Academic Profile : No longer with NTU

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Prof Randy John La Polla
Professor, School of Humanities
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Biography

Prof. LaPolla received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990. He joined HSS as a tenured Professor at the beginning of August, 2012. Before joining NTU he was Chair (Professor) of Linguistics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia (2004-2012). He was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy for the Humanities in 2008, and President of the Australian Linguistic Society for 2007-2009. He was also Head of the Linguistics Program during most of his tenure at La Trobe, as well as Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe 2008-2010. Before moving to Australia he worked at the Academia Sinica (1990-1998) and City University of Hong Kong (1996-2004). His research focuses on the history and typology of Sino-Tibetan languages and issues related to the nature of communicative behaviour. He has many years of experience in administration and service work of many different types, including editing journals and serving on major grant agency panels.

Research Interests

Sino-Tibetan Linguistics
Linguistic Typology
Historical linguistics (including Grammaticalization and Sino-Tibetan reconstruction)
Functional Syntax (esp. Role & Reference Grammar and Systemic Functional Grammar)
Pragmatics (particularly Relevance Theory)
Anthropological Linguistics (Asian languages on which I have done fieldwork: Cambodian, Chinese dialects [Southern Fujian, Beijing subdialects, Shanghai, Guangzhou dialects], Dulong [1st Township, 3rd Township, 4th Township, Nujiang dialects], Qiang [Ronghong, Qugu dialects], Rawang [Mvtwang, Dvru dialects], Tagalog, Vietnamese.)
 

Current Grants

  • Ethnolinguistic contact across the Indo-Myanmar-Southwestern China mountains: migration routes, intercultural interactions, and llinguistic outcomes