Obituary: Natalia Kozinceva (LINGUIST List: Vol-13-391)

[Loren A. Billings]

Humble apologies for cross-posting. --Loren



Date:  Tue, 12 Feb 2002 10:38:48 -0800
From:  Elena Maslova <Maslova at jps.net>
Subject:  Obituary: Natalia Kozinceva

On behalf of the members of St.Petersburg Typology Seminar, I
regret to announce that our colleague, Natalia A. Kozinceva, a
distinguished expert in functional typology and Armenian studies,
died in St.Petersburg on December, 28.

Elena Maslova


OBITUARY (from St.Petersburg Typology Seminar)

Prof. Dr. Natalia Andreevna Kozintseva
(26 July 1945  28 December 2001)

On 28 December 2001 the Institute of Linguistic Studies of the
Russian Academy of Sciences (ILI RAN) lost its leading
researcher, Doctor of Linguistics, Professor Natalia Andreevna
Kozintseva. An outstanding expert in language theory, linguistic
typology, and Armenian and Russian studies, she died at age 56
after a long battle with cancer.

Prof. Kozintseva had worked at the Linguistic Typology Workshop
since graduating from the Leningrad State University (Department
for Structural and Applied Linguistics) in 1970.

An expert in many languages, she focused on Armenian studies and
became virtually Russia's only specialist in the Armenian
Grammar. She authored sections on Armenian in almost all
collective monographs of the Linguistic Typology Workshop of ILI
RAN including: Typology of Passive Constructions (1974), Typology
of Resultative Constructions (1983), Verb Categories and Sentence
Structure (1983), Typology of Constructions with Predicate
Actants (1985), Typology of Iterative Constructions (1989),
Typology of Imperative Constructions (1992), Typology of
Conditional Constructions (1998), and Typology of Concessive
Constructions (to be published). She is also the author of the
monograph Modern Eastern Armenian (München, LINCOM EUROPA, 1995)
and had published more than forty books and papers on various
issues of the Armenian Grammar.

Prof. Kozintseva made important contributions to Russian studies
as well. She was an active participant in the writing and editing
of the six-volume publication A Functional Grammar Theory
(1987-1996) (ed. Prof. A. V. Bondarko) for which she wrote the
following sections:  Dependent taxis (on the material of
converbal constructions) (jointly with T.G. Akimova);
Aspectual-and-taxis situations (with temporal localisation) in
multipredicative co-ordinative constructions; Aspectual-and-taxis
situations without temporal localisation (iterative taxis)
(jointly with T.G. Akimova); Qualitative characterisation meaning
in constructions with verbal predicates (jointly with T.G.
Akimova). Another important publication in this area was her
monograph Temporal Localization of Action and its Relation to
Aspectual, Modal, and Taxis Meanings (Leningrad, Nauka, 1991).

In recent years Prof. Kozintseva turned her attention to the
subject of evidentiality. She published three papers on this
issue: Structural and typological characteristics of the category
of evidentiality/non-evidentiality  (Typolological and
Contrastive Methods in Slavic Linguistics, Moscow, 1993); The
category of evidentiality: problems of typological analysis
(Voprosy Yazykoznaniya, 1994, 1 3); and Perfect forms as a means
of expressing evidentiality in Modern Eastern Armenian
(Evidentials: Turkic, Iranic and Neighbouring Languages, Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 2000). The collective monograph Typology of
Evidential Constructions that she was preparing for publication
at the time of her death remains unfinished.

The last event in which Prof. Kozintseva took a most active part
was preparing for publication the proceedings of the Verb
Categories and Sentence Structure international conference, held
in commemoration of the 95th birthday of Prof. A. A. Kholodovich
and on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Linguistic
Typology Workshop of ILI RAN (2001).

Apart from her fruitful research, Prof. Kozintseva lectured for
many years at the St. Petersburg State University. She taught
courses in Linguistic Typology at the Philological Faculty,
Russian Syntax at the Faculty of Journalism, and Armenian Grammar
at the Oriental Faculty. From 1998 to 2000 she spent some time at
Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Paris, France)
as a visiting professor.

Throughout her distinguished career Prof. Kozintseva spoke at
numerous conferences around the world, including St. Petersburg,
Moscow, Vologda, Kemerovo, Irkutsk, Yerevan, Tartu, Warsaw,
Krakow, Torun, Bratislava, Sofia, Prague, Paris, Montreal, and
Istanbul.

Saying our last farewell today, we grieve that death took her
from us prematurely when she could achieve so much more. Alas,
for some reason, it is the way of the world that those who still
have so much to say are destined to go. Natalia Andreevna
Kozintseva was a wonderfully kind, responsive and unusually
modest person who radiated light and warmth. To us at the
Linguistic Typology Workshop, she was the good angel. And in our
memories that is how she will always remain.

Elena Maslova
Stanford University


http://www.stanford.edu/~emaslova

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