Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
	Александра Юрьевна Айхенвальд
Transl. :	Aleksandra Jur'evna Ajchenval'd
Transcr. :	Alexandra Jurjewna Aichenwald

Alexandra Yurievna "Sasha" Aikhenvald (own spelling; born September 1, 1957 in Moscow , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union ) is a Russian - Australian linguist specializing in language typology , the Arawak languages (Indian languages of South America), Berber languages , languages of Papua New Guinea ( Sepik ) and the Australian languages . As a university lecturer, she has been teaching in Australia since 1994, since 2009 as a professor at James Cook University ; she is co-founder of the Language and Culture Research Group .

Life

Alexandra Aikhenvald, a niece of the Russian lexicographer Natalija Juljewna Schwedowa , grew up in a Russian-assimilated Jewish family in Moscow. Her early interests and her talent for languages allowed her to study at the Philosophical Faculty of Lomonosov University in Moscow (BA in 1978, MA in 1979). At the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow , she received her doctorate in 1984 with a thesis on the structural and typological classification of the Berber languages. She received a Doctor of Letters from La Trobe University in Melbourne in 2006 .

At first she had a research position at the Institute for Oriental Languages, Linguistics Department, in Moscow until July 1989. In August 1989 she moved to the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Florianópolis , first as a visiting professor, then to the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in the state of São Paulo , to the University of São Paulo and again from December 1992 to February 1994, this time as a full professor , after Florianópolis. In early 1993 she was a visiting professor at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra . She moved to Australia because she was employed as a Senior Research Fellow with the rank of professor at the ANU from February 1994 to 2004 . In 2004 she became Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University in Melbourne . At the Research Center for Linguistic Typology there , she worked in particular with RMW Dixon . Since 2009 she has been Professor and Head of Research for Tropical Peoples and Societies at James Cook University in Cairns .

Her awards include: Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and the humanities in linguistics and philology in 2003 and the Humboldt Research Prize in 2010.

Academic work

Hebrew

Her language textbook Современный иврит (Sowremenny iwrit) from 1990 was the first introduction to New Hebrew for the Russian language and achieved high sales.

Berber languages

1981 to 1988 she undertook several field research trips to North Africa and examined the Taschelhit , the Tamacheq , one of the southern Tuareg languages , and the language of the Kabyle .

Arawak languages

1989 began her multiple research stays in the area of the upper Rio Negro in northern Brazil .

The languages she has studied through field research since July 1991 include Baniwa and Warekena as well as Tucano and Piratapuya (Wanano), which belong to the East Tucano languages

the Baré of the people of the same name of the Baré from the settlement area between Rio Içanca and Rio Xie , the upper reaches of Rio Negro (Amazon) in the border region between the Colombia, Venezuela and the north Brazil. To this end, in 1995 she submitted an authoritative linguistic description of the phonology , morphology and syntax ;

the Tariana of the Tariana (Tariano) people of the same name from the settlement area on the Río Vaupés on the border between Colombia and the northernmost tip of the state of Amazonas . The Tariana practice a linguistic exogamy , that is, marriages take place between different language groups, which Aikhenvald offered the possibility of linguistic contact , a technical term from linguistics that denotes the clash of two or more individual languages or linguistic varieties collective level (speaker community) or on an individual level (individual language users). She published a grammar (2003), a language manual (2000) and text collections (1999 and 2000), as well as a Tariana-Portuguese / Portuguese-Tariana dictionary (2002) for the Tariana.

In 1992 she also examined the Paumari from the Arawá language family in South Amazonia . Her importance as a language typologist was shown in the fact that some of the Maipur languages and dialects of North Amazonia could be reassigned, also in accordance with other linguists such as Terrence Kaufman .

Papuan languages

Research at Sepik began in 1995 in East Sepik Province after she moved to Australia .

She also examined Manambu , one of the Ndu languages in the Middle and East Sepik and spoken by around 2900 Papuans, using field research methods and published her research results on language contact there. As a further result, she presented a grammar for this language. John Newman, University of Alberta, mentions this as exemplary in his review of the grammar of Manambu.

Her work Classifiers (2000) deals with the occurrence of counting words in over 500 languages, more than by other authors before.

