Konstantin Igorevich Pozdniakov (; born 24 July 1952,

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, USSR) is a Russian-French linguist who works on the comparative-historical linguistics of the

Mande Mande may refer to: * Mandé peoples of western Africa * Mande languages, their Niger-Congo languages * Manding languages, Manding, a term covering a subgroup of Mande peoples, and sometimes used for one of them, Mandinka people, Mandinka * Garo p ...

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for se ...

, and Niger-Congo families.Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Segerer, Guillaume (2017)
"A Genealogical classification of Atlantic languages."
(Draft) To appear in: Lüpke, Friederike (ed.) ''The Oxford guide to the Atlantic languages of West Africa:'' Oxford:Oxford University Press. He also works on

Rongorongo Rongorongo ( or ; Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that has the appearance of writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, but none have been successful. Although ...

Easter Island Easter Island (, ; , ) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, ...

Education

In 1974, Pozdniakov graduated from the West African Languages Department (in the Department of African Studies, Oriental Department) of

Leningrad State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...

. In 1978, he defended his thesis at the Institute of Linguistics of the

Academy of Sciences of the USSR The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (u ...

(Moscow) on the comparative study of

Mande languages The Mande languages are a family of languages spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé peoples. They include Maninka (Malinke), Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Kpelle, Jula (Dioula), Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai. There are ar ...

Career

From 1978-1982 he worked at the Soviet cultural mission in

Dakar Dakar ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Senegal, largest city of Senegal. The Departments of Senegal, department of Dakar has a population of 1,278,469, and the population of the Dakar metropolitan area was at 4.0 mill ...

, Senegal. From 1982–1997, he was a researcher at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the

/ RAS (

Kunstkamera The Kunstkamera (, derived from German ''Kunstkammer'' lit. "art chamber") formally organized as the Russian Academy of Science's Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (, ''Muzey antropologii i etnografii imeni Petra Velikogo R ...

) in Leningrad / St. Petersburg. In 1995, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the reconstruction of the grammar of

Atlantic languages The West Atlantic languages (also the Atlantic languages"West Atlantic" is the traditional term, following Diedrich Hermann Westermann; "Atlantic" is more typical in recent work, particularly since Bendor-Samuel (1989), but is also used specifi ...

. Since 1997, he has been a professor at the

Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (; ), abbreviated as INALCO, is a French Grand Etablissement with a specializing in the teaching of languages and cultures from the world. Its coverage spans languages of Central Europ ...

(INALCO) in Paris and a researcher at the LLACAN (Languages and cultures of Africa) research unit of the

French National Center for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 engi ...

(CNRS). From 2011–2016, he was a senior member of the

Institut Universitaire de France The Institut Universitaire de France (IUF, Academic Institute of France), is a service of the French Ministry of Higher Education that annually distinguishes a small number of university professors for their research excellence, as evidenced by t ...

Research interests

*reconstruction of the vocabulary and grammar of the

, and etymological dictionary of the Atlantic languages (with

Guillaume Segerer Guillaume Segerer (born July 13, 1965, in Paris, France) is a French linguist who specializes in Niger-Congo languages, especially the Atlantic languages. Segerer is known for his historical-comparative work on the Atlantic languages. Educatio ...

) * Proto-Niger-Congo reconstruction, including noun classes and numerals *

quantitative comparative linguistics Quantitative comparative linguistics is the use of quantitative research, quantitative analysis as applied to comparative linguistics. Examples include the statistical fields of lexicostatistics and glottochronology, and the borrowing of phylogene ...

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

phonotactics Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek 'voice, sound' and 'having to do with arranging') is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...

*decipherment of

(

)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pozdniakov, Konstantin Living people 1952 births Linguists of Niger–Congo languages Linguists from Russia Russian Africanists French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists Rongorongo Linguists of Serer