My first position after graduating with a PhD was Specialist in Linguistic Analysis, Australian Development Assistance Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Australian Government (1981-1985). I was stationed in Singapore, at the SEAMEO Regional Language Centre. I then taught at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education (now University of Southern Queensland), Toowoomba, for one year. I was a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at Massey University, Plamerston North, New Zealand from 1986-2002. In 2002 I was appointed Professor and Chair, Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. In 2016 I returned to Australia.

My research interests are quite broad and include cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, typology, and in an earlier life phonology (including a textbook on Feature Geometry). I have has published on a diverse range of languages —Germanic, Sinitic (especially Chinese dialects), and Austronesian— and I have carried out fieldwork in Sarawak in (Malaysia), Manus Island (in Papua New Guinea) and in Alberta, Canada.

For some years, I have been engaged in cross-linguistic research on verbal concepts, resulting in a number of book-length publications and journal articles on this topic. The names of some of the journals in which I have published speak to the diversity of my interests: Oceanic Linguistics, the Journal of Philippine Linguistics, the Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, and the Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science.

Please visit my homepage at https://www.johnnewm.org/ or by clicking on the globe icon under my photo.