Nicholas Thieberger is an Australian linguist and an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

. He helped to establish the

PARADISEC The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel-to ...

archive in 2003 and currently serves as its Director. Thieberger was the Editor of ''

Language Documentation & Conservation ''Language Documentation & Conservation'' is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all topics related to language documentation and conservation, including the goals of data management, field-work methods, ethics, orthography desig ...

'' (2011-2021), an

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...

which focuses on

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 ...

and

conservation Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws. Conservation may also refer to: Environment and natural resources * Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...

. He was elected a Fellow of the

Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australia ...

in 2021. Thieberger received his PhD from The University of Melbourne in 2004 for his work on the grammar of South Efate (Nafsan), which was the first grammar to demonstrate the use of a media corpus as the basis for examples used in the grammar. He is best known for his research on

Indigenous Australian languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

, on the South Efate (Nafsan) language of

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...

, and for his work in

. He established Wangka Maya the Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre in the late 1980s, ASEDA, the Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive, in the early 1990s, and co-founded the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity. He established

Kaipuleohone Kaipuleohone is a digital ethnographic archive that houses audio and visual files, photographs, as well as hundreds of textual material such as notes, dictionaries, and transcriptions relating to small and endangered languages. The archive is stored ...

, the University of Hawai'i's digital language archive.

Key publications

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* Linda Barwick">Barwick, Linda & Nicholas Thieberger. (eds.) 2006. ''Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork'' Sydney: Sydney University Press. * McConvell, Patrick & Nicholas Thieberger. 2001. ''State of Indigenous languages in Australia - 2001''. Australia State of the Environment Second Technical Paper Series (Natural and Cultural Heritage), Department of the Environment and Heritage, Canberra. * Sharp, Janet & Nicholas Thieberger. 1992. ''Bilybara: Aboriginal languages of the Pilbara Region'' Port Hedland: Wangka Maya. * Thieberger, Nicholas. 1993. ''Handbook of WA Aboriginal Languages south of the Kimberley Region ''Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. * Thieberger, Nicholas. 2006. ''A Grammar of South Efate: An Oceanic Language of Vanuatu'' Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication, No. 33. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. * Thieberger, Nicholas (ed). 2012. ''The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork''. Oxford: OUP. * Thieberger, Nicholas & Bill McGregor (eds.).1994.'' Macquarie Aboriginal words: a dictionary of words of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages ''Sydney: Macquarie Library.

References

External links

Nick Thieberger's home pageThe University of Melbourne "Find an Expert" page
Living people Linguists from Australia Linguists of Australian Aboriginal languages Linguists of Austronesian languages Linguists of Oceanic languages La Trobe University alumni University of Melbourne alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities University of Melbourne faculty {{Australia-linguist-stub