Arthur Capell was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages.
11 Facts About Arthur Capell
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Arthur Capell graduated from the Sydney Teachers' College in Modern Languages in 1922 and the University of Sydney in the same year as the University medallist in Classics.
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Arthur Capell taught in high schools for three years at Canterbury Boys' Intermediate High and Tamworth High School.
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Arthur Capell was then ordained deacon in 1925 and priest in 1926 in the Church of England in Australia.
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When Elkin, then the Anglican rector at Morpeth, was appointed to a professorship in anthropology at Sydney, Arthur Capell served as his locum tenens in the parish.
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Arthur Capell was appointed reader in 1948, and remained in that position until retirement in 1967.
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Arthur Capell was made an honorary canon of Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, Dogura in 1956.
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Notwithstanding his extensive work on Papuan and Polynesian languages, including dictionaries of Fijian, Palauan and Western Futuna, Arthur Capell managed to make important contributions to Australian linguistics, particularly in discovering typologically distinct north-western languages which could not be assimilated to the standard Pama-Nyungan language family.
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Arthur Capell was fond of punning, an example being his pronunciation of semantics as "some antics".
10.
When his housekeeper fell ill, he hired another to care for her and, when the second in turn fell ill, Arthur Capell looked after both of them.
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Arthur Capell's records have been digitised and deposited with the National Library of Australia.