Ellen Contini-Morava is an

anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, wh ...

linguist, interested in the meanings of linguistic forms,

discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis (discourse, writing, conversation, communicative sy ...

functional linguistics Functional linguistics is an approach to the study of language characterized by taking systematically into account the speaker's and the hearer's side, and the communicative needs of the speaker and of the given language community. Linguistic fu ...

and (noun) classification; in particular, in the relationship between lexicon and grammar. She specializes in

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

in general, and Swahili in particular.

Education and career

Contini-Morava received her PhD from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1983 under William Diver and Erica Garcia. She is a

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...

Books

Contini-Morava is the author of the book ''Discourse Pragmatics and Semantic Categorization: The Case of Negation and Tense-Aspect with Special Reference to Swahili'' (Mouton de Gruyter, 1989). Her

edited volume Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written language, written, Image editing, visual, Audio engineer, audible, or Film editing, cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing p ...

s include ''Between Grammar and Lexicon'' (edited with Yishai Tobin, John Benjamins, 2000) and ''Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis'' (edited with Robert S. Kirsner and Betsy Rodríguez-Bachiller, John Benjamins, 2004).

References

Linguists from the United States Living people University of Virginia faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Women linguists {{US-linguist-stub