Hi!

 

My name is Alexander D. Smith (just Alex is fine). I am a linguist, and a Principal Investigator at Fudan University. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2017 and wrote my dissertation on the languages of Borneo, an island the size of the US state of Texas, and an area of considerable linguistic diversity.

 

My Linguistic interests are in historical linguistics, and I focus heavily on the comparative study of Austronesian languages. I am currently in charge of managing the content of the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary, a position that was given to me by the late Robert Blust. Please feel free to contact me with any questions regarding the ACD.

 

I have recently been intrigued by the prospect of working on the Austro-Tai hypothesis, and have some work in this area as well.

​

Apart from my academic interests, I am involved in various projects dealing with the documentation, description, preservation, and promotion of the indigenous languages of Borneo. I am in the process of uploading my large linguistic datasets to borneodictionary.com, a non-academic site designed for use by local community members in Borneo. I am also currently working on several dictionary projects with different communities in Borneo.

​​

​

Archived Materials:

Materials from my fieldwork are stored at the Kaipuleohone language archive, hosted at the University of Hawaiʻi.

• Kayanic comparative vocabularies

• Modang

• Kenyah, Long San

• Bidayuh, Biatah

• Kayan, Uma Nyaving

​

​

Upcoming:

​

• Southeast Asian Linguistics Society Conference (2025). I will be giving a ​Keynote talk at the next SEALS conference and I will post an abstract here when it is ready.

​

• The Languages of Borneo (2025-2026). I am rewriting my dissertation to be published as a book. The rewrite is comprehensive, so definitely stay tuned for more!​

​​

​

Recent:

​

• New book (as editor), January 2025: Kelabit to English Contemporary Dictionary (Gerawat Tuan, author). This groundbreaking book is the first large dictionary of the Kelabit language as it is spoken at Bario Asal. The dictionary is not yet available online, but if you are interested in getting your hands on a copy, feel free to reach out to me.

​

• New paper, December 2024: Bornean passives in comparative perspective with Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine; comments welcome!

​

• ​New paper, December 2024: Proto-Austronesian *j once again in Oceanic Linguistics.

​​​

 

Check out my Publications page for more (less recent) publications.

​