Robert M. W. Dixon
Gloucester-born linguist Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon, Professor of Linguistics in James Cook University's College of Arts, Society, and Education, is also Deputy Director of JCU's Language and Culture Research Centre, and is one of three living linguists specifically mentioned in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, which described him as [a]n extreme advocate of the view that all linguists should, like him, do field work.
After earlier work in statistical linguistics and a continuing interest in blues and gospel music—he has co-authored four editions of Blues and Gospel Records: 1890–1943, the most recent published in 1997, and Recording The Blues (1970)—he did fieldwork for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in northeast Queensland, taking a particular interest in Dyirbal, Dyirbal, Yidiɲ, Warrgamay, Nyawaygi, and Mbabaram.
He has also conducted intensive fieldwork in a Fijian village and Amazonia, and written extensively on general linguistic theory, English grammar and semantics.
