Geoffrey Hull
Encyclopedia
Geoffrey Stephen Hull (6 September 1955) is an Australian linguist
, ethnologist
and historian
who has made contributions to the study of Romance, Celtic, Slavonic, Semitic, Austronesian and Papuan languages, and in particular to the relationship between language
and culture
.
and Scots
ancestry on his father’s side, his maternal family belonged to the Latin community of Egypt (of mixed Maltese
, Venetian
, Triestine
and French
descent) which left that country during the post-war period of nationalization (1946–1957). He grew up familiar with the large range of languages spoken in his extended family (French, Maltese, Italian and various dialects of Italy, Occitan, Slovene, Greek and Arabic).
(1974–1982), completing a doctorate in historical linguistics after dialectological research in Italy and Switzerland. His Ph.D thesis was a reconstruction of the Padanian language underlying the modern Gallo-Italian, Venetian and Ladin dialects. Before graduation he also undertook studies in philosophy
and theology
at the Aquinas Academy, Sydney.
In his academic career Hull taught in the areas of linguistics
and modern and classical European languages at Sydney University, Melbourne University, the University of Wollongong and other Australian tertiary institutions, and is a professional lexicographer and a translator working in over a dozen languages.
He is currently an adjunct professor at Macquarie University, Sydney.
ese leadership in exile by standardizing Tetum and creating a range of linguistic and literary resources for this and other languages of East Timor, then under Indonesian occupation.
He was also a member of a human rights delegation organized by the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council which visited the country in 1997 amid escalating violence and reported to the United Nations
, the Indonesian Human Rights Commission, the Australian government and the Vatican
. In September 1999 he testified before the Australian Senate Inquiry on East Timor on abuses he had witnessed in that country during past visits.
From 2001 to 2007 he was research and publications director of the Instituto Nacional de Linguística, the national language authority of the independent state of Timor-Leste. He was the designer, principal author and editor of the national Tetum dictionary and was founder and co-editor of the academic journal Estudos de Línguas e Culturas de Timor-Leste.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, ethnologist
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
and historian
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
who has made contributions to the study of Romance, Celtic, Slavonic, Semitic, Austronesian and Papuan languages, and in particular to the relationship between language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
.
Biography
Of EnglishEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Scots
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
ancestry on his father’s side, his maternal family belonged to the Latin community of Egypt (of mixed Maltese
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, Venetian
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Triestine
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
and French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
descent) which left that country during the post-war period of nationalization (1946–1957). He grew up familiar with the large range of languages spoken in his extended family (French, Maltese, Italian and various dialects of Italy, Occitan, Slovene, Greek and Arabic).
Education and Academic Career
He studied Arts at the University of SydneyUniversity of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
(1974–1982), completing a doctorate in historical linguistics after dialectological research in Italy and Switzerland. His Ph.D thesis was a reconstruction of the Padanian language underlying the modern Gallo-Italian, Venetian and Ladin dialects. Before graduation he also undertook studies in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
at the Aquinas Academy, Sydney.
In his academic career Hull taught in the areas of linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and modern and classical European languages at Sydney University, Melbourne University, the University of Wollongong and other Australian tertiary institutions, and is a professional lexicographer and a translator working in over a dozen languages.
He is currently an adjunct professor at Macquarie University, Sydney.
Achievements in East Timor and Work on the Tetum Language
In the 1990s he assisted the East TimorEast Timor
The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...
ese leadership in exile by standardizing Tetum and creating a range of linguistic and literary resources for this and other languages of East Timor, then under Indonesian occupation.
He was also a member of a human rights delegation organized by the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council which visited the country in 1997 amid escalating violence and reported to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, the Indonesian Human Rights Commission, the Australian government and the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
. In September 1999 he testified before the Australian Senate Inquiry on East Timor on abuses he had witnessed in that country during past visits.
From 2001 to 2007 he was research and publications director of the Instituto Nacional de Linguística, the national language authority of the independent state of Timor-Leste. He was the designer, principal author and editor of the national Tetum dictionary and was founder and co-editor of the academic journal Estudos de Línguas e Culturas de Timor-Leste.
Other areas of interest
Outside the field of linguistics Geoffrey Hull is known for writings on religious questions, most notably the historical causes and socio-cultural impact of church reforms of the 1960s on the Latin Catholic and Eastern Catholic traditions.Select Publications
- The Linguistic Unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1982
- “La lingua ‘padanese’: Corollario dell’unità dei dialetti reto-cisalpini”. Etnie: Scienze politica e cultura dei popoli minoritari, 13 1987
- “Franco-Maltese”. In James Jupp, ed., The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1988
- Polyglot Italy: Languages, Dialects, Peoples. Melbourne: CIS Educational, 1989
- “Parallels and Convergences in Celtic and Romance Philology”. Australian Celtic Journal, 1 1989
- “Vocabulary Renewal Trends in the Modern Celtic Languages.” Origins and Revivals: Proceedings of the First Australian Conference of Celtic Studies, pp. 69–90.
