Anvita Abbi | |
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| Born | (1949-01-09)9 January 1949 (age 76) |
| Occupation(s) | Scholar and linguist |
| Awards | Padma Shri Rashtriya Lok Bhasha Sammaan All India Institute of Advanced Study Fellowship Gold Medal - Delhi University SOASLeverhume Professor Max Planck Institute Visiting Scientist Kenneth Hale Award - Linguistic Society of America (2015) |
| Website | www.andamanese.net |
Anvita Abbi (born 9 January 1949) is an Indian linguist and scholar of minority languages, known for her studies on tribal languages and other minority languages ofSouth Asia.[1] In 2013, she was honoured with thePadma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award by theGovernment of India for her contributions to the field oflinguistics.[2]
Anvita Abbi was born on 9 January 1949, inAgra[3][4] to a family that had produced a number of Hindi writers.[5] After schooling at local institutions, she graduated in economics (BA Hons) from theUniversity of Delhi in 1968.[3][4] Subsequently, she secured a master's degree (MA) inlinguistics from the same university with first division and first rank in 1970[3][4] and continued her studies to obtain a PhD fromCornell University, Ithaca, USA, in 1975,[6] with a major in General Linguistics and minor in South Asian Linguistics.[3][4]She worked as professor of linguistics at Centre for Linguistics, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies.[7] She currently lives inNew Delhi.
Anvita Abbi is credited with extensive research on the six language families in India[7] and the languages and culture of theGreat Andamanese[8] which she did as a part of theEndangered Languages Documentation Project (ELDP) project onVanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese (VOGA),[9][10]SOAS, University of London.[11] Her studies of 2003-2004 have helped in identifying the distinct characteristics of two Great Andamanese languages,Jarawa andOnge which promoted the concept of a sixth language family of India.[8][12] Later researches onAndamanese people by other scholars have reported to have confirmed Abbi's findings by discovering two distincthaplogroups of the region, viz. M31 and M32.[7]
She resumed her research on the topic in 2006, concentrating on themorpho-syntax and lexicon of three dying languages of Andaman Islands and unearthed evidence proving that Great Andamanese belongs to a linguistically different language family.[3][4][12] She has also compiled an English-Great Andamanese-Hindi Dictionary.[13] Her current project covers the grammar and the evolution ofGreat Andamanese languages and its people.[3][4][7]
A teacher at theJNU, Abbi has assisted 20 PhD and 29 MPhil students in their researches.[3][4][7]
Abbi has held many positions of importance, both at administrative and academic levels. Current position: Director, Center of Oral and Tribal Literature Sahtiya Akademi, New Delhi India. Adjunct Professor, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and the President of the Linguistic society of India.[14] She has served as an advisor to institutions such asUNESCO (since 2002) andSahitya Akademi. He is a / She is a life member of theLinguistic Society of India at theirDravidian Linguistics Association wing and has also sat on the editorial board of two journals,Indian Linguistics (1991–95) and theInternational Journal of Dravidian Linguistics[15] (1992–96).[3][4][14]
The list of academic and organizational responsibilities Professor Anvita Abbi has carried out may be listed as:[3][4][14]
Abbi has been invited by several universities around the world as visiting professor.[16] She has taught at the following universities:[3][4][16]
Anvita Abbi, an honorary life member of theLinguistic Society of America[6] and theDravidian Linguistics Association,[3][4][14] sits on the advisory board ofTerralingua and theUNESCO.[6][7] She has also served as a Director Board member of Terralingua during 1998–2008.[6]
Anvita Abbi has presented papers and delivered keynote addresses at various platforms and at many institutions of repute.[3][4][7] A selection of her lectures are:
| Venue | Date | Topic | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cairns Institute,James Cook University | 8 November 2010 | The endangered languages of the Andaman Islands: Reconstructing the knowledge-base of the Pre Neolithic tribes of India[3][4][7] | Australia |
| Cairns Institute,James Cook University | 11 January 2011 | Semantics of inalienability and grammaticalization of body part terms inGreat Andamanese[3][4][7] | Australia |
| Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology | 18 September 2010 | In search of language contact betweenJarawa andAka-Bea: the languages of South Andaman[3][4][7] | Germany |
| University of Würzburg | 1 July 2010 | Contact language in Northeast India[3][4][7] | Germany |
| University of Oslo | 23 September 2010 | Hindi as a contact language of India[3][4][7] | Norway |
Anvita Abbi is credited with 19 books, authored, coauthored and edited.[3][4][5][17][18] Her writings cover the typology, structures and ethnolinguistic aspects of languages and their documentation.[7] Her work has spanned the entire Indian subcontinent[19] and the most known among her works is her project,Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese.[3][4][5][9]
Her Hindi short story anthology,Mutthhi Bhar Pahcaan, was published in 1969.[31]
Anvita Abbi has also published over 80 articles in national and international peer-reviewed journals.[3][4][5] Some of her notable articles are:
Anvita Abbi has been honoured by several institutions and establishments.[7][34] She has held the position of the Visiting Scientist at theMax Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology,Leipzig, Germany for three years, 200, 2003 and 2010.[6][7] She was aLeverhume Professor at theSOAS, University of London in 2011[6] and a fellow of Humanities and Social Sciences at theCornell University, New York, US in 1990 and a visiting fellow of theLa Trobe University, Melbourne in 2003.[3][4][6][7][34] Abbi was a visiting professor at the Cairns Institute,James Cook University, Australia during 2010–2011.[6][7] Some of the other honours she has received are:
In 2013, theGovernment of India honoured Anvita Abbi by awarding her the civilian award ofPadma Shri.[2][6]
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