Johanna Nichols (born 1945,

Iowa City Iowa City is the largest city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. At the time of the 2020 census the population was 74,828, making it the state's fifth-most populous city. The Iowa City metropolitan area, which enc ...

, Iowa) is an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

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". ...

in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Career

She earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973 with a dissertation titled "The Balto-Slavic predicate instrumental: a problem in diachronic syntax". Her research interests include the Slavic languages, the linguistic prehistory of northern

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

, language typology, ancient linguistic

prehistory Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use ...

, and languages of the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

, chiefly Chechen and Ingush. She has made fundamental contributions to these fields.

Honors

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

in her honor, ''Language Typology and Historical Contingency: In honor of Johanna Nichols'', was published in 2013. Nichols's best known work, ''

Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

'', won the Linguistic Society of America's Leonard Bloomfield Book Award for 1994. In 2013 Nichols was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. In 2023 she was elected as a member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

Books

* ''Predicate Nominals: A Partial Surface Syntax of Russian.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. . * ''Grammar Inside and Outside the Clause: Some Approaches to Theory from the Field.'' Edited by Johanna Nichols and Anthony C. Woodbury. Cambridge ambridgeshire New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. . * ''Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology.'' Edited by Wallace Chafe and Johanna Nichols. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Pub. Corp., 1986. * ''Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. . * ''Sound Symbolism.'' Edited by Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols, and John J. Ohala. Cambridge ngland New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994. . * ''Chechen–English and English–Chechen Dictionary'' / ''Noxchiin–ingals, ingals–noxchiin deshnizhaina''. London; New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004. . Johanna Nichols, Ronald L. Sprouse, and Arbi Vagapov. * ''Ingush Grammar.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. .

References

External links

Biography of Johanna Nichols

The Chechen Language

The Ingush Language

Typology in the service of classification: Alternative approaches to language classification
Stanford, July 17–19, 2007
World Atlas of Language Structures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nichols, Johanna Linguists from the United States Living people University of California, Berkeley faculty Linguists of Hokan languages Linguists of Caucasian languages Linguists of Northeast Caucasian languages Linguists of Ingush Linguists of Chechen Historical linguists American women linguists 1945 births Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America University of California, Berkeley alumni Members of Academia Europaea