Alexandra Aikhenvald | |
|---|---|
| Born | Alexandra Yurievna Aikhenvald (1957-09-01)September 1, 1957 (age 67) |
| 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 anAustralian-Brazilian[1]linguist specialising inlinguistic typology and theArawak language family (includingTariana) of the BrazilianAmazon basin. She is a professorial research fellow atCentral Queensland University[2]
Alexandra Aikhenvald was born to a grandson ofYuly 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 inLatin andClassical studies in university.[3] A friend taught herGerman during her high school years, and she also masteredFrench.
Aikhenvald earned her undergraduate degree fromMoscow State University, with a thesis onAnatolian languages[4] (Hittite[3]). She also studiedSanskrit,Akkadian,Lithuanian,Finnish,Hungarian,Arabic,Italian andAncient Greek. Outside of her classes, she learnedEstonian andHebrew.[3] After graduation, she joined the research staff of theInstitute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where she earned herCand. Sc. degree (Soviet equivalent of Ph.D.) in 1984 with a thesis on the "Structural and Typological Classification ofBerber Languages" (1984).[4] She published the first Russian grammar of modern Hebrew in 1985. She also masteredYiddish, the language of her grandparents, which was, however, never spoken at home.
In 1989–1992, Aikhenvald did research work inBrazil, where she masteredPortuguese, learnt five Brazilian Indian languages, and wrote a grammar of theTariana language. In 1993 she started her work in Australia, first atAustralian National University, later atLa Trobe University.[4]
In 1996, the expert on Australian aboriginal languagesR. M. W. Dixon and Aikhenvald established theResearch Centre for Linguistic Typology atAustralian National University inCanberra. On January 1, 2000, the center relocated toLa Trobe University inMelbourne.[5] Dixon and Aikhenvald both resigned in May 2008.[6] In January 2009, she became a professor at theJames Cook University,[7] where she andR. M. W. Dixon founded The Language and Culture Research Group.[8]
She speaksTok Pisin, and has written a grammar of theSepik languageManambu, a language she self-professedly occasionally dreams in.[9][10]
Aikhenvald has published work onBerber languages, Modern and Classical Hebrew,Ndu languages (specificallyManambu ofEast Sepik Province ofPapua 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 theVaupés River Basin.[11] She has established a typology of classifiers[12] and worked out parameters for the typology ofevidentials as grammatical markers of information sources.[13] In addition, she authored a grammar ofWarekena and of Tariana, bothArawak languages, in addition to a Tariana–Portuguese dictionary (available online).
Aikhenvald was elected Fellow of theAustralian Academy of the Humanities in 1999.[14] In 2012, she was awarded anAustralian Laureate Fellowship.[15] She was elected a member of theAcademia Europaea in 2021.[16]
