William A. Foley (''William Auguste "Bill" Foley;'' born 1949) is an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

He was previously located at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

. He specializes in Papuan and Austronesian languages. Foley developed

Role and Reference Grammar Role and reference grammar (RRG) is a model of grammar developed by William A. Foley and Robert Van Valin, Jr. in the 1980s, which incorporates many of the points of view of current functional grammar theories. In RRG, the description of a sent ...

in a partnership with Robert Van Valin.

Career

In 1986, Foley published ''The Papuan Languages of New Guinea'' through Cambridge University Press. In 1991, his book ''The

Yimas Language The Yimas language is spoken by the Yimas people, who populate the Sepik River Basin region of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken primarily in Yimas village (), Karawari Rural LLG, East Sepik Province. It is a member of the Lower-Sepik language fam ...

of New Guinea'' was published by Stanford University Press. In 1997, his book ''Anthropological Linguistics'', "the first comprehensive textbook in anthropological linguistics" was published with an introduction by

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

Works

* William A. Foley and Robert D. Van Valin, Jr (1984). ''Functional syntax and universal grammar.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * William A. Foley (1986). ''The Papuan Languages of New Guinea''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Books
* William A. Foley (1991). ''The Yimas Language of New Guinea''. Stanford: Stanford University Press. * William A. Foley (1997). ''Anthropological Linguistics: an introduction''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. * William A. Foley (2005). "Linguistic prehistory in the Sepik - Ramu basin." In: Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson, eds, ''Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples'', 109–144. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. * * * William A.Foley (2022) "A Sketch Grammar of Kopar". Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton

References

External links

Prof. William A. Foley
at the University of Sydney Linguists from the United States Linguists of Austronesian languages Linguists of Southeast Asian languages Linguists of Papuan languages Linguists of Lower Sepik languages University of Sydney faculty Living people 1949 births Paleolinguists Linguists of Sepik languages {{US-linguist-stub