Alexandra Aikhenvald | |
---|---|
Born | Alexandra Yurievna Aikhenvald September 1, 1957 |
Citizenship | Australian, Brazilian [1] |
Spouse | R.M.W. Dixon |
Awards | |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Structural and Typological Classification of Berber Languages (1984) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Linguist |
Sub-discipline | |
Institutions |
Alexandra Yurievna "Sasha" Aikhenvald (Eichenwald) FAHA is an Australian-Brazilian [1] linguist specialising in linguistic typology and the Arawak language family (including Tariana) of the Brazilian Amazon basin. She is a professorial research fellow at Central Queensland University [2]
Alexandra Aikhenvald was born to a grandson of Yuly Aykhenvald;Natalia Shvedova was her paternal aunt. She was fascinated by languages from early childhood,picking up some Spanish from her parents' Spanish flatmate,and dreaming of majoring in Latin and Classical studies in university. [3] A friend taught her German during her high school years,and she also mastered French.
Aikhenvald earned her undergraduate degree from Moscow State University,with a thesis on Anatolian languages [4] (Hittite [3] ). She also studied Sanskrit,Akkadian,Lithuanian,Finnish,Hungarian,Arabic,Italian and Ancient Greek. Outside of her classes,she learned Estonian and Hebrew. [3] After graduation,she joined the research staff of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences,where she earned her Cand. Sc. degree (Soviet equivalent of Ph.D.) in 1984 with a thesis on the "Structural and Typological Classification of Berber Languages" (1984). [4] She published the first Russian grammar of modern Hebrew in 1985. She also mastered Yiddish,the language of her grandparents,which was,however,never spoken at home.
In 1989–1992,Aikhenvald did research work in Brazil,where she mastered Portuguese,learnt five Brazilian Indian languages,and wrote a grammar of the Tariana language. In 1993 she started her work in Australia,first at Australian National University,later at La Trobe University. [4]
In 1996,the expert on Australian aboriginal languages R. M. W. Dixon and Aikhenvald established the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at Australian National University in Canberra. On January 1,2000,the center relocated to La Trobe University in Melbourne. [5] Dixon and Aikhenvald both resigned in May 2008. [6] In January 2009,she became a professor at the James Cook University, [7] where she and R. M. W. Dixon founded The Language and Culture Research Group. [8]
She speaks Tok Pisin,and has written a grammar of the Sepik language Manambu,a language she self-professedly occasionally dreams in. [9] [10]
Aikhenvald has published work on Berber languages,Modern and Classical Hebrew,Ndu languages (specifically Manambu of East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea),alongside a number of articles and monographs on various aspects of linguistic typology.
She has worked on language contact,with reference to the multilingual area of the Vaupés River Basin. [11] She has established a typology of classifiers [12] and worked out parameters for the typology of evidentials as grammatical markers of information sources. [13] In addition,she authored a grammar of Warekena and of Tariana,both Arawak languages,in addition to a Tariana–Portuguese dictionary (available online).
Aikhenvald was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1999. [14] In 2012,she was awarded an Australian Laureate Fellowship. [15]
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea,as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia,Solomon Islands,and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping,and does not imply a genetic relationship.
Macro-Arawakan is a proposed language family of South America and the Caribbean centered on the Arawakan languages. Sometimes,the proposal is called Arawakan,and the central family is called Maipurean.
Arawak,also known as Lokono,is an Arawakan language spoken by the Lokono (Arawak) people of South America in eastern Venezuela,Guyana,Suriname,and French Guiana. It is the eponymous language of the Arawakan language family.
Tayap is an endangered Papuan language spoken by fewer than 50 people in Gapun village of Marienberg Rural LLG in East Sepik Province,Papua New Guinea. It is being replaced by the national language and lingua franca Tok Pisin.
In linguistics,evidentiality is,broadly,the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement;that is,whether evidence exists for the statement and if so,what kind. An evidential is the particular grammatical element that indicates evidentiality. Languages with only a single evidential have had terms such as mediative,médiatif,médiaphorique,and indirective used instead of evidential.
Robert Malcolm Ward "Bob" Dixon is a Professor of Linguistics in the College of Arts,Society,and Education and The Cairns Institute,James Cook University,Queensland. He is also Deputy Director of The Language and Culture Research Centre at JCU. Doctor of Letters,he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa by JCU in 2018. Fellow of British Academy;Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities,and Honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America,he is one of three living linguists to be specifically mentioned in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics by Peter Matthews (2014).
In linguistics,mirativity,initially proposed by Scott DeLancey,is a grammatical category in a language,independent of evidentiality,that encodes the speaker's surprise or the unpreparedness of their mind. Grammatical elements that encode the semantic category of mirativity are called miratives.
Tariana is an endangered Maipurean language spoken along the Vaupés River in Amazonas,Brazil by approximately 100 people. Another approximately 1,500 people in the upper and middle Vaupés River area identify themselves as ethnic Tariana but do not speak the language fluently.
Stephen Adolphe Wurm was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.
The Yuat languages are an independent family of five Papuan languages spoken along the Yuat River in East Sepik Province,Papua New Guinea. They are an independent family in the classification of Malcolm Ross,but are included in Stephen Wurm's Sepik–Ramu proposal. However,Foley and Ross could find no lexical or morphological evidence that they are related to the Sepik or Ramu languages.
William A. Foley is an American linguist and professor at Columbia University. He previously worked at the University of Sydney. He specializes in Papuan and Austronesian languages. Foley developed Role and Reference Grammar in a partnership with Robert Van Valin.
Terence Michael Crowley was a linguist specializing in Oceanic languages as well as Bislama,the English-lexified Creole recognized as a national language in Vanuatu. From 1991 he taught in New Zealand. Previously,he was with the Pacific Languages Unit of the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu (1983–90) and with the Department of Language and Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea (1979–83).
The Ndu languages are the best known family of the Sepik languages of East Sepik Province in northern Papua New Guinea. Ndu is the word for 'man' in the languages that make up this group. The languages were first identified as a related family by Kirschbaum in 1922.
Jendraschek,Gerd is a German linguist specialized in Basque,Turkish,and Iatmul. He was assistant professor of General and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Regensburg,Germany,until July 2012,and a Korea Foundation Fellow from September 2012 until August 2013. He is currently assistant professor at Sangmyung University in Cheonan,South Korea.
Mawayana (Mahuayana),also known as Mapidian (Maopidyán),is a moribund Arawakan language of northern South America. It used to be spoken by Mawayana people living in ethnic Wai-wai and Tiriyóvillages in Brazil,Guyana and Suriname. As of 2015,the last two speakers of the language are living in Kwamalasamutu.
Manambu is one of the Ndu languages of Sepik River region of northern Papua New Guinea. A Manambu-based pidgin is used with speakers of Kwoma. Manambu has been extensively documented by Alexandra Aikhenvald in a comprehensive grammar.
Dr. Ulrike Mosel is a professor of linguistics and head of the linguistics department at the University of Kiel. She has held these positions since 1995. Mosel is the co-editor and author of nine academic books,including Essentials of Language Documentation with Jost Gippert and Nikolaus Himmelmann. This book is as described as "a landmark" in the field of Language Documentation.
Tom Dutton was an Australian linguist specialising in Papuan languages and other languages of Papua New Guinea.
Hilary Chappell is a professor of linguistics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. Her research focuses on grammaticalization and the typology of the Sinitic languages.
Birgit Hellwig is a German linguist specializing in African and Papuan languages. She is professor of general linguistics at the University of Cologne.