Geoffrey O'Grady

Geoffrey O'Grady (1 January 1928 -29 December 2008) was a professor Emeritus of linguistics whose primary field of specialization was Australian Aboriginal languages.

Life and career

He trained as a jackaroo and worked as a stockman at Wallal Downs station pastoral lease[1] some 156 miles north-east of Port Hedland from 1949 to 1955,[2] and from 1952 carried out linguistic studies,[3] focusing particularly on the Njaŋumada. Challenging the received notion that Aboriginal languages were lexically impoverished, O'Grady gathered some 4,000 roots which, together with Helmut Petri and Gisela Odermann's list of 6,550 words compiled at Anna Plains, gave proof of a rich language that could appropriate by assimilation and grammatical modification many concepts that were exclusive to the domain of Western civilization.[2]

Over two months, in March/April 1961, O'Grady and the visiting American linguist Ken Hale made a sweeping survey tour of coastal languages spoken from Port Augusta to Broome, and managed to record significant quantities of material from 26 languages.[4]

Notes

    Citations
    1. Hale 2012, pp. 86–7.
    2. O'Grady 1960, p. 1.
    3. O'Grady 1957, p. 283.
    4. Nash 2001, p. 339.

    Sources
    • "Geoff O'Grady". Times Colonist. Victoria, British Columbia. 3–4 January 2009.
    • Hale, Monty (2012). Scrimgeour, Anne (ed.). Kurlumarniny: We Come from the Desert. Aboriginal Studies Press. ISBN 978-0-855-75830-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
    • Nash, David (November–December 2001). "In memoriam Ken Hale (1934-2001)". Glot International. 5 (9/10): 339–340.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
    • O'Grady, Geoffrey N. (June 1957). "Statistical Investigations into an Australian Language". Oceanic Linguistics. Oceania. 27 (4): 283–312. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1957.tb00707.x. JSTOR 40329062.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
    • O'Grady, Geoffrey N. (January 1960). "New Concepts in Nyaŋumaḍa: Some Data on Linguistic Acculturation". Anthropological Linguistics. 2 (1): 1–6. JSTOR 30022232.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
    • O'Grady, Geoffrey N. (1964). Nyangumarta Grammar (PDF). University of Sydney.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
    • O'Grady, Geoffrey N. (Winter 1966). "Proto-Ngayarda Phonology". Oceanic Linguistics. University of Hawai'i Press. 5 (2): 71–130. JSTOR 3622951.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
    gollark: You could make a *zip* file which is both bootable and extractable, but that's because of a weird zip quirk.
    gollark: Evil idea: somehow make a valid image file you can also boot from if you `dd` it straight to a disk.
    gollark: I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux,is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux.Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free componentof a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shellutilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day,without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNUwhich is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users arenot aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just apart of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the systemthat allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run.The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself;it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux isnormally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole systemis basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux"distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
    gollark: It's just that you *can* use other things.
    gollark: No, Arch is very general.
    This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.