LINGUIST List 13.391

Tue Feb 12 2002

All: Obituary: Natalia Kozinceva

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

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1. Elena Maslova, 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 (M�nchen, 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, � 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