Aleksandr Kibrik’s scientific school: From language description and documentation towards linguistic typology and linguistic theory

Abstract

The paper presents the “field biography” of Aleksandr E. Kibrik – the outstanding Russian linguist, the founder of the national school of field linguistics. Kibrik’s 1967–2008 field studies of unwritten languages of Russia, most particularly of Daghestanian languages, including Archi, Khinalug, Godoberi, Bagwalal and Tsakhur, are outlined. Description and documentation of languages fundamentally differing from the Standard Average European in their structural characteristics fostered his pioneering research program in theoretical linguistics and linguistic typology, involving the thesis of cognitive motivation of the linguistic form as its fundamental pillar.

Keywords

• field linguistics
• description and documentation of languages
• east-caucasian languages
• linguistic typology
• intragenetic typology
• cognitive science