Research Fields

• Linguistics
• Language description
• African languages
• Language documentation
• Syntax;
• Corpus linguistics

About

Dr. Alena Witzlack-Makarevich's research revolves around capturing, describing, and explaining linguistic diversity. In her work, Witzlack-Makarevich combines large-scale typological studies involving hundreds of languages with in-depth studies of individual languages. Alena is also actively involved in language documentation and description.

 

Selected Publications

Bickel, Balthasar, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Kamal K. Choudhary, Matthias Schlesewsky & Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky. 2015. “The neurophysiology of language processing shapes the evolution of grammar: evidence from case marking”, PLOS ONE 10(8): e0132819. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132819.

Seifart, Frank, Jan Strunk, Swintha Danielsen, Iren Hartmann, Brigitte Pakendorf, Søren Wichmann, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Nivja H. de Jong & Balthasar Bickel. 2018. “Nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 2018, 201800708.

Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena & Hirosi Nakagawa. 2019. Linguistic features and typologies in languages commonly referred to as ‘Khoisan’. In Ekkehard Wolff (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics, 382–416. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena & Ilja A. Seržant. “Differential argument marking: Patterns of variation. In Seržant, Ilja A. & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (eds), Diachrony of differential argument marking”, 1–40. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena, Taras Zakharko, Lennart Bierkandt, Fernando Zúñiga & Balthasar Bickel. “Decomposing hierarchical alignment: co-arguments as conditions on alignment and the limits of referential hierarchies as explanations in verb agreement”, Linguistics 54(3), 531–561.

 

Teaching

Corpus linguistics

Quantitative methods in linguistics

Pidgins and creoles

Lexical typology

Practical lexicography

ǃUi languages of the Tuu family

Introduction to the structure of Khoekhoe

Register Variation

Comparative linguistics and phylogenetic methods

Linguistic typology

Field linguistics