Evidentiality from 2004 deals with evidentiality , which is used in linguistics to describe the information expressed in an utterance with grammatical means , from where the speaker got the knowledge of the information contained in his utterance (e.g. heard, seen, told get or a conclusion), understands.

Fonts (selection)

Aikhenvald published over 100 writings, numerous journal articles and encyclopedia entries.

Monographs

Современный иврит [Modern Hebrew, Russian]. Nauka, Moskva 1990.
Bare. LINCOM Europe Munich, 1995, ISBN 3-89586-050-6 .
Tariana texts and cultural context. LINCOM Europe, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-89586-078-6 .
Manual da língua tariana. In addition: Histórias tariana. 2000. Language manual and text collection for the Tariana speakers of the central Rio Negro (Amazon).
Classifiers: A typology of noun categorization devices. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, also: 2003, ISBN 0-19-926466-X .
Dicionário Tariana-Português e Português-Tariana. (= Boletim do Museu Goeldi. 17). Museu Goeldi, Belém 2002.
Language contact in Amazonia. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, ISBN 0-19-925785-X .
A grammar of Tariana, from northwest Amazonia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, ISBN 978-0-521-02886-8 .
Evidentiality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, ISBN 978-0-19-920433-5 .
The Manambu language, from East Sepik, Papua New Guinea. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-953981-9 .
Imperatives and commands. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-920790-9 .
The languages of the Amazon. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-959356-9 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

Co-authorship, editing, contributions

with RMW Dixon (Ed.): The Amazonian languages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-57021-2 .
Language contact along the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. In: Anthropological Linguistics. Vol. 50, 2008, No. 1, ISSN 0003-5483 , pp. 1-66.
with RMW Dixon: Essays in syntax and semantics. Brill, Leiden 2012.

Web links

Aikhenvald Linguistics Research website
CV and bibliography (PDF; 135 kB; English)
Me and other languages. abc.net.au, transcript of the radio broadcast of February 9, 2008. Accessed June 9, 2014.

Individual evidence

↑ "... Aikhenvald's book qualifies as a model of what linguists with modern sensitivities should be aiming for when setting out to write a grammer of an indigenous language based on fieldwork." Quoted from: Review: John Newman: The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea by Alexandra Y. Alkhenvald. In: Anthropological Linguistics. Vol. 53, 2011, No. 2, pp. 176-179. ( ISSN 0003-5483 , JSTOR 41472250 ). Retrieved June 9, 2014.
↑ Review: Edward J. Vajda : Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. In: Journal of Linguistics . Vol. 38, 2002, No. 1, pp. 137-141. ( ISSN 0022-2267 , JSTOR 4176716 ). Retrieved June 9, 2014.
↑ Review: Doris L. Payne: The Amazonian Languages by RMW Dixon; Alexandra Aikhenvald. In: Language. Vol. 77, 2001, No. 3, pp. 594-598. ( ISSN 0097-8507 , JSTOR 3086957 ). Retrieved June 9, 2014.

personal data
SURNAME	Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Айхенвальд, Александра Юрьевна (Russian); Aikhenvald, Sasha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian-Australian linguist specializing in language typology
DATE OF BIRTH	September 1, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH	Moscow , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union

[1] "... Aikhenvald's book qualifies as a model of what linguists with modern sensitivities should be aiming for when setting out to write a grammer of an indigenous language based on fieldwork." Quoted from: Review: John Newman: The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea by Alexandra Y. Alkhenvald. In: Anthropological Linguistics. Vol. 53, 2011, No. 2, pp. 176-179. ( ISSN 0003-5483 , JSTOR 41472250 ). Retrieved June 9, 2014.

[2] Review: Edward J. Vajda : Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. In: Journal of Linguistics . Vol. 38, 2002, No. 1, pp. 137-141. ( ISSN 0022-2267 , JSTOR 4176716 ). Retrieved June 9, 2014.

[3] Review: Doris L. Payne: The Amazonian Languages by RMW Dixon; Alexandra Aikhenvald. In: Language. Vol. 77, 2001, No. 3, pp. 594-598. ( ISSN 0097-8507 , JSTOR 3086957 ). Retrieved June 9, 2014.