- “Idealist Nationalism and Linguistic Dogma in Italy”. In The Shared Horizon. Dublin: The Academic Press, 1990
- Timor Oriental: n’est-ce qu’il qu’une question politique? Églises d’Asia: Agence d’Information des Missions Etrangères de Paris, Dossiers et documents No. 9/92, 1992
- The Malta Language Question: A Case Study in Cultural Imperialism. Malta: Said International, 1993
- Building the Kingdom: Mary MacKillop and Social Justice. Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1994
- Instituto de Estudos Timorenses “Maria Mackillop” - Orientação para a Padronização da Língua Tetum. Baulkham Hills (Sydney). 1994
- Mai Kolia Tetun. A Course in Tetum-Praça, Sydney, Australian Catholic Relief and the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council 1998
- Timor-Leste: Identidade, Língua e Política Educacional. Lisbon: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros/Instituto Camões, 2001
- The Languages of East Timor. Some Basic Facts, Instituto Nacional de Linguística, Universidade Nacional de Timor Lorosa'e. The Languages of East Timor
- Standard Tetum-English Dictionary 2nd Ed, Allen & Unwin Publishers ISBN 978-1-86508-599-9 2002
- (with Lance Eccles). Gramática da Língua Tétum. Lisbon: Lidel, 2005
- (with Halyna Koscharsky) “Contours and consequences of the lexical divide in Ukrainian”. Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, Vol 20, Nos 1-2 2006
- The Banished Heart: Origins of Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church. 2nd Edition. London: T&T Clark, 2010
General references
- Adelaidean, News from Adelaide university (p. 6), 10 April 2000
- Berdichevsky, Norman: A Reminder of the Authentic Semitic non-Arab Identity of the Ancient Mediterranean World (May 2007), New English review, http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=6806&sec_id=6806
- Boon, Danielle (Adult Literacy Advisor, Ministry of Education and Culture of East Timor), UNDP Timor-Leste: Literacy in East Timor
- Current Language Issues in East Timor: Text of a public lecture given at the University of Adelaide, 29 March 2000, http://www.ramelau.com/tetum/issues.html
- Grenfell, Laura: Legal Pluralism and the Rule of Law in Timor Leste, Leiden Journal of International Law (2006), 19:2:305-337 Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/S0922156506003323
- http://webzoom.freewebs.com/jpesperanca/lusofonia_Parte_3.pdf (p. 40 et seq.)
- Instituto camoes: O português, língua timorense; Número 88, 6-19 de Julho de 2005 Suplemento do JL, Nº 907, Ano XXV, http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/encarte/encarte88a.htm
- Interview with Prof. Hull at the ABC national radio: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/s113139.htm
- Interview with Prof. Hull at News WeeklyNews WeeklyNews Weekly is an Australian current affairs magazine, published by the National Civic Council. It was founded by B. A. Santamaria in 1941 under the name Freedom. News Weekly provides analysis of current cultural, social, political and economic trends in the Australia. It has a focus on ethics.The...
- Köster, Dietrich (Bona), Política linguística de Timor-Leste: a reintrodução do português como língua oficial e de ensino, Lusorama, 57-58 (Maio de 2004), pág. 172-179, ISSN 0931-9484
- Köster, Dietrich (Deutsche Gesellschaft für die afrikanischen Staaten portugiesischer Sprache), Política Linguística de Timor-Leste: A Reintrodução do Português como Língua Oficial e de Ensino, Estudos de Línguas e Culturas de Timor-Leste/Studies in Languages and Cultures of East Timor, número 6, 2004, pág. 1-7, Instituto Nacional de Linguística da Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e, ISSN 1441-1105
- Köster, Dietrich: Sprachpolitik Osttimors - Die Wiedereinführung des Portugiesischen als Amts- und Unterrichtssprache, http://www.colonialvoyage.com/timorsprachpolitik.html
- Leclerc, Jacques, L’Aménagement linguistique dans le monde: Timor Lorosae (République de Timor Lorosae), Université Laval, Québec 2004, http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/asie/timor_est.htm
- Prof. Hull's Tetum courses in Sidney: http://www.pasthound.com/topics/Tetum?PHPSESSID=2ros07p49gp13ik7ob8duggmj1
- Stephens, M 2006, 'Healing Timor Leste through language understanding', in Healing Timor Leste: a consultation of specialists, ed. M King-Boyes, Tony Kitchener Printing pty ltd, Adelaide
- Vassalo Thake, Clare: Identityy and instruction, (p. 356) in: Stella Borg Barthet (Editor) - A Sea for Encounters: Essays Towards a Postcolonial Commonwealth, Rodopi (5 November 2009), ISBN 978-9042027640