John Lynch (linguist)

John Dominic Lynch (8 July 1946 in Sydney, Australia – 25 May 2021 in Port Vila, Vanuatu) was a linguist specializing in Oceanic languages. He was an emeritus professor of Pacific Languages and the former Director of the Pacific Languages Unit at the University of the South Pacific in Port Vila, Vanuatu.

Career
Prior to moving to Vanuatu, Lynch had served at the University of Papua New Guinea for 21 years, the last five as vice-chancellor. His areas of focus were the languages of Vanuatu, the history of languages of the Pacific, pidgin and creole languages, language change, dictionaries and orthography design.

He was the editor of the journal Oceanic Linguistics from 2007 to 2019.