Alexandra Aikhenvald

Biography

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor at the Jawun Research Centre of Central Queensland University (Cairns), and Australian Laureate Fellow (awarded 2012). She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and on languages of the Sepik region of New Guinea (where she has done intensive fieldwork), in addition to various typological and areal topics, and the author of over 150 papers. She edited numerous books, among them The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality (2018) and, jointly with R. M. W. Dixon, The Cambridge handbook of linguistic typology (2017). Her other major publications include Classifiers: A typology of noun categorization devices (OUP, 2000, pb2003), Language contact in Amazonia (OUP, 2002), Evidentiality (OUP, 2004, pb 2006), Imperatives and commands (OUP, 2010, pb 2014), Languages of the Amazon (OUP, 2012, pb 2015), The art of grammar: a practical guide (OUP, 2014 pb and hb), How gender shapes the world (OUP, 2016, pb 2018), Serial verbs (OUP, 2018, pb 2021), The web of knowledge: evidentiality at the cross-roads (Brill, 2021), A guide to gender and classifiers (OUP, forthcoming), and a general interest book I saw the dog: how language works (Profile books, 2021).