Fernando Zúñiga (born 6 January 1968) is a Chilean-born Swiss

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 ...

at the

University of Bern The University of Bern (, , ) is a public university, public research university in the Switzerland, Swiss capital of Bern. It was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the canton of Bern. It is a comprehensive university offering a br ...

, where he held the chair of General Linguistics from February, 2013 until January, 2024; after retiring for health reasons, he became an associate researcher at the Institute of Linguistics. He works in the fields of

linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

and

indigenous languages of the Americas The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now e ...

, especially

Mapudungun Mapuche ( , ; from 'land' and 'people', meaning 'the people of the land') or Mapudungun (from 'land' and 'speak, speech', meaning 'the speech of the land'; also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu) is either a language isolate or member of the s ...

and

Algonquian languages The Algonquian languages ( ; also Algonkian) are a family of Indigenous languages of the Americas and most of the languages in the Algic language family are included in the group. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from ...

. He 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 ...

in 2018.

Partial bibliography

* ''Mapudungun'', Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2000 * ''Deixis and Alignment. Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas'', Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006, * ''Mapudungun: el habla mapuche. Introducción a la lengua mapuche, con notas comparativas y un CD'', Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios Públicos, 2006, * ''Benefactives and Malefactives. Typological perspectives and case studies'', co-edited with Seppo Kittilä, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010, * ''Word Formation in South American Languages'', co-edited with Swintha Danielsen and Katja Hannss, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2014, * ''Advances in Research on Semantic Roles'', co-edited with Seppo Kittilä, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2016, * ''Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony'', co-edited with Sonia Cristofaro, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2017, * ''Grammatical Voice'', co-authored with Seppo Kittilä, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, * ''Mapudungun: el habla mapuche. Introducción a la lengua mapuche, con notas comparativas y audio'', Santiago de Chile:

Fondo de Cultura Económica Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE or simply "Fondo") is a Spanish language, non-profit publishing group, partly funded by the Mexican government. It is based in Mexico but it has subsidiaries throughout the Spanish-speaking world. It was founded ...

/ Centro de Estudios Públicos, 2022, * ''Applicative constructions in the world's languages'', co-edited with Denis Creissels, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2024,

References

External links

Home page at the University of Bern
1968 births Living people Linguists from Switzerland Linguists of Mapuche Members of Academia Europaea {{switzerland-linguist-stub