Robert Blust


Robert A. Blust is a prominent linguist in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. Blust specializes in the Austronesian languages and has made major contributions to the field of Austronesian linguistics.

Biography

Robert Blust was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised in California. He received a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in 1974. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, and served as the department chair from 2005 to 2008. He is also a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America.

Austronesian Languages

Until 2018, he also served as the review editor for Oceanic Linguistics, an academic journal that covers the Austronesian languages. Blust is best known for his work on Austronesian, including a large Austronesian comparative dictionary and a Thao-English dictionary. 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 of the Austronesian language family in its entirety.

Field work

Blust has done field work on 97 Austronesian languages spoken in locations such as Sarawak, Papua New Guinea, and Taiwan. In Taiwan, he has performed field work on Formosan languages such as Thao, Kavalan, Pazeh, Amis, Paiwan and Saisiyat. His dictionary of the highly endangered Thao language is currently the most complete of any Formosan language dictionary, containing over 1100 pages. Blust also has an abiding interest in both linguistic and cultural aspects of rainbows and dragons.

Selected publications

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