The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology

Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics

by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Editor), R.M.W. Dixon (Editor)

Linguistic typology identifies both how languages vary and what they all have in common. This Handbook provides a state-of-the art survey of the aims and methods of linguistic typology, and the conclusions we can draw from them. Part I covers phonological typology, morphological typology, sociolinguistic typology and the relationships between typology, historical linguistics and grammaticalization. It also addresses typological features of mixed languages, creole languages, sign languages and secret languages. Part II features contributions on the typology of morphological processes, noun categorization devices, negation, frustrative modality, logophoricity, switch reference and motion events. Finally, Part III focuses on typological profiles of the mainland South Asia area, Australia, Quechuan and Aymaran, Eskimo-Aleut, Iroquoian, the Kampa subgroup of Arawak, Omotic, Semitic, Dravidian, the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian and the Awuyu-Ndumut family (in West Papua). Uniting the expertise of a stellar selection of scholars, this Handbook highlights linguistic typology as a major discipline within the field of linguistics.

Genres: Linguistics

ebook

Published April 13, 2017

About the author

Alexandra Aikhenvald is a leading linguist and expert in linguistic typology and the Arawak language family, particularly the Tariana language of the Brazilian Amazon. Born in Russia, she studied at Moscow State University, mastering numerous ancient and modern languages, including Hittite, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Yiddish. She earned her Cand. Sc. degree with research on Berber languages and published the first Russian grammar of modern Hebrew. Between 1989 and 1992, she conducted fieldwork in Brazil, learning several Indigenous languages and producing a grammar of Tariana. After moving to Australia in 1993, she held academic positions at ANU, La Trobe, and James Cook University, where she co-founded major research centers in linguistic typology and language and culture. Aikhenvald has worked extensively on language contact, classifiers, evidentials, and grammars of understudied languages. She has authored influential works on Manambu and Warekena and compiled a Tariana–Portuguese dictionary. She speaks numerous languages, including Tok Pisin, and has been recognized internationally, being elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1999), awarded an Australian Laureate Fellowship (2012), and elected to the Academia Europaea (2021). She is currently a professorial research fellow at Central Queensland University.