Vanuatu
Bislama dictionary author dies
Posted Wednesday, January 19, 2005
The late Dr Terry Crowley
Renowned linguist and author of the New Bislama
Dictionary, Dr Terry Crowley, has passed away over the weekend at his home in
Hamilton, New Zealand.
Dr Crowley, who was recently promoted to Professor
at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, was 51 when he died.
The Bislama ‘specialist’ who has been a Lecturer
at the University of Waikato since 1991 was formerly the founding Director of
the Pacific Languages Unit at USP in Port Vila from 1983 to 1990.
Before that he worked with the Department of
Language and Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea from 1979 to 1983
straight after completing his PhD at the Australian National University (ANU).
His linguistic career began at the Australian
National University, and his early research interests were in Australian
Aboriginal languages.
Despite his move to the Pacific, he maintained an
interest in those languages, and had recently been assisting Tasmanian
Aborigines reconstruct their languages, which were lost in the 19th century.
His doctoral research was on the language of
Paama, and this brought him firmly into the Vanuatu linguistic sphere.
He was probably the most productive of all
linguists who worked on Vanuatu languages, carrying out research on Erromango
and Malakula as well as Paama, and publishing grammars and dictionaries of a
number of languages spoken on those islands.
In addition, he put into published form
traditional stories told to him by speakers of the various languages he worked
on, so that the people would have something useful and interesting to read.
His most recent work has been with a number of
dying languages of northern and central Malakula.
When he began his research on Malakula, Dr Crowley
had described how vital it was to have a detailed grammatical description of
the Naman and Tape languages of central Malakula, because only between 10 and
20 mostly elderly speakers were still living.
Terry Crowley was trying to record as much as he
could of these languages before their last speakers died out.
His last visit to Vanuatu was last year to
continue research work in Malekula before he returned in October.
Apart from his research work as a linguist,
Crowley also played a major role in looking after Vanuatu students studying in
New Zealand, especially in Hamilton.
In addition to his work on vernaculars, Crowley
also became a world-renowned authority on Bislama, publishing the definitive
dictionary of the language (now in its third edition), as well as a book on the
history of the language.
He also published widely in more theoretical areas
of linguistics.
The Pro-Vice Chancellor and Director of Pacific
Languages Unit at the USP Emalus Campus, John Lynch described Crowley as by no
means an “armchair linguist”.
Said Lynch: “He was keen to get out into the field
and to record languages at first hand.
“Perhaps even more importantly, he was determined that the results of his work
would not just be of interest to other linguists, but also that they would be
useful to the speakers of the language themselves.
“He gave a number of public lectures on his
frequent trips to Vanuatu, to better inform the general public about various
linguistic issues and the results of his research.
“He had numerous friends in Vanuatu, both in Port
Vila and in the various villages in which he did fieldwork.
“He visited Vanuatu almost every year, and was a
strong supporter of Vanuatu’s national drink.
“We will all mourn his passing, and remember him
not only for the work that he did but for the person that he was,” Professor
Lynch said.
Dr Crowley’s most recent
published books
[LIST]
[*]2004: Bislama Reference Grammar. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication No
31. Honolulu : University of Hawai’i Press. xv + 205 pp.
[*]2003: A New Bislama Dictionary (2nd Edition).
Suva : Institute of Pacific Studies (University of the South Pacific). viii +
448 pp.
[*]2002: Serial Verbs in Oceanic: A Descriptive
Typology. Oxford : Oxford University Press. xvii + 281 pp.
[*]The Oceanic Languages (with John Lynch and
Malcolm Ross). London : Curzon Press. xvii + 924 pp.
[*]2001: Languages of Vanuatu : A New Survey and
Bibliography (with John Lynch). Pacific Linguistics. Canberra : The Australian
National University. xiv + 187 pp.
[*]2000: An Erromangan (Sye) Dictionary. Pacific
Linguistics. Canberra : The Australian National University. xxxii + 249 pp.
[*]1999: Ura: A Disappearing Language of Southern
Vanuatu. Pacific Linguistics C-156. Canberra : The Australian National University.
xx + 226 pp.
[*]1998: An Erromangan (Sye) Grammar. Oceanic
Linguistics Special Publication No 27. Honolulu : University of Hawai’i Press.
xv + 294 pp.
Ura. Languages of the World/Materials 240. München: LINCOM EUROPA. ii + 49 pp.
[*]1997: An Introduction to Historical Linguistics
(3rd Edition). Melbourne : Oxford University Press. 342 pp.
[*]1995: The Design of Language: An Introduction
to Descriptive Linguistics (with John Lynch, Jeff Siegel and Julie Piau).
Auckland : Longman Paul. xv + 471 pp.
[*]1992: A Dictionary of Paamese. Pacific
Linguistics. Canberra. xxi + 256 pp.
[*]1990: Beach-la-Mar to Bislama: The Emergence of
a National Language in Vanuatu. Oxford Studies in Language Contact. Oxford :
Clarendon Press. xxi + 422 pp.