the new and emerging field of

or documentary linguistics. His contribution to this field includes a new model of language management that can account for complex issues of language policy affecting the maintenance of indigenous minority languages in Indonesia. Arka has carried out language documentation in

Merauke Merauke is a large town and the capital of the South Papua province, Indonesia. It is also the administrative centre of Merauke Regency in South Papua. It is considered the easternmost city in Indonesia. The town was originally called Ermasoe. It ...

, Indonesia and is currently working on the

Enggano language The Enggano language, or Engganese, is an Austronesian language spoken on Enggano Island off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Enggano is notable among the Austronesian languages of western Insular Southeast Asia because of many unu ...

, an

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

on the island of

Enggano Enggano Island is about 100 km (60 mi) southwest of Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of the 92 officially listed outlying islands of Indonesia, though it can also be considered a barrier island of Sumatra. Enggano is about long from e ...

, southwest of

Bengkulu Bengkulu is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southwest coast of Sumatra. It was formed on 18 November 1968 by separating out the former Bencoolen Residency area from the province of South Sumatra under Law No. 9 of 1967 and was fi ...

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

based on a grant from the

Endangered Language Fund The Endangered Language Fund (ELF) is a small non-profit organization based in New Haven, Connecticut. ELF supports endangered language maintenance and documentation projects that aim to preserve the world’s languages while contributing rare li ...

and a AHRC grant.

Awards and honors

In 2021, Arka was elected a fellow of the

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) is an independent, non-governmental organisation devoted to the advancement of knowledge and research in the social sciences. It has its origins in the Social Science Research Council of Austr ...

. In 2022, Arka was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities.

Selected works

*Arka, I Wayan, Ash Asudeh and Tracy Holloway-King (eds). 2021. ''Modular Design of Grammar: linguistics on the edge''. Oxford: Oxford University Press

*Arka, I Wayan. 2017. The core-oblique distinction in some Austronesian languages of Indonesia and beyond. Linguistik Indonesia 35(2): 100–142 *Arka, I Wayan, and Mary Dalrymple. 2017. Nominal, pronominal, and verbal number in Balinese. Linguistic Typology. 21(2): 261–331 *Arka, I W. 2014. Locatives and the argument-adjunct distinction in Balinese. Linguistic Discovery no. 12(2): 56-84 *Arka, I W. 2013. Language management and minority language maintenance in Indonesia: Strategic issues. Language Documentation Conservation, 7:74-105 *Arka, I W. 2011. Constructive number systems in Marori and beyond. In Butt, M. and King, T.H. (eds), Proceedings of the International Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG2011) conference, 5-25. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 19 July 2011: CSLI *Arka, I W. 2003. Balinese morphosyntax: a lexical-functional approach. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics

References

External links

* * {{improve categories, date=April 2021 1962 births Living people