Peter Austin (linguist)

Peter Austin is an Australian linguist. He has done fieldwork on several Australian languages including Dieri, Gamilaraay and Payungu, and the Austronesian languages Sasak and Samawa. He has published in the fields of language documentation, syntax and linguistic typology. He is currently the Märit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics at SOAS, University of London. Austin is deeplky involved in work to salvage languages that are otherwise on the verge of extinction. On January 30, 2015 Austin received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University for playing "a crucial international part in drawing attention to endangered languages by emphasising the importance of documenting the human cultural heritage represented by the thousands of languages at risk of vanishing in the near future. His motto that ‘every lost word means yet another lost world’ has boosted schools’ and the public’s interest in endangered languages."

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