This house is so full of people, it makes me sick! When I grow up and get married, I'm living alone!
[in his mind] I wish they would all just disappear.
I took a shower, washing every body part with actual soap, including all my major crevices, including in between my toes and in my belly button, which I never did before but sort of enjoyed. I washed my hair with adult-formula shampoo and used cream rinse for that just-washed shine. I can't seem to find my toothbrush, so I'll pick one up when I go out today. Other than that, I'm in good shape. [applies aftershave] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
A Family Comedy Without The Family.
When Kevin's Family Left For Vacation, They Forgot One Minor Detail: Kevin. But Don't Worry... He Cooks. He Cleans. He Kicks Some Butt.
This Non-Family Comedy is a Real Scream.
Robert A. Blust is a prominent linguist in several areas, including
historical linguisticsHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
,
lexicographyLexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
and
ethnologyEthnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
. Blust specializes in the
Austronesian languagesThe Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
and has made major contributions to the field of Austronesian linguistics.
Biography
Robert Blust was born in
Cincinnati, OhioCincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
and raised in
CaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. He received a
B.A.A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in
anthropologyAnthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and a
PhDDoctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in linguistics from the
University of Hawai'i at MānoaThe University of Hawaii at Mānoa is a public, co-educational university and is the flagship campus of the greater University of Hawaii system...
in 1974. Currently, he is a
professorA professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and served as the department chair from 2005 to 2008. He also serves as the review editor for the
Oceanic LinguisticsOceanic Linguistics is an international academic journal devoted to the study of the thousand-odd indigenous languages of the Oceanic area and parts of Southeast Asia, including the aboriginal languages of Australia, the Papuan languages of New Guinea, and the languages of the Austronesian family...
, an academic journal that covers the
Austronesian languagesThe Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
. Blust is best known for his work on
Austronesian languagesThe Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
, including a large Austronesian comparative dictionary (Blust 1995c) and a
ThaoThao , also known as Sao, is the language of the Thao people, a tribe of Taiwanese aborigines in the region of Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. In 2000 there were approximately 5 or 6 speakers living in Dehua village , all but one of whom were over the age of sixty...
-English dictionary (Blust 2003b). Another one of his well-known works is a 2009 work called
The Austronesian Languages, which is the first single-authored book to cover all aspects (
phonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
,
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
,
morphologyIn linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, sound changes, classification, etc.) of the Austronesian language family in its entirety.
Blust has done field work on 97 Austronesian languages spoken in locations such as
SarawakSarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang , Sarawak is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia followed by Sabah, the second largest state located to the North- East.The administrative capital is Kuching, which...
,
Papua New GuineaPapua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
, and
TaiwanTaiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. In Taiwan, he has performed field work on
Formosan languagesThe Formosan languages are the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Taiwanese aborigines currently comprise about 2% of the island's population. However, far fewer can still speak their ancestral language, after centuries of language shift...
such as
ThaoThao , also known as Sao, is the language of the Thao people, a tribe of Taiwanese aborigines in the region of Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. In 2000 there were approximately 5 or 6 speakers living in Dehua village , all but one of whom were over the age of sixty...
,
KavalanKavalan was formerly spoken in the Northeast coast area of Taiwan by the Kavalan people . It is an East Formosan language of the Austronesian family....
,
PazehPazeh is the language of the Pazeh, a Taiwanese aboriginal people). It is a Formosan language of the Austronesian languages language family. Kulun was a dialect. There was only one remaining native speaker of Pazeh proper, 96-year-old Pan Jin-yu. Since her death, however, the language is extinct...
,
AmisAmis is the Formosan language of the Amis Ami, an indigenous tribal people living along the east coast of Taiwan . It is spoken from Hualien in the north to Taitung in the south, with another population near the southern end of the island, though the northern varieties are sometimes considered a...
,
PaiwanPaiwan is a native language of Taiwan, spoken by the Paiwan people, one tribe of the Taiwanese aborigines. Paiwan is a Formosan language of the Austronesian language family...
and
SaisiyatSaisiyat is the language of the Saisiyat, a tribe of indigenous people on Taiwan . It is a Formosan language of the Austronesian family...
. His dictionary of the highly endangered
Thao languageThao , also known as Sao, is the language of the Thao people, a tribe of Taiwanese aborigines in the region of Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. In 2000 there were approximately 5 or 6 speakers living in Dehua village , all but one of whom were over the age of sixty...
is currently the most complete of any Formosan language dictionary, containing over 1,100 pages. Blust also has an abiding interest in both linguistic and cultural aspects of
rainbowThe rainbow, a natural phenomenon noted for its beauty and inexplicability, has been a favorite component of mythology throughout history. The Norse saw it as Bifrost; Judeo-Christian traditions signs it as a covenant with God not to destroy the world by means of floodwater. Finding a mythology...
s and
dragonA dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
s.
Selected publications
- Blust, Robert. 1974. The Proto-North-Sarawak vowel deletion hypothesis. PhD dissertation. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
- Blust, Robert. 1977. The Proto-Austronesian pronouns and Austronesian subgrouping: a preliminary report. University of Hawai‘i Working Papers in Linguistics 9.2: 1–15.
- Blust, Robert. 1988. Austronesian Root Theory: An Essay on the Limits of Morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Blust, Robert. 1993. *S metathesis and the Formosan/Malayo-Polynesian language boundary. In Oyvind Dahl, ed., Language — a doorway between human cultures: tributes to Dr. Otto Chr. Dahl on his ninetieth birthday, 178–183. Oslo, Novus.
- Blust, Robert. 1995a. The position of the Formosan languages: method and theory in Austronesian comparative linguistics. In Paul Jen-kuei Li et al., eds., Austronesian Studies Relating to Taiwan: 585—650. Symposium Series of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, No. 3. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
- Blust, Robert. 1995b. Austronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD). Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
- Blust, Robert. 1996. Some remarks on the linguistic position of Thao. Oceanic Linguistics 35: 272–294.
- Blust, Robert. 1999. Pazeh phonology and morphology. Oceanic Linguistics 38.2: 321–365.
- Blust, Robert. 2003a. Three notes on early Austronesian morphology. Oceanic Linguistics, 42.2: 438–478.
- Blust, Robert. 2003b. Thao dictionary. Language and Linguistics Monograph Series, No. A5. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics (Preparatory Office), Academia Sinica.
- Blust, Robert. 2003c. A short morphology, phonology and vocabulary of Kiput, Sarawak. Shorter Grammars. Pacific Linguistics 546. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.
- Blust, Robert. 2005. Must sound change be linguistically motivated? Diachronica 22: 219–269.
- Blust, Robert. 2006. The origin of the Kelabit voiced aspirates: a historical hypothesis revisited. Oceanic Linguistics 45.2: 311–338.
- Blust, Robert. 2009. The Austronesian Languages. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 0858836025, 978-0858836020.