Life and career
O'Grady trained as a jackaroo and worked as a stockman at Wallal Downs station pastoral lease some 251 kilometres (156 mi) north-east of Port Hedland from 1949 to 1955.
From 1952 he carried out linguistic studies, focusing particularly on the Nyangumarta language and people. 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 civilisation.
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 in South Australia to Broome in Western Australia, and managed to record significant quantities of material from 26 languages.
Kenneth Locke Hale, also known as Ken Hale, was an American linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied a huge variety of previously unstudied and often endangered languages—especially indigenous languages of North America and Australia. Languages investigated by Hale include Navajo, O'odham, Warlpiri, and Ulwa.
Syntactic Structures is an influential work in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky, originally published in 1957. It is an elaboration of his teacher Zellig Harris's model of transformational generative grammar. A short monograph of about a hundred pages, Chomsky's presentation is recognized as one of the most significant studies of the 20th century. It contains the now-famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", which Chomsky offered as an example of a grammatically correct sentence that has no discernible meaning. Thus, Chomsky argued for the independence of syntax from semantics.
Stephen Adolphe Wurm was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.
Macro-Pama-Nyungan is an umbrella term used to refer to a proposed Indigenous Australian language family. It was coined by the Australian linguist Nicholas Evans in his 1996 book Archaeology and linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in global perspective, co-authored by Patrick McConvell. The term arose from Evans' theory suggesting that two of the largest Indigenous Australian language families share a common origin, and should therefore be classified as a singular language family under "Macro-Pama-Nyungan".
The Daly languages are an areal group of four to five language families of Indigenous Australian languages. They are spoken within the vicinity of the Daly River in the Northern Territory.
David George Nash is a prominent Australian field linguist, specialising in the Aboriginal languages of Australia. Brought up in Parkes, New South Wales, he received a BA in pure mathematics from the Australian National University followed by an M.A. in Linguistics. He then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied with Ken Hale and received his PhD in Linguistics in 1980. Before returning to Australia, he worked on the Lexicon Project at MIT. In 2005 he was Ken Hale Professor at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute. He works as a consultant for various Aboriginal organisations. He is also a Visiting Fellow of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Yalarnnga is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of the Pama–Nyungan language family, that may be related to the Kalkatungu language. It was formerly spoken by the Yalarnnga people in areas near the Gulf of Carpentaria the towns of Dajarra and Cloncurry in far northwestern Queensland. The last native speaker died in 1980. It is a suffixing agglutinative language with no attested prefixes.
The Paman languages are an Australian language family spoken on Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. First noted by Kenneth Hale, Paman is noteworthy for the profound phonological changes which have affected some of its descendants.
Ngarla is a Pama–Nyungan language of coastal Western Australia. It is possibly mutually intelligible with Panyjima and Martuthunira, but the three are considered distinct languages.
The Burarra language is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Burarra people of Arnhem Land. It has several dialects.
The Yukulta language, also spelt Yugulda, Yokula, Yukala, Jugula, and Jakula, and also known as Ganggalidda, is an extinct Tangkic language spoken in Queensland and Northern Territory, Australia. It was spoken by the Yukulta people, whose traditional lands lie on the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Charles Frederick "Carl" Voegelin, often cited as C. F. Voegelin, was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was one of the leading authorities on Indigenous languages of North America, specifically the Algonquian and Uto-Aztecan languages. He published many influential works on Delaware, Shawnee, Hopi and the Tübatulabal languages.
The Nyangumarta people, also written Njaŋumada, Njangamada, Njanjamarta and other variations, are a nation of Aboriginal Australians from the northwestern coast of Western Australia. According to Norman Tindale, they are divided into two distinct branches, the Kundal and the Iparuka.
Warnman, also spelt Wanman, is a possibly extinct Australian Aboriginal language, of the Wati branch of the Pama–Nyungan family. It was spoken near Jigalong in Western Australia by the Warnman people (Warman), who are a subgroup of Martu people (Mardu).
Jane Simpson is an Australian linguist and professor emerita at Australian National University.
Florence Marie "Flo" Voegelin, also known as Florence Marie Robinett and Florence Marie Robinett Voegelin, was an American anthropologist and linguist. She was a prominent figure in the documentation of the indigenous languages of North America, and co-wrote many articles and books with her second husband, Carl Voegelin. She also published under the name F.M. Voegelin and other variants.
The Madoitja or Tjupany were an indigenous Australian people of Western Australia.
The Yangkaal, also spelt Yanggal, are an Aboriginal Australian people of area of the Gulf of Carpentaria in the state of Queensland.
The Archives of the Languages of the World is a collection of sound recordings and documentation held at the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, focused on documenting endangered languages around the world, particularly from the Americas. The collection is also known as the C.F. and F.M. Voegelin Archives of the Languages of the World.
R. David Zorc is an American linguist primarily known for his work on Austronesian languages and linguistics, particularly the Philippine languages.
