Career
After gaining his doctorate, McGregor had a number of positions through different institutions in Australia, before moving to Europe. He was appointed senior research fellow at KU Leuven in Belgium in 1998, and then visiting research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands, for one and a half years. Since 2000, he has been full professor at Aarhus University. [3]
He specialises in the description of mainly non-Pama-Nyungan Australian languages, and does descriptive linguistic work on Gooniyandi, Nyulnyul and Warrwa languages. Since 2010 he has also studied Shua, a language spoken in Botswana, in Africa. He works on theoretical and typological issues from within a variation of systemic functional linguistics dubbed "semiotic grammar", developed by him. [4] [5]
Apart from his own works on linguistics, McGregor has also published articles and book chapters about the work of other linguists in Australia, notably the work of German linguists and ethnographers such as Pallottine missionary Ernest Worms and his mentor, Hermann Nekes [ de ]. [6] [7]
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:
Louis Trolle Hjelmslev was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family, Hjelmslev studied comparative linguistics in Copenhagen, Prague and Paris. In 1931, he founded the Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague. Together with Hans Jørgen Uldall he developed a structuralist theory of language which he called glossematics, which further developed the semiotic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. Glossematics as a theory of language is characterized by a high degree of formalism. It is interested in describing the formal and semantic characteristics of language in separation from sociology, psychology or neurobiology, and has a high degree of logical rigour. Hjelmslev regarded linguistics – or glossematics – as a formal science. He was the inventor of formal linguistics. Hjelmslev's theory became widely influential in structural and functional grammar, and in semiotics.
Kathryn "Kate" Burridge is a prominent Australian linguist specialising in the Germanic languages. Burridge currently occupies the Chair of Linguistics in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.
Theodoor Jacob "Theo" van Leeuwen is a Dutch linguist and one of the main developers of the sub-field of social semiotics. He is also known for his contributions to the study of Multimodality; he wrote with Gunther Kress Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, one of the most influential books on the topic.
William A. Foley is an American linguist and professor at Columbia University. He previously worked at the University of Sydney. He specializes in Papuan and Austronesian languages. Foley developed Role and Reference Grammar in a partnership with Robert Van Valin.
The Nyulnyulan languages are a small family of closely related Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Western Australia. Most languages in this family are extinct, with only three extant languages, all of which are almost extinct.
The Bunuban languages are a small family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Australia. The family consists of two languages, Bunuba and Gooniyandi, which are related to each other to about the same degree that English is related to Dutch. Bunuba has about 100 speakers and Gooniyandi about 400. Both are endangered.
Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin is a pidgin that sprang up in Broome, Western Australia in the early 20th century to facilitate communication between the various groups working in the pearling industry there—Japanese, Malays, Torres Strait Islanders, Koepangers, Hakka Chinese, Filipinos, Sri Lankans of Sinhalese and Tamil descent, a small number of Koreans, and local Indigenous Australians, mainly of the Bardi people but also Nyulnyul, Jabirr Jabirr, Jukun, Yawuru and Karajarri people. The name derives from the boats used for pearling, known as pearling luggers.
Mary Carmel Charles was an author and the last fluent speaker of the Nyulnyul language of Western Australia. She was born to the Nyulnyul tribe in the Kimberley region of Western Australia at the Beagle Bay Mission. She played an important part in the documentation of the language and the writing of a Nyulnyul grammar, despite the fact that she was deaf.
Nyulnyul is an dormant Australian Aboriginal language, formerly spoken by the Nyulnyul people of Western Australia.
Gooniyandi is an Australian Aboriginal language now spoken by about 200 people, most of whom live in or near Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia. Gooniyandi is an endangered language as it is not being passed on to children, who instead grow up speaking Kriol.
Jukun or Djugun is an Australian Aboriginal language of Western Australia. There are no longer any fluent speakers of Jukun, but some people may remember it to some degree. It is an Eastern Nyulnyulan language, closely related to Yawuru.
Cognitive semiotics is the study model of meaning-making, applying methods and theories from semiotics, linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, computational modeling, anthropology, philosophy and other sciences. Contrary to classical cognitive science, cognitive semiotics is explicitly involved with questions of meaning, having recourse, when possible, to semiotic terminology, although developing it when necessary. As against classical semiotics, cognitive semiotics aims to incorporate the results of other sciences, using methods ranging from conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental and ethnographic investigations.
Nicholas Thieberger is an Australian linguist and an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne.
The Jabirr Jabirr language, also known as Djabirr-Djabirr, is a Western Nyulnyulan language formerly spoken by the Jabirr Jabirr people on the coast south of Beagle Bay in Western Australia. Earlier sources spelled the name DjaberrDjaberr or Dyaberdyaber; the contemporary accepted spelling is Jabirr-Jabirr, which reflects the spelling conventions of languages of the Kimberley region. It is also sometimes spelt Jabba Jabba.
Ernst Friedrich Gustav Worms, also known as Ernest Ailred Worms or Ernst Alfred Worms, was a German Catholic missionary and anthropologist who lived and worked among Aboriginal Australians in Western Australia. He became an expert in Aboriginal languages, and an important contributor to the development of both Australian studies of native languages, and to the ethnography of the continent's Indigenous peoples.
The Bardi people, also spelt Baada or Baardi and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people, living north of Broome and inhabiting parts of the Dampier Peninsula in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. They are ethnically close to the Jawi people, and several organisations refer to the Bardi Jawi grouping, such as the Bardi Jawi Niimidiman Aboriginal Corporation Registered Native Title Body and the Bardi Jawi Rangers.
The Gooniyandi, also known as the Konejandi, are an Aboriginal Australian people in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen is a Danish linguist and professor of applied linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. She has contributed significantly to the description of Danish Sign Language and was the only sign language linguist in Denmark from 1978 to 2004. She is considered an important figure in the development of Danish functional linguistics, and has also studied autism and the relation between language and cognition from a cognitive-functional perspective with focus on semantics and pragmatics. She is the sister of Troels Engberg-Pedersen.
