I was sad to learn that Geoffrey O'Grady [1] has died - on 28th December at home in Victoria, British Columbia. He was a fine linguist, who documented Australian languages (Nyangumarta most extensively), wrote the report with Ken Hale that started bilingual education in the Northern Territory, and loved with a great passion the work of understanding relationships between Australian languages. Above all, he was a generous and kind man. He is survived by Alix O'Grady, his wife and collaborator for over fifty years, and their two daughters.
More about his life and work can be found in: 'Geoffrey O'Grady: pioneer of Australian linguistics' in his aptly titled festschrift Boundary rider: studies in the lexicology and comparative linguistics of Australian languages, edited by Darrell Tryon and Michael Walsh (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, out of print but available as a .pdf $37.80)
[1] BA Hons thesis, University of Sydney, Significance of the circumcision boundary in Western Australia 1959.
[2] PhD thesis, Indiana University, Nyangumata grammar 1963.
Comments
Wiyarrpa.
Posted by: Wamut | January 2, 2009 11:05 AM
I first met Geoff O'Grady along with Ken Hale in 11/63 at the American Anthropological Association annual mtgs in San Francisco. Geoff was only the second Australian person I met.
Geoff first worked on Umpila with Johnny Butcher in Sydney when he was still at Sydney Uni, in the late 1950s(?), before going off to America to do his PhD at Indiana University. He later worked with Johnny again and with Simon Ropeyarn at Umagico about 1970 or so, not long before Barbara, me and family went to Bamaga to take up Lamalama work.
I don't think that Geoff did Umpila or Ya'u fieldwork again after that, but he and Barbara Harris wrote a paper for the big 1974 AIAS conference which later appeared in Peter Sutton's Lgs of Cape York.
Geoff and I last saw each other in Darwin in 1992 when we spent a day together before the conference started. We reiminisced and thought it funny that he ended up staying in North America but I came out to Oz and became an Aussie - and neither of us lost our accents!
Over the past decade or so, Geoff was incapacitated by Parkinson's, I believe. He was never much of a correspondent, but Athol Chase, David Nash, Margaret Sharpe and others passed on news of him from time to time after visits.
Vale Geoff, ol' mate, we'll miss you.
Bruce
Bruce Rigsby
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology
The University of Queensland
Posted by: Bruce Rigsby | January 3, 2009 11:35 AM
I first met Geoff O'Grady on the exact same day as his passing precisely 30 years ago at the 1978 Linguistic Society of America annual meeting in Boston (28 December 1978). What struck me then, and since, was his unstinting friendship and generosity, and his selfless sharing of data and knowledge on a vast number of Australian languages. He gave me open access to all the materials he collected on the languages of the Gascoyne-Ashburton region of Western Australia, put together under difficult conditions in the 1960's, and allowed me to incorporate them (with acknowledgement) into my own research. He himself had worked out, but not yet published, most of the sound changes that had affected Purduna and Tharrkari that I was able to publish an article on in 1981 ('Proto-Kanyara and Proto-Mantharta historical phonology', pp. 295-333 in Lingua, Vol.54), building on Geoff's and my materials. Virtually all the data we have on Warriyangka, including some short texts, were recorded by Geoff with Alec Eagles -- by the time I started fieldwork in Western Australia in 1978 there were only vocabulary fragments of the language remembered.
Geoff and Alix hosted me on a couple of visits to Victoria, and we kept in touch occasionally, mainly through the good offices of David Nash whose phone calls were able to transfer information to and from Geoff.
The world, and West Australian languages in particular, has lost a true scholar, champion and friend. RIP.
Posted by: Peter Austin | January 3, 2009 11:39 PM