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Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS)
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Malcolm Ross, BA (Hons) (Bristol), Postgrad Cert Ed (Bristol), MLitt (Ed) (Bristol), Cert TSL (Massey), PhD (ANU), FAHA
Emeritus Professor, Department of Linguistics

Email: Malcolm.Ross@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Malcolm Ross head and shoulders
For the last few years my main involvements have been in the Oceanic Lexicon Project and the Papuan Linguistics Project, both projects of the Department of Linguistics.

Research Interests

Austronesian and Papuan languages, theory of language change, contact-induced language change, historical change in grammatical constructions.

Key Publications

  • (with John Lynch and Terry Crowley) The Oceanic languages. Curzon Press, Richmond, 2002.
  • Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of Western Melanesia. Canberra, Pacific Linguistics, 1988.
  • (with Andrew Pawley) Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history, Annual Review of Anthropology, 22:425-459, 1993.
  • (ed. with Mark Durie) The Comparative Method Reviewed: Regularity and irregularity in language change, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.
  • 'Social networks and kinds of speech community event', in Roger M. Blench and Matthew Spriggs (eds), Archaeology and Language, vol. 1: Theoretical and methodological orientations, 209-261. London, Routledge, 1997.
  • (ed. with Andrew Pawley and Meredith Osmond) The Lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society, vol. 1: Material culture, 1998, vol. 2; Physical environment, 2003. Canberra, Pacific Linguistics.

Career Highlights

Principal of Goroka Teachers' College (UPNG) (1980-82); Visiting Professor, Dept of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Frankfurt (1993, 1998-99); Guest Scientist, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (2002); Visiting Professor, Academia Sinica, Taipei (2003).