Alexandra Aikhenvald

Alexandra Yurievna Aikhenvald (born 1957 in Russia) is the academic coordinator of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She is Natalia Shvedova's niece and Yuly Aikhenvald's great granddaughter.

Aikhenvald is a specialist in Arawak language family (including Tariana), which is spoken in the Brazilian Amazon basin, and has published work on Berber languages, Modern and Classical Hebrew, Ndu languages (Eastern Sepik, Papua-New Guinea), alongside a number of articles and monographs on various aspects of linguistic typology.

She has extensively worked on language contact, with particular attention to the multilingual area of the Vaupés River Basin [ "Language Contact in Amazonia" By Alexandra Aikhenvald, Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 019925785X] . She has established a comprehensive typology of classifiers [Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald,"Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices", Oxford University Press, 2000, pb. 2003, ISBN 019926466X] and worked out major parameters for the typology of evidentials as grammatical markers of information source [Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, "Evidentiality" Oxford University Press] 2004, pd. 2006, ISBN 0199263884] . In addition, she authored a comprehensive grammar of Warekena and of Tariana, both Arawak, in addition to a lengthy Tariana-Portuguese dictionary (available on-line).

References

External links

* [http://www.latrobe.edu.au La Trobe home page]
* [http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/StaffPages/aikhenvald.htm A.Y. Aikhenvald's official home page]
* [http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/StaffPages/aikhenvald%20downloads/aikhenvaldCV.pdf A.Y. Aikhenvald's CV]
* [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18124326.200.html For want of a word] - New Scientist magazine interview
* [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/s1062928.htm Telling the Truth in Tariana] - ABC radio documentary transcript