Sidney Herbert Ray
Sidney Herbert Ray(28 May 1858 – 1 January 1939) was a Britishcomparativeanddescriptivelinguist who specialised inMelanesian languages.[1][2]
In 1892, he read an important paper,The Languages of British New Guinea,to the NinthInternational Congress of Orientalists.In that paper, he established the distinction between theAustronesianandPapuan languagesofNew Guinea.[3]Although he never held an academic position, and was employed throughout his working life as a school teacher,[4]S. H. Ray was an energetic fieldworker, and participated in a number of expeditions.
His first fieldwork was carried out as part ofA. C. Haddon's1898 Torres Straits Expedition along withW. H. R. Rivers,C. G. Seligmanand Anthony Wilkin. At the time Ray was a primary school teacher, who had already made a study of two Torres Straits languages on the basis of missionary publications and data supplied by Haddon.[5]
Bibliography
[edit]- Ray, Sidney Herbert (1892). "The languages of British New Guinea".Transactions of the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists.II (1892): 754–770.
- Ray, Sidney Herbert (1926).A Comparative Study of the Melanesian Island Languages.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. xvi+598.ISBN9781107682023.
Archives
[edit]The papers of Sidney Herbert Ray (PP MS 3) are held atSOAS Archives
References
[edit]- ^Wells, Roberta (1999). "Sidney Herbert Ray: Linguist and Educationalist".Cambridge Journal of Anthropology.21(1): 79–99.
- ^Papers and field notes relating to his linguistic work are held bySOAS Special Collections
- ^Ray (1892).
- ^Haddon, A. C.(1939). "Sidney H. Ray: 28th May, 1858–1st January, 1939".Man.39:58–61.
- ^Ian Langham (1981).The building of British social anthropology: W. H. R. Rivers and his Cambridge disciples in the development of kinship studies.London: Reidel.
