Malcolm Ross

Hermann and Klara H. Collitz Professor

LSA 303: Austronesian and Papuan historical linguistics

Malcolm Ross is Emeritus Professor in Linguistics, in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, where he held a series of positions from 1987 until his retirement in 2007. Before 1987, he was a high-school teacher in the UK and in Papua New Guinea, then a teacher trainer and teachers' college principal in PNG. It was during his time in PNG that he became engaged in Austronesian historical linguistics. He had had a hobbyist interest in historical linguistics since his teenage years, but the challenge of unravelling something of the culture history of PNG turned this interest into a serious pursuit which culminated in his 1987 ANU Ph.D. on the history of the Oceanic Austronesian languages of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the northwest Solomons. More recently Ross has become engaged in the histories of the Austronesian languages of Taiwan and of the Papuan languages of New Guinea.

External website: http://rspas.anu.edu.au/people/personal/rossm_ling.php