Randy John LaPolla () is a professor and former Head of Division at th
Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies
in

Nanyang Technological University The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a national research university in Singapore. It is the second oldest autonomous university in the country and is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in the world by various in ...

. He is also 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 Austra ...

, elected 2008. He is currently Professor of Linguistics at the Center for Language Sciences at

Beijing Normal University Beijing Normal University (BNU, ), colloquially known as Beishida (), is a public research university located in Beijing, China, with a strong emphasis on humanities and sciences. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Chin ...

Zhuhai Zhuhai (, ; Yale: ''Jyūhói''), also known as Chuhai is a prefecture-level city located on the west bank of Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern Guangdong province, People's Republic of China, on the southeastern edge of Pe ...

campus, and Associate Fellow of CLASS,

. LaPolla has done research in various areas of

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. Lingu ...

. He has worked on the

typology Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...

and morphosyntactic patterns of

Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

, examined methodology for carrying out linguistic work in these languages and also done

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 sp ...

in Qiang and Dulong/Rawang. He is well known as the author of a

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

of Qiang (LaPolla and Huang 2003) and as the coauthor of Van Valin and LaPolla (1997), a major work in

Role and Reference Grammar Role and reference grammar (RRG) is a model of grammar developed by William A. Foley and Robert Van Valin, Jr. in the 1980s, which incorporates many of the points of view of current functional grammar theories. In RRG, the description of a sente ...

. As a doctoral student at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, LaPolla was part of

James Matisoff James Alan Matisoff ( zh, , t=馬蒂索夫, s=马蒂索夫, p=Mǎdìsuǒfū or zh, , t=馬提索夫, s=马提索夫, p=Mǎtísuǒfū; born July 14, 1937) is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a n ...

STEDT The ''Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus'' (commonly abbreviated ''STEDT'') was a linguistics research project hosted at the University of California at Berkeley. The project, which focused on Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics, ...

project. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1990 at the

. He was first a researcher at the

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

from 1990 to 1998, then was an associate professor at the

City University of Hong Kong City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is a world-class public research university located in Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1984 as City Polytechnic of Hong Kong and became a fully accredited university in 1994. Currently, CityU is ...

from 1996 to 2004. From 2004 to 2012 he was the Chair of Linguistics (Chair Professor) at

La Trobe University La Trobe University is a public university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora, Victoria, Bundoora. The university was established in 196 ...

. A Cheung Kong Scholar from 2005 to 2008, he also led the

Australian Linguistic Society The Australian Linguistic Society (ALS) is an academic association for linguists. It was established in 1967 with the primary goal of furthering interest in and support for linguistics research and teaching in Australia. The Australian Linguistic S ...

as its President from 2007 to 2009.

Selected publications

*''A Grammar of Qiang, with Annotated Texts and Glossary'' (Mouton Grammar Library 31), by Randy J. LaPolla, with Chenglong Huang. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 445 + xvii pp., Dec. 2003 (). *''The Sino-Tibetan Languages'' (Routledge Language Family Series 3), edited by Graham Thurgood & Randy J. LaPolla. London & New York: Routledge, 727 + xxii pp., Jan. 2003 (). Paperback version released April 2007 (). *Rawang Texts, with Grammatical Analysis and English Translation, by Randy J. LaPolla & Dory Poa. Muenchen: LINCOM EUROPA, December 2001 (). *''Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function'' (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics Series), by Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. & Randy J. LaPolla. Cambridge University Press, 1997 ().

References

External links

Personal web pageLaPolla's academia.edu page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lapolla, Randy Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Linguists from Australia Linguists of Sino-Tibetan languages