Konstantin Igorevich Pozdniakov (Russian: Константин Игоревич Поздняков; born 24 July 1952, Leningrad, USSR) is a Russian-French linguist who works on the comparative-historical linguistics of the Mande, Atlantic, and Niger-Congo families.[1][2][3][4][5] He also works on Rongorongo of Easter Island.

Konstantin Pozdniakov
Константин Поздняков
Born (1952-07-24) 24 July 1952 (age 74)
Academic background
Alma materLeningrad State University
Academic work
InstitutionsCNRS
Main interests

Education

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In 1974, Pozdniakov graduated from the West African Languages Department (in the Department of African Studies, Oriental Department) of Leningrad State University. In 1978, he defended his thesis at the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Moscow) on the comparative study of Mande languages.

Career

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From 1978-1982 he worked at the Soviet cultural mission in Dakar, Senegal. From 1982–1997, he was a researcher at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR / RAS (Kunstkamera) in Leningrad / St. Petersburg. In 1995, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the reconstruction of the grammar of Atlantic languages.

Since 1997, he has been a professor at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris and a researcher at the LLACAN (Languages and cultures of Africa) research unit of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). From 2011–2016, he was a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Research interests

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References

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Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Valentin Vydrin. 2026. Mande and Bantu in the Niger-Congo context // Language in Africa, 7 (1), https://iling-ran.ru/web/en/node/4416

Pozdniakov, Konstantin. 2022. Proto-Fula–Sereer: Lexicon, morphophonology, and noun classes. (Niger-Congo Comparative Studies 3). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5820515 https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/325

Pozdniakov, Konstantin. 2018. The numeral system of Proto-Niger-Congo: A step-by-step reconstruction. (Niger-Congo Comparative Studies 2). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1311704 https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/191

Pozdniakov, Konstantin 1993. Сравнительная грамматика атлантических языков: именные классы и элементы фоно-морфологии. [Comparative grammar of the Atlantic languages]. Moscow: Nauka (in Russian).

Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Guillaume Segerer. 2024. "A Genealogical classification of Atlantic languages." In: Lüpke, Friederike (ed.) The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa: Oxford: Oxford University Press : 16-47.

Pozdniakov, Konstantin. 2023. Anomalies in the noun class systems of Niger-Congo: towards a typology of the atypical // Language in Africa, 4, 1: 86-99. https://iling-ran.ru/web/ru/publications/journals/languageinafrica/4-1

Pozdniakov, Konstantin. 2016. Statistics and reconstruction: «quantitative diachrony». .In: (Ed.) Konstantin Pozdniakov. Reconstruction et classification généalogique: tendances actuelles. Faits de Langues, Paris: 223-250.

Pozdniakov, Konstantin. 2015. Diachronie des classes nominales atlantiques: morphophonologie, morphologie, sémantique. In: (Ed.) Denis Creissels et Konstantin Pozdniakov. Les classes nominales dans les langues atlantiques. Köln, Rüdiger Köppe Verlag: 54-102.

Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Guillaume Segerer. 2019. Regular homophones: a tool for semantic typology and for linguistic reconstruction // Africana Linguistica 25: 231-279

Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Guillaume Segerer. 2007. Similar Place Avoidance: A Statistical Universal // Linguistic Typology. Vol. 11(2): 307-348. PDF

Pozdniakov, Konstantin. 2003. Micromorphologie ou morphologie de paradigme? // Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris, 1, vol. XCVIII: 3-52. PDF

Pozdniakov, Konstantin. 1996. Les bases du déchiffrement de l'écritures de l'île de Pâque // Journal de la Societé des Océanistes, 103, Paris, , p. 289-303.

Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Igor Pozdniakov. 2007. Rapanui Writing and the Rapanui Language: Preliminary Results of a Statistical Analysis. In: Forum for Anthropology and Culture . St. Petersburg: University of Oxford; Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences; European University: 3-36. PDF

  1. Pozdniakov, Konstantin. "Etudes atlantiques comparatives : questions de méthodologie." Mémoires de la Société linguistique de Paris, XV, 2007, p. 93-119.
  2. Pozdniakov, Konstantin. "Problèmes de l’étude comparative historique des langues atlantiques". Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 2007.
  3. Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Segerer, Guillame. Reconstruction des pronoms atlantiques et typologie des systèmes pronominaux // Systèmes de marques personnelles en Afrique. Collection «Afrique et Langage », 8, 2004, p. 151-162.
  4. Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Segerer, Guillame. Tradition et rupture dans les grammaires comparées de différentes familles de langues », 2007, p. 93-119.
  5. Pozdniakov, Konstantin & Segerer, Guillaume (2017). "A Genealogical classification of Atlantic languages."[permanent dead link] (Draft) To appear in: Lüpke, Friederike (ed.) The Oxford guide to the Atlantic languages of West Africa: Oxford:Oxford University Press.