Paul James Sidwell is an Australian linguist based 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 Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

who has held research and lecturing positions 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 and ...

. Sidwell, who is also an expert and consultant in

forensic linguistics Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of ap ...

, is most notable for his work on the

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

of the Austroasiatic language family, and has published reconstructions of the Bahnaric, Katuic,

Palaungic The nearly thirty Palaungic or Palaung–Wa languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages. Phonological developments Most of the Palaungic languages lost the contrastive voicing of the ancestral Austroasiatic consonants, with the disti ...

, Khasic, and Nicobaric proto-languages. Sidwell is currently the President of the

Southeast Asian Linguistics Society The Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS) is a linguistic society dedicated to the study of languages and linguistics in mainland and insular Southeast Asia. It was founded in 1991 by Martha Ratliff and Eric Schiller. Paul Sidwell is currently ...

Career

In 2001, Sidwell was appointed as a Collaborating Scientist at the

Max Planck Institute Max or MAX may refer to: Animals * Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog * Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE) * Max (gorilla) (1 ...

for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. From 2001 to 2004, he was an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the

, remaining there from 2005 to 2007 as a Visiting Research Fellow, funded by the Max Planck Institute. From 2007 to 2011 he was Director of the Mon-Khmer Language Project at the Center for Research in Computational Linguistics at

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estima ...

, and from 2012 to 2016 an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Australian National University, working on the Austroasiatic Lexicon Project. For the rest of 2016 he rejoined the Center for Research in Computational Linguistics, Bangkok, as a Consulting Linguist on the DARPA/LORELEI Project. Since 2017 he has been a Partner at Language Intelligence, and in 2017/2018 was an Honorary Lecturer of the Australian National University. From 2019 to 2021 he was an Honorary Associate in the Department of Linguistics of 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 ...

Publications

Books

* *Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell (eds). ''The handbook of Austroasiatic languages''. Leiden, Boston: Brill. *Sidwell, Paul. 2015. ''The Palaungic Languages: Classification, Reconstruction and Comparative Lexicon''. Munich: Lincom Europa. *Sidwell, Paul and Philip Jenner. 2010. ''Old Khmer Grammar''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. *Sidwell, Paul. 2009. ''Classifying the Austroasiatic Languages: history and state of the art''. Munich: Lincom Europa. *Sidwell, Paul. 2005. ''The Katuic Languages: classification, reconstruction and comparative lexicon''. Munich: Lincom Europa. *Sidwell, Paul and Pascale Jacq. 2003. ''A Handbook of Comparative Bahnaric: volume 1 — West Bahnaric''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics 551. *Sidwell, Paul. 2000. ''Proto South Bahnaric: a reconstruction of a Mon-Khmer language of Indo-China''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics 501. *Sidwell, Paul and Pascale Jacq. 2000. ''A Comparative West Bahnaric Dictionary''. Munich: Lincom Europa. *Sidwell, Paul and Pascale Jacq. 1999. ''Sapuan (Sepuar)''. Munich: Lincom Europa. *Sidwell, Paul and Pascale Jacq. 1999. ''Loven (Jruq) Consolidated Lexicon''. Munich: Lincom Europa.

Dissertation

*Sidwell, Paul. 1998. ''A reconstruction of Proto-Bahnaric''. Ph.D. dissertation.

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 ...

References

*Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell (eds). 2015. ''The handbook of Austroasiatic languages''. Leiden, Boston: Brill. *Sidwell, Paul. 2015. ''The Palaungic Languages: Classification, Reconstruction and Comparative Lexicon''. Munich: Lincom Europa.

External links

Paul Sidwell home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sidwell, Paul Linguists from Australia Linguists of Southeast Asian languages Paleolinguists Australian National University faculty University of Melbourne alumni Linguists of Austroasiatic languages Linguists of Shompen Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists