Alexandra Aikhenvald's Books

Evidentiality

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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In a number of languages, scattered across the world, every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based--whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from somebody else. Of interest to any grammarian, the book discusses evidentiality, and the cognitive and sociolinguistic consequences of evidentiality in a language.

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452

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Oxford University Press on Demand

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199204330

ISBN 13

9780199204335

The Art of Grammar

A Practical Guide

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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The Art of Grammar

A Practical Guide

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

This book introduces the principles and practice of writing a comprehensive reference grammar. Several thousand distinct languages are currently spoken across the globe, each with its own grammatical system and its own selection of diverse grammatical structures. Comprehensive reference grammars offer a basis for understanding linguistic diversity and can provide a unique perspective into the structure and social and cognitive underpinnings of different languages. Alexandra Aikhenvald describes the means of collecting, analysing, and organizing data for use in this type of grammar, and discusses the typological parameters that can be used to explore relationships with other languages. She considers how a grammar can made to reflect and bring to life the society of its speakers through background explanation and the judicious choice of examples, as well as by showing how its language, history, and culture are intertwined. She ends with a full glossary of terms and guidance for those wanting to explore a particular linguistic phenomenon or language family. The Art of Grammar is the ideal resource for students and teachers of linguistics, language studies, and inductively-oriented linguistic, cultural, and social anthropology.

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405

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191506214

ISBN 13

9780191506215

Classifiers

A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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Classifiers

A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

Almost all languages have some ways of categorizing nouns. Languages of South-East Asia have classifiers used with numerals, while most Indo-European languages have two or three genders. They can have a similar meaning and one can develop from the other. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in the mechanisms of human cognition.

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562

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OUP Oxford

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191543985

ISBN 13

9780191543982

A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.

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744

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

110726880X

ISBN 13

9781107268807

How Gender Shapes the World

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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How Gender Shapes the World

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

This is a book about the multi-faceted notion of gender. Gender differences form the basis for family life, patterns of socialization, distribution of tasks, and spheres of responsibilities. The way gender is articulated shapes the world of individuals, and of the societies they live in. Gender has three faces: Linguistic Gender-the original sense of 'gender'-is a feature of many languages and reflects the division of nouns into grammatical classes or genders (feminine, masculine,This is a book about the multi-faceted notion of gender. Gender differences form the basis for family life, patterns of socialization, distribution of tasks, and spheres of responsibilities. The way gender is articulated shapes the world of individuals, and of the societies they live in. Gender has three faces: Linguistic Gender-the original sense of 'gender'-is a feature of many languages and reflects the division of nouns into grammatical classes or genders (feminine, masculine, neuter, and so on); Natural Gender, or sex, refers to the division of animates into males and females; and Social Gender reflects the social implications and norms of being a man or a woman (or perhaps something else). Women and men may talk and behave differently, depending on conventions within the societies they live in, and their role in language maintenance can also vary. The book focuses on how gender in its many guises is reflected in human languages, how it features in myths and metaphors, and the role it plays in human cognition. Examples are drawn from all over the world, with a special focus on Aikhenvald's extensive fieldwork in Amazonia and New Guinea.

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304

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191035696

ISBN 13

9780191035692

The Wives

By: Alexandra Popoff

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The Wives

By: Alexandra Popoff

Many readers may know that such writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence used their marriages for literary inspiration and material. In Russian literary marriages, these women did not resent taking a secondary position, although to call their position secondary does not do justice to the vital role these women played in the creation of some of the greatest literary works in history. From Sofia Tolstoy to Vera Nabokov and Elena Mandelshtam and Natalya Solzhenitsyn, these women ranged from stenographers and typists to editors, researchers, translators, and even publishers. Living under restrictive regimes, many of these women battled censorship and preserved the writers’ illicit archives, often risking their own lives to do so. They established a tradition all their own, unmatched in the West. Many of these women, like Vera and Sofia, were the writers’ intellectual companions and willingly contributed to the creative process—they commonly used the word “we” to describe the progress of their husbands’ work. And their husbands knew it too. Leo Tolstoy made no secret of Sofia’s involvement in War and Peace, and Vladimir Nabokov referred to Vera as his own “single shadow.”

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Page Count

200

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1639361324

ISBN 13

9781639361328

Serial Verbs

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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Serial Verbs

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

This book provides an in-depth typological account of the forms, functions, and histories of serial verb constructions. Serial verbs, in which several verbs combine to form a single predicate, describe what is conceptualized as a single event. The verbs in the construction have the same tense, aspect, mood, modality, and evidentiality values, cannot be negated or questioned separately, and usually share the same subject and object. They are a powerful means of portraying various facets of one event, and can express grammatical meanings such as aspect, direction, and causation, particularly in languages where few other means are available. In this volume, Alexandra Aikhenvald seeks to answer unresolved questions such as: What are the parameters of variation in serial verbs? How do serial verbs differ from other, superficially similar multi-verb constructions? How do serial verbs emerge, and what happens to them over time? What role do they play in the representation of event structure? The book uses an inductively-based framework for the analysis and draws on data from languages with different typological profiles and genetic affiliations. It will be of interest to researchers and students from a wide range of fields of linguistics, especially typology, anthropological linguistics, and language contact.

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336

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0192508776

ISBN 13

9780192508775

The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

By: Alexandra Aikhenvald

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The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

By: Alexandra Aikhenvald

This book is the first comprehensive description of the Manambu language of Papua New Guinea and is based entirely on the author's immersion fieldwork. Manambu belongs to the Ndu language family, and is spoken by about 2,500 people in five villages: Avatip, Yawabak, Malu, Apa:n, and Yambon (Yuanab) in East Sepik Province, Ambunti district. Manambu can be considered an endangered language. The Manambu language has many unusual properties. Every noun is considered masculine or feminine. Feminine gender - which is unmarked - is associated with small size and round shape, and masculine gender with elongated shape, large size, and importance. The Manambu culture is centered on ownership of personal names, and is similar to that of the Iatmul, described by Gregory Bateson. After an introductory account of the language and its speakers, Professor Aikhenvald devotes chapters to phonology, grammatical relations, word classes, gender, semantics, number, case, possession, derivation and compounding, pronouns, morphohology, verbs, mood and modality, negation, clause structure, pragmatics, discourse, semantics, the lexicon, current directions of change, and genetic relationship to other languages. The description is presented in a clear style in a framework that will be comprehensible to all linguists and linguistically oriented anthropologists.

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992

Publisher

OUP Oxford

Published Date

ISBN 10

019161534X

ISBN 13

9780191615344

Language Contact in Amazonia

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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Language Contact in Amazonia

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

This book considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another. The author explains the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and reveals the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another. Aikhenvald uses the example of Arawak and Tucanoan languages spoken in the large area of the Vaupes river basin in northwest Amazonia, which spans Colombia and Brazil. In this region language is seen as a badge of identity: language mixing, interaction, and influence are resisted for ideological reasons. The book considers which grammatical categories are most and least likely to be borrowed in a situation of prolonged language contact where lexical borrowing is reduced to a minimum. The author provides a genetic analysis of the languages of the region and considers their historical relationships with languages of the same family outside it. She also examines changes brought about by recent contact with European languages and culture, and the linguistic and cultural effects of being part of a group that is aware of the threat to its language and identity. The book is presented in relatively nontechnical language and will interest linguists and anthropologists.

