Johanna Nichols (born 1945,

Iowa City Iowa City, offically the City of Iowa City is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It is the home of the University of Iowa and county seat of Johnson County, at the center of the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the time ...

, Iowa) is an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

and

professor emerita ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

in the Department of

Slavic Language The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ea ...

s and Literatures at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

. 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 the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...

, language typology, ancient linguistic

prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The us ...

, and languages of the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historica ...

, chiefly Chechen and Ingush. She has made fundamental contributions to these fields. A festschrift 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 ''Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time''Johanna Nichols. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time'. University of Chicago Press, 1992. is a 1992 book by linguist Johanna Nichols. It is her best-known work, pioneering the use of linguistic typology ...

'', won the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: '' Language'' ...

's Leonard Bloomfield Book Award for 1994.

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 Leanne Hinton (born 28 September 1941) is an American linguist and emerita professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. Education and career Hinton received her PhD in 1977 from UC San Diego, with a dissertation entitle ...

, 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 Paleolinguists Women linguists 1945 births Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America