Terry Crowley

Language Log is reporting the very sad news that Terry Crowley, the University of Waikato linguist best known for his work on documenting Oceanic languages and Bislama (the creole English of Vanuatu) has passed away at the age of 52. Terry published both a reference grammar and dictionary for Bislama, as well as the classic 1990 From Beach-la-Mar to Bislama which traced the origins of the language and reconstructed with written texts how the modern grammar of Bislama arose. He was also on the editorial boards for Oceanic Linguistics and the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages.

Our field has just lost one of its brightest shining stars; he will be sadly missed.