Research honour for Linguistics professor
Presented annually by Royal Society Te Apārangi, the Humanities Aronui Medal is awarded for research or innovative work of outstanding merit in the Humanities. This includes conventional academic research and work in the creative arts.
Emeritus Professor Bauer was recognised by the selection panel for his innovative research in descriptive linguistics—in particular, his influential work exploring the way words are constructed. He is considered a leading authority on compound words.
He has also undertaken work on the grammar of New Zealand English, and has been involved in the construction of million-word samples of both written and spoken New Zealand English to facilitate research on the way in which language is used in New Zealand. He has also investigated the New Zealand accent, including its history.
Emeritus Professor Bauer was elected a Fellow of Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2012. He has authored 20 books and was a co-author of The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology, which won the Linguistic Society of America’s prestigious Leonard Bloomfield Book Award in 2015.
“I am honoured to be the sixth recipient of the Aronui Medal, and to be placed among others who have done so much for the humanities in New Zealand,” says Emeritus Professor Bauer.
Emeritus Professor Bauer was one of three Victoria University academics recognised at the 2017 New Zealand Research Honours awards—Professor Colin Wilson from the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences received the 2017 Rutherford Medal and Professor Peter Tyler from Victoria’s Ferrier Research Institute was awarded the 2017 MacDiarmid Medal.
Victoria’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Grant Guilford congratulated the three Victoria recipients on their outstanding efforts.
“We are extremely proud of Professors Wilson and Tyler, and Emeritus Professor Bauer, for their awards. It is richly deserved recognition for their hard work, and reflects the world-leading, impactful and innovative research taking place at Victoria.”