David Wilkins passed away

David was an American-Australian linguist, with a PhD on Arrernte, who contributed many insights into the nature of semantics, meaning and communication. He will be remembered particularly for his work on semantic change, spatial language, deixis and gesture. He played an important role in the work of the Language and Cognition department on spatial cognition and language during the 1990s, later co-editing Grammars of Space (2006, CUP), and contributed the essential framework to the more recent book Demonstratives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective (2018, CUP). 

He had maintained his interests in aphasia and assisted communication during his time in Nijmegen, and went on to work at the Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders at the VA Northern California in Martinez, and subsequently held an honorary appointment at ANU. David was treasured by colleagues for his creativity and generosity with ideas and constructive advice. A full bibliography of his 40 odd publications can be found on https://www0.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/wilkins.html

Profound impact

During his time at the Max Planck Institute in the late 1990s, David Wilkins pursued a wide range of interests, including the multimodal practices of Arrernte speakers - particularly their use of sand drawings, gestures, and signs in a richly composite and integrated manner. He was also one of the scholars who participated in the first workshop on pointing, organized by Kita Sotaro and later published as a landmark volume. 

Director Asli Özyürek worked closely together with David. “His influential work challenged the assumption that index-finger pointing is universal, demonstrating instead that pointing practices vary significantly across cultures. David's innovative multimodal perspective on spatial language, narratives, and demonstratives was groundbreaking at the time, and it helped lay the foundation for the flourishing of multimodal approaches to language both at the MPI and more broadly within the fields of linguistics and anthropology. 

His research had a profound impact on me personally - especially the fascinating field videos he shared from Australia, which vividly documented the rich multimodal communicative practices of Aboriginal speakers.

He was always supportive of my own research, and his work significantly shaped my thinking, particularly regarding multimodal approaches to demonstratives and strategies for conducting cross-linguistic research. David Wilkins will be deeply missed - not only as a scholar, but also for his generous and inspiring presence in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, field research, and gesture and sign studies.”

Gesture project

Wilkins played a key role in one of the Institute Projects, "Gesture Project", in 1990s - and worked closely together with Kita Sotaro. Kita: “I am deeply saddened by the news that David Wilkins passed away. In a period where research on multimodality in psycholinguistics was still in its infancy and it was considered to be a marginal topic, David, from Day 1 of the Gesture Project, was an enthusiastic and active contributor. His clarity of thinking often helped us make sense of complex phenomena we were grappling with. His brilliant input and enthusiasm energised the Project. His own research on multimodal communication in an Australian Aboriginal community beautifully demonstrated how people orchestrate various multimodal resources to communicate complex messages and how multimodality can only be understood through deep understanding of the cultural background.”