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363

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199588244

ISBN 13

9780199588244

Sophia Tolstoy

A Biography

By: Alexandra Popoff

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Sophia Tolstoy

A Biography

By: Alexandra Popoff

As Leo Tolstoy’s wife, Sophia Tolstoy experienced both glory and condemnation during their forty-eight-year marriage. She was admired as the muse and literary assistant to one of the world’s most celebrated novelists. But when in later years Tolstoy became a towering public figure and founded a new brand of religion, she was scorned for her disagreements with him. And it is this version of Sophia—malicious, shrill, perennially at war with Tolstoy—that has gone down in the historical record. Drawing on newly available archival material, including Sophia’s unpublished memoir, Alexandra Popoff presents a dramatically different and accurate portrait of the woman and the marriage. This lively, well-researched biography demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, Sophia was remarkably supportive of Tolstoy and was, in fact, key to his fame. Gifted and versatile, Sophia assisted Tolstoy during the writing of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Having modeled his most memorable female characters on her, Tolstoy admired his wife’s boundless energy, which he called “the force of life.” Sophia’s letters, never before translated, illuminate the couple’s true relationship and provide insights into Tolstoy’s creative laboratory. Although long portrayed as an elitist and hysterical countess, Sophia was in reality a practical, independent-minded, generous, and talented woman who shared Tolstoy’s important values and his capacity for work. Mother of thirteen, she participated in Tolstoy’s causes and managed all business a airs. Popoff describes in haunting detail the intrusion into their marriage by Tolstoy’s religious disciple Vladimir Chertkov, who controlled Tolstoy at the end of his life and led a smear campaign against Sophia, branding her evil and mad. She is still judged by Chertkov’s false accounts, which dismissed her valuable achievements and contributions. During his later religious phase, Tolstoy renounced his property and copyright, and Sophia had to become the breadwinner. She published Tolstoy’s collected works and supported their large family. Despite the pressures of her demanding life, she realized her own talents as a writer, photographer, translator, and aspiring artist. This vigorous, engrossing biography presents in fascinating depth and detail the many ways in which Sophia Tolstoy enriched the life and work of one of the world’s most revered authors.

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Page Count

370

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1416559906

ISBN 13

9781416559900

Case in Russian

A sign-oriented approach

By: Alexandra Beytenbrat

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Case in Russian

A sign-oriented approach

By: Alexandra Beytenbrat

This volume presents an analysis of Russian case from a sign-oriented perspective. The study was inspired by William Diver’s analysis of Latin case and follows the spirit of the Columbia School of linguistics. The fundamental premise that underlies this volume is that language is a communicative tool shaped by human behavior.In this study, case is viewed as a semantic entity. Each case is assigned an invariant meaning within a larger semantic system, which is validated through numerous examples from spoken language and literary texts to illustrate that the distribution of cases is semantically motivated and defined by communicative principles that can be associated with human behavior.

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198

Publisher

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

9027268169

ISBN 13

9789027268167

The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

By: Alexandra Aikhenvald

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The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

By: Alexandra Aikhenvald

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992

Publisher

OUP Oxford

Published Date

ISBN 10

019161534X

ISBN 13

9780191615344

Classifiers

A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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Classifiers

A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices

By: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

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535

Publisher

Oxford University Press on Demand

Published Date

ISBN 10

019926466X

ISBN 13

9780199264667

Language at Large

Essays on Syntax and Semantics

By: Alexandra Aikhenvald,R.M.W. Dixon

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Language at Large

Essays on Syntax and Semantics

By: Alexandra Aikhenvald,R.M.W. Dixon

The volume brings together important essays on syntax and semantics by Aikhenvald and Dixon, highlighting their expertise in various fields of linguistics. The first part focusses on linguistic typology, covering case markers used on verbs, argument-determined constructions, unusual meanings of causatives, the semantic basis for a typology, word-class-changing derivations, speech reports and semi-direct speech. The second part concentrates on documentation and analysis of previously undescribed languages, from South America and Indigenous Australia. The third part addresses a variety of issues in grammar and lexicography of English. This includes pronouns with transferred reference, comparative constructions, features of the noun phrase, and the discussion of 'twice'. The treatment of Australian Aboriginal words in dictionaries is discussed in the final chapter.

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Page Count

630

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004207686

ISBN 13

9789004207684

Book's by Alexandra Aikhenvald

Evidentiality

Evidentiality

The Art of Grammar

The Art of Grammar

Classifiers

Classifiers

A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia

A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia

How Gender Shapes the World

How Gender Shapes the World

The Wives

The Wives

Serial Verbs

Serial Verbs

The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

Language Contact in Amazonia

Language Contact in Amazonia

Sophia Tolstoy

Sophia Tolstoy

Case in Russian

Case in Russian

The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

Classifiers

Classifiers

Language at Large

Language at Large

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