In Memory of Robert Blust (1940–2022)

Robert A. Blust (https://blusthawaii.wixsite.com/blust) passed away on January 5, 2022 in Honolulu, Hawaii at the age of 81 after a 13-year battle with cancer. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940, he was first and foremost a historical linguist who specialized in the Austronesian language family, which represents nearly 20% of the world's languages and extends more than halfway around the globe. He earned a B.A. in Anthropology followed by a Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1974 at UH Mānoa, after which he held positions at the Australian National University and the University of Leiden. He returned to the UH Mānoa in 1984 where he then spent most of his remaining academic career.

As part of his field work, Blust collected data on 100 Austronesian languages spoken in locations such as Sarawak (1971), the Admiralty Islands (1975), and Taiwan (1994-1999). Building on previous work by scholars such as Isidore Dyen, Otto Dahl, Paul Jen-kuei Li, and Shigeru Tsuchida, Blust proposed the widely-accepted theory that Taiwan was the homeland of the Austronesian family – from where the Austronesian people expanded to such remote places as Madagascar, Hawai'i, and New Zealand.

Soon after his first trip to Taiwan in 1994, Blust began conducting primary fieldwork on Formosan languages such as Thao, Kavalan, Pazeh, Amis, Paiwan, and Saisiyat. His dictionary of the highly-endangered Thao language (2003), at 1,106 pages and with more than 13,000 entries and sub-entries, is one of the most complete ever compiled for a Formosan language. He also worked with the last fluent speaker of Pazeh during the same period and published a series of works on Thao, Pazeh, and the genetic and contact relationships of the Formosan languages.

Blust served as the review editor for Oceanic Linguistics, an academic journal focused on the Austronesian languages, until 2018. His comprehensive 9,000-page online Austronesian Comparative Dictionary (www.trussel2.com/ACD > acd.clld.org) is the largest research project ever undertaken on Austronesian languages. His well-known 2009/2013 book The Austronesian Languages was the first single-authored book to cover all aspects (phonology, morphology, syntax, sound change, classification, etc.) of the Austronesian language family in its entirety and is one of the largest single-authored projects in the history of linguistics. He also published a workbook (2018) on historical linguistics for the general linguistics public. Other publications include over 230 articles, reviews, etc. in anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics journals.

Blust had a strong research interest in both linguistic and cultural aspects of rainbows and dragons; one of his last publications, The Dragon and the Rainbow (brill.com/display/title/68234) articulated his theory of the origin of dragons.

Blust made three contributions during the '90s to Mother Tongue: