Society mourns specialists

The National Weekender
LANGUAGE
Robert Blust

In these monthly discussions we normally answer one question about language in PNG and beyond. This month, however, we are looking at the contributions of three specialists in PNG languages who passed away in the past 12 months, Professors John Lynch, Tom Dutton, and Robert Blust.
All made significant contributions to our knowledge about Papua New Guinean languages before Independence and Professors John Lynch and Tom Dutton in particular guided young Papua New Guinean linguists in the first decades after Independence. Both helped establish the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea (LSPNG), the oldest still-existing academic association in the country.
THE Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea has set up memorial pages to Professors Lynch and Dutton on its website (langlxmelanesia.com), with links to their works that are available online, both in Language & Linguistics in Melanesia (the journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea) and elsewhere. In this way, their work and knowledge can continue to be available to speakers of the languages which they researched.
Born in Sydney in 1946, John Dominic Lynch studied linguistics at the University of Sydney under Arthur Capell, a pioneering researcher into PNG languages, going on to post-graduate work at the University of Hawai?i under George Grace, then the leading American expert in the history of Pacific languages.
His early research was with the languages of Vanuatu. He joined the University of PNG soon after it was founded, eventually becoming Professor of Language and then Vice-Chancellor. His students were the first Papua New Guineans to go on to earn doctoral degrees in linguistics. In 1992 he went to be Director, and later Professor, of the newly established the Department of Pacific Languages at the University of the South Pacific in Port Vila, Vanuatu.
For many years he was the editor of the journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea (then called Kivung) and later he was the editor of Oceanic Linguistics, the foremost journal dedicated to South Pacific languages. He wrote important textbooks and reference works about South Pacific languages that are still used at universities in the region.
Most of his research dealt with the description of Austronesian languages of Melanesia and of the relationships between them that are evidence of their linguistic history. He was deeply concerned with the lack of language awareness among Melanesians, which he blamed on government and church policies that left Melanesians without “sufficient information on which to base decisions affecting their everyday lives”.
After a number of illnesses, Professor Lynch passed away in Port Vila on May 25, 2021 at the age of 74.
Thomas (“Tom”) Edward Dutton was born in 1935 and grew up in Queensland. He came to PNG as a teacher in the late 1950s, where he became interested in linguistics while taking a linguistics course in Goroka. After doctoral work at the Australian National University in Canberra and MIT in the United States, he returned to PNG to become the Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the newly established University of PNG. He was active in the establishment of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea and used its publications and conferences to encourage young linguists, both Papua New Guineans and those who had come from other countries to work with PNG languages. After leaving PNG in 1977, he was a professor at the Australian National University until his retirement in 1997.
There he was managing editor of Pacific Linguistics, a series of dictionaries, grammars, and documentation of languages throughout the South Pacific, but especially PNG.
He was fluent in both Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu and was able to converse in other PNG languages. The Tok Pisin textbook that he wrote with Prof Dick Thomas continues to be the most thorough textbook for foreign learners of the language, and his book about Hiri Motu, Police Motu iena Sivarai, is the most detailed book about the history and development of the language that used to be called Police Motu and is today called Hiri Motu. Both are now available at no cost as e-books through links on the LSPNG website.
He promoted the use of both Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu for national development and the education of ordinary people. He also conducted research into the linguistic history of central and eastern Papua. He worked intensely with the Koita language, describing both the language itself and its relationship to other Koirian languages of Central Province and the NCD.
In his work, he paid particular attention to cultural objects and the words used to describe them to uncover historical links between different groups of people and the languages they spoke.
He worked with both Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages and often examined how these two groups of languages influenced each other.
After his retirement, he learned to raise sheep and was an active sheep farmer near Canberra until his death on 22 December 2021 at the age of 87. He continued to publish analyses about languages in Papua until shortly before his death.
Last month a third giant in the study of Papua New Guinean languages also passed away, Robert Blust, who was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawai?i for many years.
Although he never held a position at a PNG university, his work with Austronesian languages in PNG and throughout the Asia-Pacific region influenced and inspired his many students (myself included), a number of whom went on to document Papua New Guinean languages.
Reference books he wrote, some together with John Lynch, are used at universities wherever Austronesian languages are spoken or studied. Shortly before he died, the Linguistic Society of PNG published his extensive descriptions of eight Manus languages. UPNG lecturer Olga Temple, publications for the Linguistic Society, said, “this monumental work will be an example to future generations of PNG scholars of the type of meticulous research that PNG languages deserve”, adding that “publishing such a basic reference work in this country is an important step in making PNG an international centre for linguistic research”. It is available for free download at https://www.langlxmelanesia.com/llm-special-issue-2021.
John Lynch, Tom Dutton, and Robert Blust came to PNG and studied PNG languages at a time when there were no Papua New Guinean linguists. Through their efforts, the first generations of PNG students could attain linguistic training and take their place describing their own languages. We are fortunate that through the efforts of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea, their work can continue to be available to help a new generation of PNG scholars expand our knowledge of languages in the most multilingual region on earth.

  • Prof Volker is a linguist living in New Ireland, an adjunct professor in The Cairns Institute, James Cook University in Australia and a vsiting professor at Kansai University in Osaka, Japan. He welcomes your language questions for this monthly discussion at [email protected]. Or continue the discussion on the Facebook Language Toktok page.