CHL Linguistics

Award-winning research

Expertise in all core areas of linguistics

World-class interdisciplinary team

Epicentre of the world's linguistic diversity

Strong tradition of research and teaching

Linguistics is the study of language, the phenomenon that is the basis for much of human communication.

There are more than 3,200 languages spoken in the Asia Pacific. The region of eastern Indonesia and island of New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse place on earth, with over 1,300 languages spoken in this region alone.

Many of them are under-documented and endangered, and therefore in urgent need of focused research.

The discipline of Linguistics at CHL is concerned with the study and documentation of languages in the Asia and the Pacific.

The research and documentation of under-described languages in this region is vital to understanding the radically diverse structures of both human language and human thought, and has wider implications for the understanding of human social interactions and cognitive processes.

We have expertise in the core areas of linguistics (descriptive linguistics, language typology, theoretical linguistics, and historical linguistics) and in related interdisciplinary fields (anthropological linguistics and forensic linguistics).

We also draw upon the expertise of linguists across ANU at the former ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language and the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics.

Meet Professor Nicholas (Nick) Evans, Former Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language in the School of Culture, History & Language.