Dr Kazuko Obata |
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| Research Project Officer |
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Contact Details |
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GPO Box 553, AIATSIS, Canberra ACT 2601 |
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Telephone: +61 2 6246 1166 Facsimile: +61 2 6249 7714 |
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| Email Kazuko Obata |
Kazuko Obata arrived in Australia from Japan in 1991. She first worked on her first language, Japanese, in order to understand why some aspects of English grammar is hard to learn for Japanese. Then, she was inspired to study previously undescribed languages and wrote a PhD thesis on a grammar of Bilua, a language spoken in the Solomon Islands. In completing her PhD thesis, she decided to use her knowledge and skills for the maintenance of Indigenous languages and moved to a remote Aboriginal community, Warburton, WA, where she worked as a community linguist for the Ngaaanyatjarra language maintenance program.
Current Research
Currently at AIATSIS, she is involved with the following three projects:
- AUSTLANG (online Australian Indigenous language database)
- ASEDA (Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive)
- OZBIB (a linguistic bibliography of Aboriginal Australia and Torres Strait Islands).
She was the organiser of the Australian Languages Workshp 2008 and 2009 and will be orgainising the 2010 workshop. Kazuko holds a Visiting Fellowship at the School of Language Studies, ANU.
Recent Publications
Obata, K. 2008. AUSTLANG web-based Australian Indigenous Languages Database: its features and compilation. In R Amery and J Nash (eds), Warra Wiltaniappendi Strengthening Languages, proceedings of the Inaugural Indigenous Languages Conference, pp. 119-130
McConvell, Patrick and Kazuko Obata. 2006. A higher order of kinship semantics: Trirelational kinship terms and kin-based pronouns in Australia. Poster presented at the Third Oxford-Kobe Linguistics Seminar: The linguistics of endangered languages. Kobe, Japan, 2--5 April 2006.
Obata, Kazuko 2003. A grammar of Bilua, a Papuan language of the Solomon Islands. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics 540.
Obata, Kazuko, I.Kral and Ngaanyatjarra language speakers 2005. Ngaanyatjarra Picture Dictionary. Alice Springs: IAD Press
To search the AIATSIS Library Mura Catalogue for more items by Kazuko Obata please click here.